Good news, Everyone!

THIS HAPPENED!

That's right, you guys--I'M A MASTER OF FINE ART!!! You must all call me "Master" now; I won't respond to anything less. Except that I totally will, because the enormity of this situation still hasn't sunk in, haha.

Last Thursday, I defended my thesis (Rockall) before a tribunal of published cartoonists in order to graduate. All three, Steve Bissette, Bob Sikoryak, and Jon Chad, have been my professors at some point over the past two years at CCS--and I'm proud to say that I think we're all friends, too--but I was still out-of-my-mind-nervous to get that last critique. I worked my butt off this year, and I'm super proud of the product I turned in, but when you spend so much time with any given thing (it took me THREE DAYS just to hand-bind the books!) all you can see are the imperfections and they are SO HORRIBLY GLARING.

Like the fact that my bangs were still uneven after all the hairspray I poured on :\

It was a great experience, though! There were a few little constructive criticisms to tweak for the future, but overall it was overwhelmingly positive and reassuring. And I passed! THANKS, GENTLEMEN! :D It has truly been a pleasure.

All of us second years, in addition to meeting with a Thesis Committee, also had to hang original art for the gallery show with our own hands. It was a fun callback to my Museum Studies years; the last time I hung actual art for a show (instead of just didactics) was waaaaay back in 2009. It was nice to know that I've still got it!

We all took turns holding the glass for each other while someone hammered in their nails. Go Team!

Later, Jon went through and hung a copy of everyone's thesis project next to its corresponding artwork, so visitors could read and compare the finished product.

I love that fat little seal so damned much.

Then my parents came into town, and we played all of the pinball and ate all of the food! It was great, I love hanging out with them. It was also incredibly interesting to meet everyone ELSE's parents, too, and try to guess who belongs to whom, haha! Everyone was so nice. AND THEN WE GRADUATED! My dad got distracted by the ceremony, so this is the only picture I've got of what is possibly the most important moment of my adult life:

Not pictured: when I curtsied right into the goddam podium and nearly took the microphone out.

I'M MEMORABLE! 8D

But it's ok, because I was totally the prettiest girl there!

Right? Right.

I am seriously in love with this dress, however.

Then there was more pinball, and more food, and all of the rum and beer. And I think that pretty much brings us up to date?

IN OTHER NEWS, Rockall got a super-nice review from Johanna Draper Carlson, over at Comics Worth Reading! She stopped by the table I shared with Billage, Donna Almendrala, and Melanie Gillman at MoCCA (no doubt lured by our mesmerizing orange tablecloth), and we all had a really good chat.

Reviews?! Networking?! It's like I'm a real cartoonist or something, haha!

MoCCA and Thesiseseeesseeeiisez?!

Hey, guys! I realized it's time for a new bog post, and not just because most of you new visitors from MoCCA will be routed here from my business cards because I was silly and used my blog's url and not my new site's. WHOOPS. With the Thesis deadline crunch I didn't have time to make new cards in addition to eight hand-bound books, and screenprinted covers for Rockall Part I reprints, AND facetrim a pile of Part Is and Part IIs for MoCCA. I'm still baffled at how much I got done just last week! At least ROCKALL (the webcomic) has been updating regularly! Tuesdays and Thursdays!

So, Thesis! It's all put together and handed in, and now I have no idea what to do with myself since I have free time again. I slept a lot today; it was awesome.

About eight days ago, I was finishing up the digital files of my cleaned up artwork and plugging them into the InDesign file. Exactly a week ago, this is what my project looked like:

You can't tell, but that stack of paper on the right is, like, two inches tall. Over 1,000 pages, Baby!

Then I separated out all of the signatures, cut the endpapers down to size, poked holes in all of them, and sewed them together with my Hulk Hands. All eight books took me an entire day, because I kept snapping the thread on accident when trying to pull it tight. They don't call me Amelia "Rips Doors Off Hinges" Onorato for nothing, folks. That has actually happened. Twice.

