New Panel Discussion Added To Thursday Festival Events!

The Kenosha Festival of Cartooning is pleased to announce a collaboration with the University of Wisconsin's Library. The Library is kicking off a Big Read of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury on Wednesday September 24th and Thursday September 25th. 

As a result of this event, the UW Parkside Art Galleries are adding original art by Tim Hamilton from the graphic novel version of Fahrenheit 451 and the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning will include Mr. Hamilton on a newly added panel discussion Thursday September 25th.

The Big Read launch of Ray Bradbury's novel about burning books coincides with Banned Books Week and fits very well with the discussion of underground comics and censorship that will be generated by the gallery show "The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen so we at the festival are very excited to offer this extra discussion and welcome Mr. Hamilton to the festival!

Freedom Of Expression: The "Subversiveness" Of Comics, The Comics Code and Banning Books 

A discussion on the role of cartoon art in the battle for freedom of speech.

 Panelists:

• Denis Kitchen – independent publisher of underground comics, comics scholar, and founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
• Scott Stantis – former president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists
• Tim Hamilton – graphic novelist of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
• Paul Buhle – comic historian
• George Hagenuer – cartoon art collector and comic historian

Moderator: Doug Singsen – Art history professor at UW Parkside

• Time: 2:00-3:30
• Location: UW-Parkside. Rita Tallent Picken Center For The Arts

Scott Stantis - Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Guest Speaker For 2014

Scott Stantis joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune in 2009. Completing a sojourn that began at his birth in Kennedy era San Diego to a Chicago native television executive and a former concert pianist. His Mad Men childhood consisted of learning to make cocktails for his parents and their friends as well as junior and senior High school in Madison, Wisconsin.

Returning to California in the late 70’s in time for the AIDS outbreak Scott attended college where, as a pre-law major, he fell in love with cartooning and his wife.

Since then Scott has worked at numerous newspapers, (like The Orange County Register, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee, The Arizona Republic and The Birmingham News), and created a trio of internationally syndicated comic strips. (The middle one, The Buckets, had a gag chosen as one of the funniest cartoons of the century).

Scott’s editorial cartoons are syndicated to over 400 newspapers around the world. They have appeared in such varied places as Newsweek, US News and World Reports, Nightline and Guns & Ammo.

His current comic strip, Prickly City, was launched in 2004 and appears in over 120 newspapers.

He has homes in Chicago and Birmingham, Alabama. He is still married to his college sweetheart and they have two grown boys.

Historic Animation On Display!!

Historic Animation Restored and On Display at The Kenosha Public Museum.

As part of the gallery show “More Than Funny 2” the museum is pleased to present the first showing in 99 years of “The Stolen Dream” by Andy Hettinger.

100 years ago Chicago was a major center for the invention of animated films. The first series of cartoons to feature a recurring character was not Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat but a character called “Old Doc Yak”. Based on a Chicago Tribune comic strip by Wisconsin cartoonist Sydney Smith (best known for his other comic strip “The Gumps”) Old Doc Yak was featured in 18 animated films.

Andy Hettinger was a talented cartoonist working in Chicago shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century who assisted Smith on some of the Doc Yak animations. Hettinger also produced two animations of his own based on his Amos Roach comic – a strip that ran in the McHenry Illinois Plain Dealer.

All of the films were animated on paper, a process that was also being used by New York Animator J.R. Bray. Bray obtained a patent for the process and all other animators were ordered to destroy their films. It is believed that all of the Chicago animations produced before 1915 were destroyed due to this patent fight.

Hettinger died tragically from septicemia in 1916 and, as a result, the drawings for his animation “The Stolen Dream” escaped destruction. The images for 7.5 minutes of this film survived, along with the art for both of his cartoons. All of which were obtained by collector George Hagenauer. George is working to restore both of Hettinger’s films from the existing art and hopes to have them completed by the film’s 100^th anniversary in 2015.

Denis Kitchen - Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Guest Speaker For 2014

Wisconsin native Denis Kitchen began his career during the “underground comix” movement of the late ‘60s. He still thinks of himself as a cartoonist first, but he wears way too many other hats to pigeonhole. He is perhaps most associated with Kitchen Sink Press, founded in Milwaukee in 1969, where he published primary works by legendary cartoonists Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Al Capp, Milton Caniff, and countless others for over thirty years.

Kitchen also writes articles and co-authors books about the comics world. Recent examples include a biography of Al Capp (with Kenosha’s own Michael Schumacher), The Art of Harvey Kurtzman and Underground Classics (both for Abrams). He curates cartoon art exhibits in the US and numerous other countries.

Kitchen also edits and packages books. He founded the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit First Amendment industry organization, and chaired it for eighteen years. He is currently a partner in two literary agencies and a third art agency. A natural archivist, over 50,000 of Kitchen’s letters were acquired by Columbia University in 2014. 

A 2010 Dark Horse Books published a monograph titled The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen. In 2012 Kitchen was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. An exhibit of his own original art, with other cartoons from his collection, will be open to the public in the Fine Arts Gallery of UW-Parkside, running concurrent with this year’s Kenosha Festival of Cartooning.

Rick Stromoski - Festival Guest Speaker for 2014

Rick’s cartoons and humorous illustrations appear in Magazines, Children’s and Humor books,

National Advertising, Licensed Products and Network Television.

His nationally syndicated newspaper comic strip, Soup to Nutz, has appeared

in over 150 newspapers since 2000. He has been nominated for his illustration work

by the National Cartoonists Society thirteen times and has been awarded

the Reuben Division Award for Best Artist on three occasions.

Rick has illustrated childrens books for Macmillan, Harcourt Brace, 

Candlewick Press, Macgraw-Hill, Random House, Scholastic, Golden Books, 

Contemporary Books, Irena Chalmers Publishing, Workman and Andrews Mcmeel.

His hundreds of greeting card designs have been sold in the lines of Recycled paper greetings.

Renaissance cards, Marian Heath Greetings, Design Design, Paramount and West Graphics.

He is also an award winning amateur wine maker specializing in German varietals

winning medals in local, regional and national competitions.

Rick is a past President of the National Cartoonists Society as well as a member of the Society of Illustrators.

He lives in the historic district of Suffield CT with his wife Danna and

their dogs Lucy and  Rascal and fighting cats , Sox and Shoes.