MoCCA Art Festival 2006 June 9, 2006

MoCCA Art Festival 2006 - Program News

This year marks the fifth anniversary of New York City's independent comics showcase - the MoCCA Art Festival - which will be held once more in the Puck Building. This year's program features ten panels, roundtables, and special events, spread out over a two day period, June 10-11. As before, the programming will take place on the seventh floor of the Puck, in an elegant ballroom that offers sweeping views of downtown Manhattan. We are putting the finishing touches on the 2006 program, which we will post on the MoCCA website in early May.

Each year the program brings together an eclectic mix of cartoonists, animators, editors, graphic designers, journalists, and others to comment on different aspects of comics and animation from a social and historical as well as a formal and aesthetic perspective. Some of the topics that will be covered in 2006 include New Yorker cartoons, political comics, new voices in comics, historical memoir, cartoon anthologies, and comic strips from the early twentieth century. The program includes a birthday party for World War 3 Illustrated, which recently marked its twenty-fifth anniversary, and closes with a presentation and Q&A with Jessica Abel.

One of the highlights of last year's festival was the "Dan Clowes in Conversation with Jonathan Lethem" event that was cosponsored with Pantheon and that filled the ballroom to capacity. This year, Pantheon has helped MoCCA organize a similar two-person exchange, this time featuring "Charles Burns in Conversation with Chip Kidd." We expect this panel will attract another large turnout and we encourage folks to come early to ensure they get a comfortable seat.

From its inception, the Festival has presented an Award to a New York area cartoonist in recognition of his or her special contribution to the comics medium. In its first year, 2002, the Festival Award was presented to Jules Feiffer, followed by Art Spiegelman (2003), Roz Chast (2004), and Neal Addams (2005). This year, the Award will be presented to Gahan Wilson, a tremendously talented novelist, short story writer, illustrator, and cartoonist whose work has appeared in virtually every major magazine published in the past half-century. He has one of the most distinctive and instantly recognizable styles in the business. His many books include Gahan Wilson's Monster Party (2003), Gahan Wilson's Even Weirder (1996), and The Best of Gahan Wilson (2004), and we are delighted that Gahan Wilson has agreed to join us as this year's Festival Award recipient.

Each Festival program spotlights individuals, periodicals, genres, and trends that have contributed to the ongoing development of the comics medium. This year's program is bigger and better than ever, and we look forward to seeing you at the Puck Building in June.

Official Website: http://www.moccany.org/artfest-main.html