Bending The Lines: Women Of Cartooning

The 2016 Kenosha Festival of Cartooning is fast approaching (Septemeber 15, 16, 17) but if you just cannot wait to get your fix of cartoon art head over to gallery show "Bending The Lines: Women Of Cartooning" on display now at the Kenosha Public Museum! The show will run through the beginning of October and the museum is located at 5500 1st Avenue, Kenosha. Hours are 10:00 am to 5:00 pm daily.

This fabulous show features original art by over 34 cartooning women working in the past and present. In alphabetical order:

       ·    Margaret Ahern
·       Isabella Bannerman
·       Donna Barr
·       Sandra Bell Lundy
·       June Brigman
·       Faith Burrows
·       Fanny Cory
·       Annabel Culverhill
·       Liza Donnelly
·       Edwina Dumm
·       Jan Eliot
·       Ramona Fradon
·       Fran Hopper
·       Helen Hokinson
·       Barbara Kaalberg
·       Columba Krebs
·      Terri  Libenson
·       Marty Links
·       Juana Medina
·       Dale Messick
·       Gladys Parker
·       Rina Piccolo
·       Wendy Pini
·       Hilary Price
·       Lily  Renee
·       Trina Robbins
·       Annie Lou Rogers
·       Maria Scrivan
·       Sylvia Sneydman
·       Jen Sorensen
·       Hilda Terry
·       Ann Telnaes
     Dale Ulrey
·       Odin Waugh 

Also featured in the show are KFOC 2016 guest speakers Wiley Miller, Eddie Pittman, Rob Harrell and John Hambrock

To whet your appetite here are a few teaser images:

Kenosha Festival Of Cartooning News

 2016 Guest Speakers

Ann Telnaes

Wiley Miller

Jen Sorensen

John Hambrock

Rob Harrell

Eddie Pittman

 The 2016 Kenosha Festival Of Cartooning will kick off in just about 1 month! Events will take place from Thursday, September 15th through Saturday, September 17th.

A few bits of business:

Speakers

Full profiles of our lineup of GREAT speakers are available by clicking here. (Or click on each artist's picture in the sidebar.)

Schedule

The schedule of events open to the public is available by clicking here.

Make A Donation

We are still accepting donations of financial support - for details click here. (All persons donating $50 or more will receive the 2016 challenge coin which you can see here.)

Take Out An Ad

We are accepting ads for the program book until August 22 - for details click here. (Folks taking out an ad will automatically receive the 2016 challenge coin and a signed copy of the program book)

Hotels

If you have not yet made a hotel reservation a list of area hotels is available by clicking here.

Important Announcement!

Lastly, we have an important announcement regarding future festivals. The short version is that, after 2016, we are putting the festival on hiatus until 2019 so if you have been meaning to come but always seem to keep putting it off - THIS is your last chance until 2019. If you want the long version you can click here for details.

Guest Speaker KFOC 2016 John Hambrock

John first discovered his love for cartooning in 1991 while working for a Chicago Graphic Design firm. That year he and his wife Anne decided to collaborate on a comic strip titled "Second Nature. Although it was never syndicated, Second Nature reached a long list of loyal readers through their privately run subscription service.

John continued experimenting with other comic strip ideas until one day a little boy named Edison arrived uninvited in his imagination. The precocious little ten year old refused to leave, so John eventually awarded him a starring role in the comic strip "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee," picked up for syndication in 2006 by King Features. The strip, now entering its tenth year, appears in over 200 digital and print newspapers worldwide.

“The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” was nominated for the Reuben Division Award “Best Newspaper Comic Strip” in 2010 by the National Cartoonists Society. That same year John was a featured speaker at “Toonfest”, the annual Walt Disney hometown festival in Marceline, Missouri. In 2011 he was one of the inaugural speakers at the first annual Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. For the 2015 KFOC he amazed the audience with a one take video in which he drew all the characters of the festival guests.

In addition to Edison Lee, John has been illustrating children’s books and serving on the board of the National Cartoonists Society. Plans for 2016 include creating a series of small Edison Lee books.

John lives in Wisconsin with his wife, daughter, an ancient cat, a passel of comic strip characters and two herding dogs who keep everyone in line.

Guest Speaker KFOC 2016 Rob Harrell

Rob Harrell first got really into cartooning as a fourth grader, growing up in Bloomington, Indiana. By the fifth grade, he was producing his own magazine called Freak Out. While largely a blatant rip-off of Mad magazine, it featured the adventures of two original characters: Henry the Cat and Bob the blob. Reviews were mixed.

After a few years of seasoning, he created the syndicated daily comic strip Big Top, which from 2002 through 2007, telling the story of a dysfunctional group of circus animals in the animal-run Big Top Circus. Currently, he writes and draws the long-running daily strip Adam@Home, about the daily exploits of Adam Newman and his family.

His first graphic novel, Monster on the Hill, was released by Top Shelf Productions in 2013. Set in a fantastical 1860s England where each town takes great pride in their local monster, the book tells the story of one Stoker-on-Avon and their less than impressive monster Rayburn. 

Rob is currently writing and illustrating a series of middle-grade books called Life of Zarf which tell the story of Zarf Belford, a troll just trying to make it through middle school in a fairy tale world. The first book was released in September 2014, and the second, Life of Zarf: The Troll Who Cried Wolf hit shelves in September 2015. The third installment will be out in the fall of 2016.

In addition to his busy schedule as an author and syndicated cartoonist Harrell is a freelance illustrator who has worked with clients that include Mad, Simon and Schuster, American Greetings, Time, Inc. and Volkswagen.

His figurative paintings have been shown around the country, including solo shows in San Francisco, Austin and Indianapolis.

Rob lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Amber and their two dogs, Cooper and Kasey.

Guest Speaker KFOC 2016 Jen Sorensen

Award winning cartoonist Jen Sorensen has been drawing her weekly comic for over 15 years. Formerly known as "Slowpoke," the strip now simply goes by her name.

Jen's cartoons appear in numerous altweekly newspapers around the country, magazines such as The Progressive, In These Times, and Ms., and websites including Daily Kos, Truthout, and AlterNet. Her work has also been published in The Nation, The Village Voice, Politico, NPR.org, and MAD. She has created commissioned long-form comics for the ACLU, NPR, Kaiser Health News, The Oregonian, and other clients. In addition to drawing cartoons, Sorensen edits a comics section for Fusion, a new media company from ABC and Univision. 

Over the years, she has won several accolades for her work. In 2014, she was named the winner of the Herblock Prize, an award endowed by the legendary Washington Post cartoonist Herb Block, as well as the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2013, she was the recipient of a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and she also won the National Cartoonists Society Divisional Reuben Award for Editorial Cartoons. In 2015, Sorensen was given an Inkpot Award for career achievement in comic arts from the San Diego Comic-Con International.

Jen grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and went on to attend the University of Virginia, where she studied cultural anthropology and drew cartoons for college publications.

Additional fun fact: Jen was once clue “12 down” in the Time Out New York crossword puzzle.

Sorensen currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and small terrier.