CXC exhibitors and special guests tracked down at SPX 2015: Gregory Benton, Chris Pitzer, Dylan Horrocks, the Family Roberts, poster artist Dustin Harbin, Derf, Katie Skelly, Jeremy Baum, Frank Santoro.
The first CXC show gets underway on Thursday, October 1!
inaugural CXC poster (2015) by Dustin Harbin! Thanks, Dusty!
Events being held at the Wexner Center For The Arts during Cartoon Crossroads Columbus are now listed with the Wexner, including the three ticketed events! That’s the Jerry Beck cartoon show on Thursday October 1 and the Jeff Lemire and Bill Griffith spotlight presentations the afternoon of Friday, October 2! That is all the ticked events for the weekend!
http://wexarts.org/series/cartoon-crossroads-columbus
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) Announces Festival Dates Through 2019
July 20, 2015 – Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), a comics festival in Columbus, Ohio launching this year, has announced its dates for 2016 through 2019. "We know this is an atypical strategy to announce dates this early,“ declared Jeff Smith, CXC’s President & Artistic Director. "But with more than a dozen community partnerships including the Thurber House, Columbus Museum of Art and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, we need to work as far ahead as possible.”
The dates selected by the festival’s executive committee and approved by its board are:
2016: October 13 to October 16
2017: September 28 to October 1
2018: September 27 to September 30
2019: September 26 to September 29
“We have a lot of Ohio State Buckeye games, and general conventions competing for hotel rooms here,” said Festival Director Tom Spurgeon, “not to mention that the comics scene has a crowded Fall schedule, so we wanted folks to know where we landed for the next couple of years.”
CXC’s mission is to celebrate the diversity of the cartoon arts including animation, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books and graphic novels, and to highlight the city of Columbus and its comics community to the world, working to secure the brightest possible future for the next generation of comics-makers.
CXC’s 2015 show is October 1-3.
For more information, please visit the website or e-mail cxcfestival@mail.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CARTOON CROSSROADS COLUMBUS (CXC) Announces Second Round Of Special Guests For 2015 Show
July 6, 2015 – Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), a comics festival set for Columbus, Ohio on October 1-3, has announced its second and expected final round of special guests for its 2015 show. They are:
Lalo Alcaraz* (La Cucaracha)
Derf
Backderf
(Trashed, My Friend Dahmer)
Grace
Ellis
(Lumberjanes)
Jaime
Hernandez*
(Love and Rockets)
Dylan
Horrocks**
(The Magic Pen, Hicksville)
Jeff
Lemire (Descender,
Hawkeye, The Essex County Trilogy)
Rafael
Rosado
(Dragons Beware! Giants Beware!)
Katie
Skelly
(Operation Margarine, Nurse Nurse)
“We’re
really happy with this second round of invited guests,” said CXC President
and Artistic Director Jeff Smith. “Some have a deep connection to the
Columbus area and some are people that have never visited here before,”
Smith noted. “They are all first-rate comics makers, and representative of
several different approaches to the medium, which is very exciting for
us.”
Previously
announced special guests were Kate Beaton, Jerry Beck, Bill Griffith, Françoise
Mouly, Jeff Smith, Art Spiegelman and Craig Thompson.
A
short biography for each special guest is available at the festival’s web site.
Exhibitor applications for the 2015 show are now closed, although cartoonists and publishers are encouraged to sign up for the CXC mailing list through that process or by e-mailing the festival directly at cxcfestival@mail.com
*****
* Lalo Alcaraz and Jaime Hernandez are sponsored by Sõl-Con: The Black & Brown Comix Expo 2015, and will be featured at that show’s events.
** Dylan Horrocks is sponsored by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library &
Museum.
*****
the
mission of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is to celebrate the diversity of the
cartoon arts including animation, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books
and graphic novels, and to highlight the city of Columbus and its comics
community to the world, working to secure the brightest possible future for the
next generation of comics-makers.
*****
for further information contact Tom Spurgeon at cxcfestival@mail.com or visit the
festival web site at www.cartooncrossroadscolumbus.com
*****
*****
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CARTOON CROSSROADS COLUMBUS (CXC) Welcomes Sõl-Con: The Black & Brown Comix Expo 2015
July 6, 2015 – Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), a comics festival set for Columbus, Ohio on October 1-3, is pleased to welcome to CXC Weekend Sõl-Con: The Black & Brown Comix Expo 2015. Sõl-Con is scheduled for Oct. 2-4 with an opening reception on Oct. 1.
An exciting combination of sizable Expo, how-to workshops and panels for every
conceivable audience, Sõl-Con is hosted by OSU’s Office of Diversity and
Inclusion and is co-founded by Frederick Luis Aldama, Arts and Humanities
Distinguished Scholar and Founder Of LASER at The Ohio State University; John
Jennings, Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY-Buffalo; and Ricardo Padilla,
Co-Founder of the Latino Comix Expo.
Co-sponsors include the Billy Ireland Cartoons Library and the Popular Culture
Studies department at The Ohio State University.
“We’re thrilled that Sõl-Con is taking place on Ohio State’s campus during
CXC weekend,” CXC Festival Director Tom Spurgeon said. “They’re
putting together a great show with an excellent guest list, making for more
events worth visiting during CXC.”
“One of our big goals when we started working on CXC was that various
institutions in Columbus would step up with comics related events of their own,
to make this a truly city-wide festival. We were thrilled to hear about Sõl-Con
doing just that. We hope to help Sõl-Con throw a spotlight on these sometimes
neglected artistic communities.”