But early last Wednesday morning, I was looking at these beautiful babies! The spines are cardstock, doubled on itself and glued directly to the book-binding cloth, which in turn is glued directly into the sewn-together signatures.

So much glue, you guys.

Then I took a nap.

THEN, I cut down 12 pieces of faux-microsuede and got nine viable screenprints of the cover design out of them! I didn't take a picture of either that step or the ensuing steps of gluing together the bookboards and guts, because I was operating on autopilot at that point, but of the books themselves I've got pictures a-plenty!

It looks so much better than the dummy, haha--and that was a version that won me a cut of the April Fog Memorial Scholarship!

Plus there's a sweet little chubby-chubs hiding out on the back! EEE!

SPINES! Dummy copy is on top.

Then I sewed them all into their little knit pouches while watching Hellraiser: Hellseeker (staring the Allstate Mayhem Guy and Liz Lemon's ex?! YES, PLEASE), and lined them all up for one last group photo. Although we had to make eight copies, we only had to hand in six to the Thesis Committee; we can keep one for ourselves and send the other to our Thesis Adviser. And, since all the patterns are unique, and I'd been working on them for so long, they all felt like their own little personalities.

What should have been a moment of triumph turned into a version of Sophie's Choice, albeit with somewhat fewer Nazis.

Thursday night and early Friday morning was spent facetrimming Parts I and II for sale at MoCCA--

--Thesis projects were handed in--

Here seen with the lovely Donna Almendrala!

--and Donna, Melanie Gillman, Billage, his wife Sarah, and myself drove down to New York, where we met up with my friends Amy and Chris (citation_needed, tl-dr), crashed in my aunt's apartment, and went to MoCCA!

Our table was the best! And the only one with an orange tablecloth. That was really a sheet. Which Donna and I found for $1.26.

I made back my table cost and made some pretty sweet trades, and I got to hang out with a bunch of friends I haven't seen in a while! HUGE SUCCESS!

I also got to try Bubble Tea for the first time!

The tea itself was good; still not a fan of tapioca.

I also got to see Cabin in the Woods on Saturday night, which may be the best $13 I've spent in a long time. Don't listen to the critics--the ending is PERFECT.

HOLY SHIT!

No, literally: Holy Shit, A Comics Anthology I was part of, was reviewed by Rob Clough of The Comics Journal. I was voted most satirical! Considering that my contribution to a collection of religious stories was a satirical collection of religious stories based on the history of Catholicism, I'm definitely happy with that statement. Thanks, Rob!

On a related note, Gary Groth, the editor-in-chief of The Comics Journal and co-founder of Fantagraphics Books is here today for Industry Day, and I have a meeting with him in a little over an hour. My other meeting is with Chris Duffy, so Big Leagues all the way!


And in OTHER news, ROCKALL's won an award!!! It's like I'm a legitimate cartoonist or something, haha!

The April Fog Memorial Scholarship is a program that started last year at The Center for Cartoon Studies, where I'm currently in my last semester before (hopefully!) getting a Master's Degree in Cartooning. We've got two pinball machines on campus, and this is the second year that half of the quarters put in them were donated to four seniors to put towards the printing costs of their thesis projects. I am one of those seniors, and ROCKALL is that thesis project! Here's a pretty picture of my certificate:

I even put on lipstick for this photoshoot, although you can't tell. I was not, however, wearing pants.

You can read more about the scholarship, my friends who also won, and pinball in general HERE :D !

In other-OTHER news, I now have a bike! My parents pulled her out of a dumpster in Connecticut, and my dad helped me fix her flat tires over Spring Break. Much to my mom's chagrin, I stuffed this relic in the back of my car and high-tailed it back up to Vermont, where I have thus far ridden her once to the park, once to the post box, and once to school. It's been really cold this week, ok?! And I'm out of shape.

This bike, she is older than I am. And, why yes, that is a Vespa helmet dangling from those handlebars.

My mom can't be holding too much of a grudge, though, because she sent me a care package of every single kind of Girl Scout cookie, plus a foot-tall solid chocolate rabbit.

