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Basking in the golden age of the graphic novel, a group of talented visual artists teamed up to adapt the greatest literature of all time. The Graphic Canon, a visual literary anthology, is a three-volume epic that spans from Greek tragedy to David Foster Wallace. Join us for a look at this stunning work with the editor and illustrators of Zora Neale Hurston, Thomas Pynchon and more, as they unlock the literary canon for a new generation of readers.
Frank M. Hansen is a cartoonist, artist and writer. He creates humorous cartoons for various print and digital publications around the globe and short educational animations to help make learning more fun. He is currently working on a new strip based on a washed-up Hollywood mogul. In between the cartooning, he produces original abstract art designs using ink, paint, and markers on anything from canvas to cardboard. His work has been shown at Gallery Nucleus, WWA Gallery, and the Red Gate Gallery in London.
Milton Knight started drawing, painting, and animation at the age of two. His work has appeared in Graphic Classics, Heavy Metal, High Times, National Lampoon, and Nickelodeon Magazine. His comic titles include Hugo, Midnite the Rebel Skunk, and Slug and Ginger. Knight is currently exhibiting and teaching at The Colonnade Art Gallery and Studio in Pasadena, CA.
Cartoonist Sharon Rudahl began drawing comics for underground newspapers and the first Wimmen's Comix. Her work has been exhibited in museums in San Francisco, New York, and Europe. Recent projects include Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman, and major contributions to Paul Buhle and Harvey Pekar's Yiddishkeit, Studs Terkel's Working, and the upcoming Bohemians, to be published in 2013. She is currently drawing comics for a Lincoln For Beginners book, which will be published this year.
Zak Smith's paintings and drawings are held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other than Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow, his books include the monograph Pictures of Girls, and We Did Porn—a book, including drawings and stories, about his experiences working in the adult film industry.
Russ Kick is the editor of the three-volume, 1,600-page set The Graphic Canon: The World's Great Literature as Comics and Visuals, which NPR called "easily the most ambitious and successfully realized literary project in recent memory." Russ' earlier books for The Disinformation Company (such as You Are Being Lied To) have sold over half-a-million copies. He has written regularly for the Village Voice, and Utne Reader named him one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He's currently working on a Walt Whitman volume of The Graphic Canon, as well as editing the first comprehensive anthology of classic and contemporary poetry about death and dying.