Kicking off with an opening reception in MLK Jr. Hall on October 1, Sõl-Con
plans include a daily Expo in that same space with a number of Latino and Black
creators on hand, and multiple panels, workshops and presentations running
concurrently, many of which will be aimed at a student-aged audience. They also
plan to show screenings of related material in their late afternoon time slots.
Guests of Sõl-Con include
cartoonist Jaime Hernandez, Lalo Alcaraz, Rafael Rosado, Rafael Navarro, Afua
Richardson, Jerry Craft, Turtel Onli and academics such as Jonathan Gray and
Qiana Whitted.
*****
for further information on Sõl-Con,
including up to date information on guests, exhibitors and programming, contact
Frederick Luis Aldama at aldama.1@osu.edu or visit the convention’s
web site at http://go.osu.edu/SolCon
for further information on CXC, contact Tom Spurgeon at cxcfestival@mail.com
or visit the festival web site at www.cartooncrossroadscolumbus.com
*****
*****
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus site is live! First round of special guests and exhibitor application are live! Come join us in Columbus this Fall for CXC!
image by Dustin Harbin
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) is set for Oct. 1-3, Columbus, Ohio, First Round of Special Guests Announced
June 3, 2015 – The first annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, or CXC, a celebration of the cartoon arts and their creators will be held Oct. 1-3, 2015. CXC is modeled on events like the Sundance or Tribeca film festivals, or the metropolitan comics events in Europe that offer a breadth of exhibits, artist talks, workshops, film screenings, performances, signings and more.
Featured guests include: Kate Beaton* (Hark! A Vagrant, The Princess and the Pony), animation historian Jerry Beck**, Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead), Francoise Mouly *** (RAW, The New Yorker, TOON BOOKS), Jeff Smith (Bone), Art Spiegelman *** (MAUS), and Craig Thompson (Blankets, Space Dumplins) More special guests will be announced in the coming weeks.
“What makes this show unique is Columbus itself,” said Jeff Smith, CXC’s President & Artistic Director, “We have unprecedented levels of institutional support for cartooning and comics here, from the museums and schools to the Thurber House with its annual Graphic Novelist in Residence which recognizes outstanding new talent. This festival brings the whole city into the celebration.”
Organizers Smith, Lucy Caswell, Vijaya Iyer, and Executive Director Tom Spurgeon have teamed with the city’s great arts institutions to plan the event:
Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
Columbus Metropolitan Library
Columbus College of Art & Design
Columbus Museum of Art
Cultural Arts Center
King Arts Complex
Laughing Ogre
Ohio History Connection
Popular Culture Studies, The Ohio State University
Short North Alliance
Thurber House
Wexner Center for the Arts
This year’s CXC will kick off on Thursday and Friday at the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum on The Ohio State University campus. On Saturday, events will move downtown. The Cultural Arts Center will host a lively comics convention where many of the most talented makers of independent comics will be on hand to sell and sign their books. CXC will conclude on Saturday evening at Columbus College of Art & Design with an event organized by CCAD in collaboration with CXC: Jeff Smith in conversation with Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly regarding the watershed comics anthology RAW.
CXC’s mission is to celebrate the diversity of the cartoon arts including animation, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books and graphic novels, and to highlight the city of Columbus and its comics community to the world, working to secure the brightest possible future for the next generation of comics-makers.
Registration for exhibitors is now open and can be found at cartooncrossroadscolumbus.com.
For more information, please visit the website or e-mail cxcfestival@mail.com
*Friday, Oct 2nd only
**Sponsored by the Wexner Center for the Arts
***Sponsored by Columbus College of Art & Design
(image by Dustin Harbin)
JEFF SMITH, LUCY CASWELL, VIJAYA IYER AND TOM SPURGEON ANNOUNCE NEW COMICS FESTIVAL: CARTOON CROSSROADS COLUMBUS (CXC)
Columbus, Ohio — NOVEMBER 24, 2014 — The Columbus, Ohio based Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) has announced its formation and intention to stage a four-day, yearly comics festival beginning in Fall 2016.
The group also announced the CXC Launch Event for October 2-3, 2015. The CXC Launch Event will be a two-day show split between the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (October 2) and the Columbus Cultural Arts Center (October 3).
The October 3 portion of the event will be a one-day comics expo featuring up to 35 exhibitors.
The four-person Executive Committee for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is:
* Lucy Caswell, Founding Curator, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum
* Vijaya Iyer, President and Co-Publisher, Cartoon Books
* Jeff Smith, Award-Winning Cartoonist and Co-Publisher, Cartoon Books
* Tom Spurgeon, Editor and Co-Publisher, The Comics Reporter
Smith will further assume the title of President and Artistic Director. Spurgeon will serve as Festival Director, and will relocate to Columbus in early 2015.
“We’re extremely excited to try and bring a first-class comics festival to Columbus, Ohio,” said Jeff Smith. “I’ve attended and enjoyed so many great shows over the years, and hope that CXC can take its place alongside them.”
“I share with the council members a belief in the comics art form and a love for the American Midwest as a great place for comics,” said Tom Spurgeon. “We also share a passion for the professional development and infrastructure issues facing so many cartoonists. We hope that CXC can become a positive force for a better community and more effective industry.”
The group’s organizational status, its advisory council members, its initial sponsorships, details on the 2015 Launch Event including exhibitor application information and initial plans for the 2016 Festival and beyond will be announced in early 2015.
A placeholder site can be found at cxcfestival.tumblr.com
A twitter account can be followed @cxcfestival.
*****
For more information or to set up an interview with a CXC executive committee member please contact Tom Spurgeon at 575-654-4391 or tom@comicsreporter.com.
*****
*****