Residency Artist - Visual Arts

Carol Tyler

Email: bloomerlandinfo@fuse.net
Website: www.bloomerland.com

I write and draw stories using the comic format. Comics are a very organized, artful, words-and-pictures juggling act. A natural activity for the classroom, comics enhance clear thinking and problem solving skills while meeting Academic Content Standards in both Fine Art and Language Arts. Comics can be an individual effort or a group activity. An example of a collaborative style residency would be to link a Sophomore art class with a group of Senior Citizens for story listening and sharing. From there, the art class would script out the stories and draw them with a goal of producing a finished page that could be reproduced and distributed.

Creating a graphic novel is like writing a regular novel, but with art supplies! I begin by writing a script and then draw everything out by hand, adding ink and color in preparation for the printing process. My current project is called You'll Never Know. It's is a 200+ page graphic novel about my Dad and WWII, how the war changed his life and how it consequently affected my life. I also teach 'Comics and Sequential Art' at the Department of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati.

I have been drawing comics since the early 80s. While in graduate painting program at Syracuse in 1983, I realized that single 'panel' painting was not enough for all I had to say. So I studied the technical aspects of making comics and have been doing sequential art ever since. In 1987 my first piece was published and have had numerous stories published in various publications over the years. My second and most recent book, Late Bloomer was published in 2005 by Fantagraphics (Seattle).