Worcester Art Museum to Host World-Wide Comic Competition
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Worcester Art Museum is just one of a plethora of sites hosting this truly world-wide event. Other countries include those as far-reaching as Estonia, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, and Finland. Modern Myths in Northampton is another site in Massachusetts hosting the event. Other New England venues include sites in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont.
As the name suggests, each artist's goal is to create a complete story of 24 interconnected comic pages in a 24 hour day. Other than that, there are not many rules and the artists are allowed a great amount of flexibility. Participants can take breaks, do research or plan out their story before starting it, as long as everything is done within 24 hours.
In addition, any genre of comic and type of story is welcome, as long as it is just that, a comic and a story.
"We have seen a wide range of stories come out of the event. They range from the deeply personal, to highly disturbing, to hilarious, or to the more poetic and obscure," says Katrina A. Stacy, Assistant Curator of Education at WAM.
The challenge is also more difficult and taxing on the body and mind than it may seem.
"Completing the challenge is not something every participant can do; many fall asleep, fall behind or give up," says Stacy.
Since WAM began to host the event, the amount of participants at event have ranged from 20-40. Shorter challenges are offered to those people who realize they can't complete the main challenge.
The Worcester Art Museum is largely unique in its desire to host the challenge, given comic book stores are the usual venues, but WAM has many special advantages, according to Stacy.
"We have one asset that most stores do not; large amounts of space devoted to professional art-making studios. "
In addition, "we have several faculty members that teach comic book art, manga, anime, or other types of graphic illustration in our part time class program, so naturally we felt that hosting an event for our already-devoted students AND the rest of the Worcester illustration community would be a fantastic partnership."
Stacy says hosting the event is perfectly in line with WAM's mission within the Worcester community.
"We hope that this event will expose comic art as an active, alive form of art that has a great following here in Worcester."
For more information on the Worcester Art Museum and the 24 Hour Comic Challenge, including information on how to register, click here.
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