Arts Exhibit: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women

"The history of women in comics is well-documented, and the Jewish contribution to the art form [is] widely acknowledged," begins the press note for "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women," an exhibit at the San Francisco-based Carton Art Museum. But bringing them together? This public showing quests to provide an insightful and revealing encounter/experience for citizens as well as other comics enthusiasts. "Graphic Details" puts on display a number of original artwork from nearly twenty cartoonists and illustrators. The museum event opened at the beginning of October 2010, and is almost halfway through, scheduled to close by the end of January 2011.

Extrapolating the theme of "confessional comics," the exhibit thus wrests from the hands of its contributors' many instances of wry political sentiment, romantic misgivings, and countless other naked truths (both literally and figuratively). According to the Cartoon Art Museum, some of the artworks currently on display have never previously been available for public viewing until now. Artists comprising the roster of "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" include the efforts of women who filled pages of underground comic art in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as "superstar younger artists," whose more modern work is similarly exciting or poignant.

"Graphic Details" is co-curated by Michael Kaminer and Sarah Lightman. Kaminer is a journalist and collector whose December 2008 story on confessional comics in Forward, a Jewish weekly newspaper, provided the impetus for the show; Lightman is an artist, curator, and journalist researching autobiographical comics at The University of Glasgow.

The Cartoon Art Museum is the first venue for "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women."

Most of the artists in the present exhibit are from the U.S., however, there are others from Canada, the UK, and Israel. Notable contributors to "Graphic Details" include Trina Robbins, who has been writing comics and books for more than three decades; Vanessa Davis, cartoonist, illustrator, and author of the comically insightful book Make Me A Woman (September 2010); Sarah Glidden, an immensely talented graphic novelist and creator of How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less (November 2010); and Laurie Sandell, the skilled graphic memoirist and Eisner Award-nominated author of The Imposter's Daughter: A True Memoir (July 2009).

The Cartoon Art Museum will hold the exhibit through January 2011, at which point they will relinquish the showing to the Koffler Centre of the Arts (Toronto, ON). The Koffler Centre will officially kickstart their version of "Graphic Details" on February 17th, and run the event for two months. The artwork revealed through the "Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women" rests heavy on the shoulders of women who, as the San Francisco museum opines, "bare their bodies, expose their psyches, and are fearless about sex, romance, politics, body functions, experiences, emotions, and desires."

Additional contributors include: Sarah Lazarovic; Miriam Katin; Ariel Schrag; Lauren R. Weinstein; Ilana Zeffren; Sharon Rudahl; Aline Kominsky-Crumb; Miss Lasko-Gross; Miriam Libicki; Sarah Lightman; Diane Noomin; Racheli Rottner; Corinne Pearlman; and Bernice Einstein.

on The Cartoon Art Museum: The Cartoon Art Museum (www.CartoonArt.org) is the only museum in the western United States dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of cartoon art in all its forms. This institution houses 6,000 original pieces in its permanent collection.