Happy Easter to ME.

Well, Fancy Seeing you Here!

I'm finally back at school, and with access to the incredible school scanners. In fact, my internship this year is scanning an enormous backlog of one of my professors, renowned comic artist, and all-around awesome human being, Stephen Bissette! Most of you reading this blog post in the next few days will probably have been linked here from his blog, in which case, thanks for the shout-out, Steve!

So, the last time I touched this blog was right when the spring semester was winding down, and here we are, three+ months later, as the fall semester of my final year of grad school picks up. What did I do with my time this summer, you ask? Was it worth neglecting to post any new and interesting things? To answer those questions in reverse order, yes, and: traveling. I did not spend more than two weeks in any one place between the 1st of June and the 1st of September. I took lots of notes, and lots of pictures, and while all of the ones from my transcontinental railroad trip (oh yes, I took the train from Los Angeles, California to New London, CT; it took three days and two layovers in Chicago and Washington, D.C) were erroneously deleted when I tried to recharge my new phone to my old iTunes account (there was much cursing), the MEMORIES still remain. The point is, I have tons of crazy stories that need to be commemorated with exaggerated blog posts and mini-comics, and I will be bombarding this blog to make up for all of the neglect.

Among some of the places I visited:
1. The Isle of Palms, SC
2. Charlotte, NC
3. Rehobeth Beach, DE
4. Philadelphia, PA
5. New York City, NY
6. Malibu, CA
7. Topanga Canyon, CA
8. Los Angeles, CA
9. Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut (in the train)
10. Bordeaux, France
11. Jersey City, NJ

This summer. It was the best summer ever, you guys. And it will never happen again, but I'm ok with that. THIS SUMMER, I LIIIIIVED! Look forward to comics! :D

But enough talking--here's some artwork! One of our first assignments this fall was to create a 10-Panel Pitch, an entire story laid out in ten strategically timed comic panels, with a description of the action contained therein. I outlined a story about a sort of alternate-history post-WWI world, where "gentlemen architects" of the upper class of society like to pass their time by designing aesthetically pleasing feats of architecture that they then have to immure one of their family members within the cornerstone in order to construct (a secret practice known only to the Architect's Guild and the construction workers, who don't care what the Patricians do with their daughters). The Bridge of Arta is an actual place, with its own Wikipedia article and everything, and apparently at one point in history it was actually a thing to bury ladies in building foundations, or kill kids and mix their blood in with the mortar to bless an edifice and ensure it stood forever. NONSENSE, UTTER NONSENSE, ALL OF IT. But terribly, terribly interesting nonsense.







If I ever have enough time to wrestle with perspective and architecture, I would really enjoy fleshing this pitch out and making a go at it :)

It's SUMMER VACATION!!!!

Although the weather is doing its best to put a damper on things. I don't mind the rain, but if it must it could at least be in the form of thunderstorms. Enough of this drizzling! HARRUMPH.

Since last we chatted, I figured out how to turn on the backlighting for my keyboard, helped out at the Center for Cartoon Studies graduation ceremony (which can be viewed here!), packed up all my stuff, put a deposit down on my first apartment for the fall, moved back home, and printed out a bunch of extra comics*.

*not necessarily in that order, but mostly in that order.

How many comics, you ask?

ALL OF THE COMICS.

What you can't see beneath ROCKALL are copies of AVAST, my group's Golden Age assignment from Spring Semester, and Holy Shit, the comics anthology I was a part of for our Fall Semester final project; neither of which I ever blogged about. Would you like to see a sample from Holy Shit? Of course you would:

Why can't I get these to line up? Weird.

Anyone going to Heroes Con next month? Because I will be down there in Charlotte from June 3-5 panhandling these works of art and you KNOW you want your very own copies. This offer is too good to pass up!

Also: business cards!

