Contemporary comics artist will give public lecture


Tue, 02/09/2016

author

Heather Anderson


LAWRENCE—With narratives straddling the divide between fine art and popular culture, David Sandlin produces art from a wide range of media: paintings, prints, books and installations. Sandlin, a 2014 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship recipient and contemporary comics artist, will visit campus to create an original print with students, visit student studios and give a public art talk.

Sandlin’s visiting artist lecture will be 2:30 p.m. Feb. 18 in The Forum at Marvin Hall. The lecture is free, and the public is welcome.

“David is making artwork today that is ripe on the branches of contemporary comic and satire. His work is steeped with humor, compassion and deeply biting criticism,” said Michael Krueger, professor of visual art. “It’s hard to imagine anyone else pushing narrative in printmaking the way that David is going at it: edgy, funny, anxious and compounded with references to classic mythology and literature.”  

David Sandlin was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1956, and has lived in the United States since 1972. He has been painting, printmaking and creating installations professionally since moving to New York City in 1980. He is also a teacher at the School of Visual Arts. His paintings, prints, books and installations have been exhibited extensively in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. His work has also been published in the Best American Comics 2012 and 2009, New Yorker, The New York Times, RAW and other publications.

Sandlin has received numerous grants and honors, including a fellowship with New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and the Lamar Dodd Chair of Art at the University of Georgia. He has also received awards from the Penny McCall Foundation, the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and other institutions.

Since he began his professional career as an artist in the 1980s, visual narrative, usually nonlinear, has been a core component of Sandlin’s work. He uses it as a structural device to build content and express ideas while experimenting with form. This focus on narrative has led him, as a printmaker and painter, to create several books, including his seven-volume series, “A Sinner’s Progress,” recently acquired by the Library of Congress.

Currently, Sandlin’s projects include “Belfaust,” a graphic novel; and “76 Manifestations of American Destiny,” a cycle of prints and paintings depicting the American pantheon — both historical characters and events and those in the realm of legend. The new series of works will represent American heroes and villains of fact and fiction as well as iconic occurrences and folktales in a fresh context.

Marvin Hall is at 1465 Jayhawk Boulevard. Visitor parking is available at the Allen Fieldhouse Parking Garage, 1501 Irving Hill Road.

The Department of Visual Art is one of four departments in the School of the Arts. As part of the KU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of the Arts offers fresh possibilities for collaboration between the arts and the humanities, sciences, social sciences, international and interdisciplinary studies.

Tue, 02/09/2016

author

Heather Anderson

Media Contacts

Heather Anderson

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

785-864-3667