Kenosha Festival Of Cartooning 2014 - Spread The Word!

Mark your calendars! We have our official dates and speaking roster set for the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning 2014! The festival will run:

• Thursday, September 25
• Friday, September 26 
• Saturday September 27

Our special guest speakers are:

• Jeff Keane - Family Circus
• Lincoln Peirce - Big Nate
• Scott Stantis - Prickly City and Editorial Cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune
• Terri Libenson - The Pajama Diaries
• Rick Stromoski - Soup to Nutz
• Todd Clark - Lola
• Denis Kitchen - Kitchen Sink Press and co-author of "Al Capp - A Life To The Contrary"
• Michael Schumacher - Author of "Will Eisner - A Contract With God" and co-author of "Al Capp - A Life To The Contrary"

We have a LOT of exciting things planned this year including two gallery shows and an auction of original art to benefit children's charities in the Kenosha Area.

We will be launching our fundraising drive for the 2014 budget at the beginning of the year and, before we launch the drive, we need to spread the word. Crowd sourcing on platforms like Kickstarter works best when a lot of people donate, even if the donations are small.

So we are setting a goal of 1000 new followers on Twitter (@KenoshaFestival)and 1000 new followers on Facebook (Kenosha Festival of Cartooning - Facebook). If you are already a "Friend of the Festival" one of the best things you can do right now is persuade others to follow the festival on social networking. Clicking on the above links will take you to the appropriate pages.

The Festival is an amazing opportunity for folks to meet cartoonists and all events are FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

Mini-fest 2013 - Photos and Thank You's

What a great Mini-fest we just had with Tom Richmond of MAD Magazine!

Both classes were full, as were the portfolio review sessions. We had a pretty good crowd, raised some money for next year, and had a great time!!

A huge thank you to Tom Richmond whose talent and professionalism are only outclassed by his overall niceness! 

Thank you to Nancy Mathews and the Kenosha Public Museum for again partnering with the festival to bring terrific artists to Kenosha!

Thank you to the Kenosha News for once again sponsoring the festival and providing us with great publicity and news coverage!

Thank you to Chet Griffith of Artworks Kenosha who provided us with space to teach the pro class and the portfolio reviews!

Thank you to Judy and Sharon Rossow and The Copy Center for again printing ALL our PR materials and programs and such this year!

Thank you to John Bloner whose press release expertise helped us spread the word in local media!

Thank you to all our wonderful donors, both here on the site and locally! We couldn't do this without you!

And finally, thank you to everyone who made the trip to Kenosha to attend the Mini-fest. You were a great audience and it is your enthusiasm and interest in cartooning and cartoonists that give us the energy to plan for the festival's next year!!

Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Mini-fest 2013, kicked off Saturday morning with a class at the Kenosha Public Museum. Geared toward ages 13-18, the kids soaked up Tom's expertise and seemed particularly excited to see him draw Daniel Radcliff as Harry Potter. The class was followed by Tom's free presentation of his illustration career spanning over 25 years.

 We did not have the talents of our expert photographer this year but I snapped a few pics of the class and Tom's presentation. Here is a small photo gallery:

At this point I had so many other things to take care of that I was forced to stop taking pictures. If any attendees have photos that they would like to share - please email me at kenoshacartoonfest@gmail.com

Thanks again - see you all next September 25-27!