By Natalie Baxter
While strolling around town on an unusually warm Saturday in November, I found myself at the Carnegie Center where they were hosting the UP! Fair, a gathering of self-publishing sequential artists from Kentucky and beyond. I must admit, the last place I would have imagined myself that day (or ever really) was at a comic book convention. Walking in, I didn’t exactly know what to expect.
Tables filled two rooms with work from comic artists of all ages, displaying a variety of aesthetics and genres for perusal. One comic centered on a man who thinks he is the next Jesus Christ, another focused on social life in Lexington. Plenty drew off a classic comic narrative: the young boy or girl who obtains superhuman powers from a freak accident. Some were hand drawn and hand bound, others formatted digitally and printed as a book using online publishing sites. One even used a wood block printing technique.
In addition to the vendor booths, the UP! Fair was also conducting workshops on comic techniques, from a DIY screen printing how-to with Lexington’s famous Cricket Press to Photoshop Tips and Tricks for people just starting out in the comic scene. On display around the Carnegie Center were drawings and digital images of comic characters created from artists of all ages.
I have little experience on the comic book scene. I am a filmmaker currently studying video in UK’s MFA program. I enjoy telling stories through video and would have never thought to draw connections between my work and that of comic artists, but at the Carnegie Center that day, I realized how similar the two art forms are. The difference is that in the world of comics, anything is possible. You are able to mix reality with fantasy and create worlds that exist only in the imagination.
All in all, I was pretty blown away at the dedication that these artists had poured into their work and the guts they had to get out there and share their passion with other comic fans. I love the concept that in this day and age, with self-publishing sites or with a printer and some artistic instinct, anyone can be a published artist and get their story to a public.
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