The Society of Illustrators is proud to share its first round of guest announcements with this year’s stellar list of Guests of Honor for the MoCCA Arts Festival, taking place April 7-8 at Metropolitan West in New York City.
This year’s featured Guests of Honor are:
- Award-winning cartoonist Roz Chast, whose decades of New Yorker cartoons transformed that traditional format with her lively art and neurotic, contemporary themes. Most recently she has authored the best-selling graphic memoirs Going Into Town and Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?.
- Argentine cartoonist Liniers, best known for his experimental daily strip Macanuda, which appears in the publication La Nación, and his children’s comics for TOON Books.
- Mike Mignola, comic artist and writer behind the award-winning Dark Horse Comics series Hellboy. A third feature film adaptation of his comic book series is currently in production and due in 2019.
- Nate Powell and Andrew Aydin, part of the trio behind the National Book Award-winning MARCH trilogy, a first-of-its-kind graphic novel about the highs and lows of the Civil Rights Movement told through the perspective of civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis.
This group of artists exemplifies the limitless aesthetic and social power of comics and cartooning. The MoCCA Arts Festival will take place April 7 – 8th from 11:00AM – 6:00PM at Metropolitan West (636 W. 46th St.) with programming mere steps away at Ink48 (653 11th Ave). They will be joined at MoCCA Fest by an array of Featured and International Guests and exhibiting artists.
Price of admission is $7 per day and will grant attendees access to the Fest including the Exhibitors Hall, on-site Gallery space, and programming. Tickets will be available for purchase at the door. Children under twelve are free. Further scheduling information regarding our Guests of Honor’s visits will be available in future announcements.
More information about the Fest can be found here.
About the Guests of Honor:
Roz Chast:
Roz Chast has created over 800 cartoons for The New Yorker. Her work focuses on urban and domestic life, in her inimitable line. Her cartoons have also been published in other notable publications like Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, Redbook, and Mother Jones. Her award-winning titles include her memoirs Going Into Town and Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant (Bloomsbury); Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons of Roz Chast, 1978 – 2006 (Bloomsbury); The Alphabet from A to Y, with Bonus Letter Z (Flying Dolphin Press), with Steve Martin; and many others.
Liniers:
Argentine comic artist Liniers is the creator of over 20 books. His daily comic strip, Macanudo, combines the charm of Calvin and Hobbes with surrealism and lively formal experimentation. Well-known in Latin America, Macanudo has recently been collected in several English-language editions by Enchanted Lion Books. He has recently gained further acclaim with his books for children, Written and Drawn by Henrietta and The Big Wet Balloon, both published by Toon Books in Spanish- and English-language editions. In 2011 he founded the La Editorial Común, whose focus is to publish works by a diverse body of Argentine authors and artists, as well as foreign creators, with a focus on design. His artwork has also appeared on the cover of The New Yorker magazine.
Argentine comic artist Liniers is the creator of over 20 books. His daily comic strip, Macanudo, combines the charm of Calvin and Hobbes with surrealism and lively formal experimentation. Well-known in Latin America, Macanudo has recently been collected in several English-language editions by Enchanted Lion Books. He has recently gained further acclaim with his books for children, Written and Drawn by Henrietta and The Big Wet Balloon, both published by Toon Books in Spanish- and English-language editions. In 2011 he founded the La Editorial Común, whose focus is to publish works by a diverse body of Argentine authors and artists, as well as foreign creators, with a focus on design. His artwork has also appeared on the cover of The New Yorker magazine.
Mike Mignola:
Mike Mignola is best known for his collection of titles created for Dark Horse Comics, including 13 graphic novels collecting his signature Hellboy series, and spin-off titles B.P.R.D., and Lobster Johnson, Abe Sapien, and Witchfinder. His comic book The Amazing Screw-On Head, also published by Dark Horse, received an Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication in 2003. Mignola has co-authored two projects with best selling author Christopher Golden: Baltimore, or,The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (Bantam Spectra) and Joe Golem and the Drowning City (Dark Horse Comics). In addition, Mignola has worked on numerous film and television projects, and is currently co-writing the script for Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen, due to be released by Lionsgate in January, 2019.
Nate Powell:
Nate Powell is a New York Times best selling-graphic novelist. He is an alumnus of the School of Visual Arts, having graduated in 2000. His work includes MARCH (Top Shelf), the graphic novel autobiography of Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis; You Don’t Say, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole (all published by Top Shelf), The Silence Of Our Friends (First Second), The Year Of The Beasts (Roaring Brook Press), and Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero (Disney-Hyperion). Powell is the first and only cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. Powell’s next book, Come Again, will be released in summer 2018 by Top Shelf/IDW.
Andrew Aydin:
Andrew Aydin is the creator and co-author of the graphic memoir series, MARCH, which chronicles the life of Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. An Atlanta native, Andrew was raised by a single mother, and grew up reading comic books. After college, he took a job with Congressman Lewis. Today, Aydin serves as Digital Director & Policy Advisor to Congressman Lewis in Washington, D.C. Andrew’s other works include the 2016 X-Files Annual (IDW), the 2016 CBLDF Annual Liberty (Image), and an upcoming issue of Bitch Planet (Image), as well as articles for the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance Magazine.
About the Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators
Founded in 1901, the Society of Illustrators and its Museum of Illustration together comprise America’s longest-standing nonprofit organization dedicated to the art of illustration. The mission of SI/MI is to promote the art and appreciation of illustration and its history and evolving nature through exhibitions and educational programs.
The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon and animation festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With 400 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting workshops, lectures and film screenings, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education. The 2018 MoCCA Arts Festival will take place April 7-8th, 2018 at Metropolitan West in New York City with programming mere steps away at Ink48 (653 11th Ave).
Anthony Andujar Jr.