Bulletin #6: Comics That Bear Witness

November 10, 2020

November 10, 2020   Good morning, The power of visual storytelling has been on my mind. We all process so much information and images on a daily basis. It’s overwhelming. I for one have a hard time digesting important facts and separating out what is just click-bait. I find a more comprehensive world in comics. In July, I launched a comics project with Front Line Defenders called Cypher. It’s a monthly ‘zine that features stories of human rights defenders, their work, and the challenges they face. In it, we pair cartoonists with human rights defenders to tell their story.  Reporting these stories through a pictorial narrative provides a multilayered vision and context through commentary that can be funny, exposing, compassionate, sarcastic, ironic and so on. It can ‘freeze’ a moment of our contemporary times, and challenge authorities in power.  Through drawings, cartoonists can show perspectives that could never be visible in photography or literal description. Drawings can describe was isn’t necessarily physically possible, but is experientially true. This is where I find clarity amidst the noise of our daily lives.  With all of this in mind, I would like to introduce to you the following Booklyn artists and their works. What they all have in common is a commitment to bearing witness, and a love for boundary-breaking, visual storytelling.    Drop me a line for inquiries, questions, or Zoom book viewings.  Beldan [email protected] Artists’ Books Mike Taylor: Present Perfect Progressive Tense Silkscreen, hand-sewn, USD 2400.   Through extensive research at the ACCORD Civil Rights Museum in St. Augustine Florida, where the artist now resides, Taylor constructs a narrative of events between 1960 and 1964 chronicling the Civil Rights struggles of St. Augustine’s residents and the city’s resistance to racial integration.  Mike Taylor: Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV 2020, edition of 20, USD 1400.Mike Taylor began monitoring American quarantine in a drawing journal as Leslie Robison was experimenting with using calligraphy to illustrate our 45th president’s ridiculous and false daily pitches to a captive media, a patently slow approach mirroring many people’s return to gardening and crafts while unable to go to their jobs. David Sandlin: 76 Manifestations of American Destiny Vol. I – In The Beginning Silkscreen, USD 7000 David Sandlin: 76 Manifestations of American Destiny Vol. 3 – Mythic Heroes, Mythic Villians Silkscreen, USD 7000 Last Copy Beldan Sezen: Memory Patches (last copy) 2020, edition of 4, USD 4200. In the moment of a happening, there is a moment of chaos which I think is a moment of unaltered truth. All that is said, talked about, reported, eye-witnessed, requested, and observed is fairly unfiltered. It takes time to alter reality. Memory Patches is an attempt to preserve those “unofficial’ voices. ink, hand painting, pencil, monoprint, typewritten, hand-sewn. Zines & Books  Jan & Roxy: Heartland 1 + 2 laser printed zine, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, saddle-stitch. USD 8. Feminist body-positive zines with autobiographical narratives, a sense of humor and dash of reality. Jan is the illustrator, storyteller, and co-creator of heartland comic. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. Roxy is the co-creator and storyteller of Heartland comic. She lives in the Northwest. Issues 1 & 2, laser printed zine, color covers, b/w interior, 8.5 x 5.5 inches, saddle-stitch. ABO Comix: Confined Before Covid19 USD 25. Confined Before COVID-19: A Pandemic Anthology by LGBTQ Prisoners features comics, artwork, poetry, and short stories about how the pandemic is affecting people inside prisons nationwide.Untreated: Mental Illness in Prison USD 10. Untreated Mental Illness in Prison is a short comic zine by E.L. Tedana & J. Coffey who are both incarcerated in Texas. It depicts the issue of sleep deprivation and mental illness within the confines of prison.   Ganzeer: Loose Shorts  2019, perfect bound, 8.5 x 11 inches, USD 40. Includes 10 short comics from Ganzeer. Ganzeer operates between art, design, storytelling, creating what he has coined: Concept Pop, a brand of cultural insurgency that utilizes the aesthetics birthed by Pop Art in tackling the subject matter typically ascribed to Conceptual Art. David Sandlin: Sleep of History 2017, perfect bound, 10 x 8 inches, USD 30. Exhibition Catalog for Sleep of History / 76 Manifestations of American Destiny: A Show of Paintings, Books & Prints by David Sandlin at the Abroms-Engel Institute For the Visual Arts, Birmingham, Alabama. June 22 – August 20, 2017. Monica Johnson: The Adventures of Dorrit Little USD 10. The adventures of Dorrit Little tells the story of a prototypical student debtor in the US today, who is frustrated and let down by the failed promises of higher education within a post-2008 economy. The title is a reworking of Charles Dickens’ serial novel Little Dorrit, which told the take of the first child born into an English debtor’s prison in the mid-19th century. Carlos Quispe & Mike Diana: Uranus Comics USD 30. Quickly-executed ink drawings, in which draftsmanship is sacrificed for rawness and spontaneity, give visual manifestation to situations rarely seen in comics of any kind: lovers arguing over their addictions and engaging in explicit sex acts involving razor blades, an “electric eel robot”, and – perhaps most shockingly – genuine and candidly-expressed affection for one another