Tuesday, March 31, 2015

About the Lecture
Questions are central to Lynda Barry’s work and her primary inquiry is the profound yet deceitfully simple question, “what is an image?” In her lecture titled What It Is: Manually Shifting the Image, Barry led the audience through a number of complex, interwoven queries essential to creative thinking, making, and living. At the center of all of these questions is ‘an image,’ something that feels alive and is contained and transported by something that is not alive—a book, or a song, or a painting—anything we call an ‘art form.’ Barry’s lecture skillfully waded the audience through an insightful understanding of the creative experience itself—unpacking the identity and function of ‘an image’ and ‘the arts.’  Please note, in addition to being a brilliant thinker and maker, Barry also has a delightfully impish sense of humor about her explorations: there were swear words, party tricks, and jokes about balls.

About the Lecturer
Lynda Barry is a cartoonist, writer, illustrator, and teacher. She is the inimitable creator of the seminal comic strip syndicated across North American alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook’s Comeek featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. Barry is currently Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches writing and picture making and runs the Image Lab at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Her bestselling and acclaimed graphic novel, What It Is, won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and the R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. Other accolades include 2013 Lifetime Visual Arts Award, MOWA, a second William Eisner award, The American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Washington State Governor’s Award, among many others. 

While at RMCAD Lynda Barry also participated in the Program's Next Day Q+A Session and taught a group of very lucky students in special workshop. Information about these events can be found here. 

For even more information, please read Lynda Barry's interview in Westword here.