Thus ends the product placement, I swear! I'm still in the process of unpacking my car and trying to Tetris all my belongings into my old bedroom (there is a distinct shortage of bookshelf space to handle my exponentially increased comic and zine collections) and I still need a 3-prong to 2-prong power adapter before I can set up my home office so unfortunately there won't be a Wunderkammer update this week. In positive news, however, I've been hanging out with my bffl Amy of [citation_needed] fame a lot over the past couple days and my family's boat went in the water today!

F*** trees, I climb buoys, Motherf***er

There is so much headroom down in that cabin and it makes me so happy. Totally makes up for getting my good pair of jeans all mucked up with harbor slime while helping to launch the dinghy.

NEXT WEEK: WUNDERKAMMER.

Because My Life Is So Terribly Interesting (?!)

I have resolved to be better about updating this blog, since I want to get better about marketing .v.

Actually, my life has actually been pretty interesting lately! Often this is not the case; it's difficult to write about my archiving career and make it interesting and appealing to "normal people." I mean, do you really want to hear about how the price of bronze casting has increased exponentially over the past six decades, based on invoices? Because...I could go on for days :\

Two weeks ago, I went (briefly!) to MoCCA! Really, I was in NY to visit 1/3 of the Regis College Museum Studies Department (Hi, April!), and I convinced her it would be fun times to check it out! And it was :D She was very patient while I ran around saying "hi" to everyone I knew (and still I missed a bunch of people from my new school AND Kate Beaton. WRYYYYYYYY T^T); she even bought a book for herself! So that was exciting, but we had to leave early to attend a 50th Anniversary Antiquarian Book Fair :OOOO So it was hard to be too bummed.

Imagine, if you will, a big-ass room. A big-ass room full of old, leather-bound books and the smell of vellum. Also, April's boyfriend's friend worked for one of the businesses represented, and snuck us in. And THEN! He snuck away from his post and took us on a tour of all the booths, and just started opening glass cases to show us, and let us touch, things! Things like a second-edition EVER printing of the Koran, and first-editions of The Hobbit and, weirdly, A Clockwork Orange. I don't much understand the allure of that particular piece of work. And it is certainly a piece of work :\ Other things of note were hysterical Age of Exploration Era maps, where South America is sideways, and a Geography Game about the Departments of France apparently written by a resident of Loire because that county was this game's equivalent of "Boardwalk." Jesus. Everyone knows that Gironde is better!

Then we went to a candy store that must have taken up an entire city block!
Yessssssss.

Also that weekend, I visited a family friend's art studio in Harlem, along with my aunt. He's a second-year Master's student at Columbia, and just finished his senior thesis: it is a clock, rolling on the track of a treadmill. I'm not going to lie; my understanding of contemporary art is negligible at best. I think it's an allegory about time v. the rat race, but I felt too stupid to actually come out and ask DD: Either way, I can appreciate the work and physics that went into engineering a rig to keep the clock from rolling off, yet rolling smoothly in place (magnets and pendulums!). Sorry, Sam .v.

Then all last week at work I was conscripted from the archives to help put together the Senior Art Show; so instead of being home working on Wunderkammer, I was running around yelling at students to give me their information and working reception on Opening Night. But it was totally worth it; below are two of my favorite pieces (please excuse the bad quality of my camera phone):

This...really reminds me of the Silent Hill nurses, only going to Prom! 8D
They are made out of papier-mache, used tea bags, and wax.

It's like a bad fairy tale! It doesn't help that I've been re-reading all of Angela Carter's weirdo, bestiality-themed reinterpretations of famous fairy tales, haha. I have to walk past this fireplace several times per day, and every time I get freaked out.

Last weekend a bunch of old friends were in town, and were treated to the grand, Home Town Tour (whether they liked it or not, haha!). And yesterday I went to the dentist and had a cavity filled without Novocaine, because I am a total badass.

That is a lie. I am such a baby; the cavity was so small it hadn't gotten past the enamel, so no pain-killer was necessary. I cried anyway T^T

This volcano is really taking away from the allure of going to France next week. Well, maybe going to France. I dislike flying at the best of times, let alone when there's an increased chance of a painful, fiery death. Eyjafjallajokull, why you gotta do me like that?