Top Danish comic creators head to 2019 Lakes International Comic Art Festival

Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2019 - Danish Guests - Art BubbleThe Lakes International Comic Art Festival has announced the full line up of Danish comic creators heading to Kendal in October, along with guests from Estonia, Finland and Italy – and beyond.

Working with the Art Bubble Comics Festival (which next takes place 9th – 10th November 2019 in Copenhagen), six top Danish creators will be attending this year’s weekend-long Festival: Árni Beck GunnarssonRikke HollænderSøren Mosdal, Lars JakobsenKristina Ricken and Rune Ryberg.

Basquiat by Julian Voloj and Søren Mosdal

Basquiat by Julian Voloj and Søren Mosdal

Danish comics artist and newspaper illustrator Søren Mosdal has just been published with SelfMadeHero, working with writer Julian Voloj on the Art Masters title, Basquiat, detailing the dazzling, provocative work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who would come to define the vibrant New York art scene of the late 1970s and early ’80s.  Mosdal’s acclaimed graphic novel, Erik the Red, was published by Centrala in 2016.

Rikke Hollænder is an underground self-publisher, while Kristina Ricken is better known as “Live fra Lolland“, creator of some hugely popular web cartoons.

Lars Jakobsen is director and founder of the Aarhus and Copenhagen-based Art Bubble Festival, best known for the humour strip Coopville, centring on life in a chicken farm, a series about everyday life and family life that has featured every week in Family Journal for over 25 years.

Ruby Falls, from Berger Books, coloured by Lee Loughridge, debuts this October

Ruby Falls, from Berger Books, coloured by Lee Loughridge, debuts this October

Also announced are Estonian creators Liisa Krusmaagi, Joonas Sildre and Veiko Tammjarv; from Finland, Taina Hakala and Milena Huhta; from Italy, Paolo Bacilieri; from Mexico, Kurly Tlapoyawa, aka The Hardcore Archaeologist; and, from the United States, artist and colourist Lee Loughridge, who’s working on the new series from Berger Books, Ruby Falls, which launches in October.

In other news, the Festival has also announced that popular comic tag team, father and son Steve and Luke McGarry, will be back to cause more cartoon mayhem with their popular contributions to the Festival’s many events. Graphic reportage artist Darryl Cunningham and editor and comic creator David Leach will also be in Kendal in October, a weekend which includes Live Draws, panels, workshops, Family Zone fun, a hugely-expanded Windows Trail and much, much more!

“We’re delighted to continue our co-operation with Festivals and organisations across Europe and beyond to deliver a range of top drawer guests,” commented Festival Director Julie Tait.

• The Lakes International Comic Art Festival returns to Kendal at various venues across the town 11th – 13th October 2019

• Tickets for the 2019 Festival are on Sale Now at www.comicartfestival.com/buy-tickets

• Web: www.comicartfestival.com | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Podcast

Mortensen's Escapades by Lars JakobsenMEET THE GUESTS…

COMIC CREATORS FROM DENMARK

Árni Beck Gunnarsson

Árni Beck Gunnarsson

Árni Beck Gunnarsson‘s goal as a promoter of the comics form is simple – to promote what he thinks are good comics and to help creators, who have little or no time to promote their works internationally.

He’s also the Danish translator of the highly acclaimed Mouse Guard series by David Petersen, ApocalyptiGirl by Andrew Maclean, and Icelandic translator of Mortensen’s Escapades by Lars Jakobsen – as well as being the English language translator of Arminius: The Battle of Teutoburg and Weneetryhl.

Rikke Hollænder

Rikke Hollænder

Rikke Hollænder is a Danish comic book artist, jerkingly debuting in the Copenhagen underground comic scene around 2004 by participating in obscure anthologies.

Her first full length comic, Travels with Albert, was was well received by critics. She then created the epic 2000002 Comics – and is now working on a larger project called Depends on the Dick.

Lars Jakobsen

Lars Jakobsen

Lars Jakobsen is a Danish documentary filmmaker, illustrator and graphic designer. He has worked with a variety of graphic forms of expression, including fashion design and illustrations, advertisements, movies, cartoons, books and comics.

He, who also worked several years for Disney, is known for Coopville, a weekly humour strip about life in a chicken farm, a series about everyday life and family life that stirs recognition in many. The strip has been published every week since 1990, in several countries, and transformed into two small animated cartoons that were a part of WDRs; Sendung mit der Maus.

Lars is also the creator of the album series Mortensen’s Escapades, which, since 2013, has been released in the United States, Australia and the UK, Belgium, Iceland as well as Denmark.

Mortensen’s Escapades are based on actual historical events, and most of the buildings and people can be googled and everyone can read more on the internet.

Søren Glosimodt Mosdal

Søren Glosimodt Mosdal

Søren Glosimodt Mosdal is a Danish comics artist and newspaper illustrator, and a member of the Finnish Kuti Kuti comics association. Born in Nairobi, he now lives in Copenhagen.

He is the author of numerous comic books, including Feuerwerk and Eric Le Rouge: roi de l’hiver (Erik the Red, published in the UK by Centrala); and artist on Art Masters: Basquiat, written by Julian Voloj, recently published by SelfMadeHero.

Kristina Ricken

Kristina Ricken

Kristina Ricken is perhaps best known as the creator of the web cartoon, Live from Lolland, which has been collected into three books to date

In addition to strips and her own books, she has also illustrated books for, among others, Hovedland, the publisher FADL, and designed campaigns for, among other things, Region Zealand, and has created a lot of drawings for wedding invitations, labels, newsletters and everything in between.

“My drawing style is super simple and is therefore really good at illustrating fun points and helping to keep the tone of your text informal and down to earth,” she says.

Rune Ryberg is an award-winning writer/artist, whose latest work Death Save (published in France as TILT) earned him top honours at Pingprisen – winning Danish Comic of the year. The title is a mammoth tribute to the pinball machines of his youth.

A Danish comic book artist with a history in animated films, Ryberg made his debut as a comic book artist with the award-winning Gigant, published by AdHouse Books. His artistic style exhibits a colour saturated, quirky, skewed and rumpled impression of dynamic movement and expression. It often contains odd characters in comical action sequences with a cinematographic feel and a limited use of text and dialogue.

"Alice" by Liisa Krusmaagi, for the kids magazine, Täheke

“Alice” by Liisa Krusmaagi, for the kids magazine, Täheke

COMIC CREATORS FROM ESTONIA

Liisa Kruusmägi

Liisa Kruusmägi

Liisa Kruusmägi is a freelance artist who mostly uses painting and drawing and works as an illustrator. She is a member of the Estonian Artists’ Association since 2013.

Born in Tallinn, she has obtained BA degree in the department of painting and MA degree in drawing at the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2013.

She’s taken additional courses in Rhode Island School of Design and participated in residence programmes in James Black Gallery (Vancouver), AIRY and Yosuga (Japan) and Kitokia Grafika risograph studio (Lithuania).

Liisa has held personal exhibitions in Portugal, Sweden, Canada, Japan, USA, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany and Estonia, and participated in group exhibitions in London, Berlin, Slovakia, Italy, Finland and Russia.

Joonas Sildre

Joonas Sildre

Born in Estonia, Tallinn, where he currently lives with his wife and four kids, Joonas Sildre, co-founder of Estonian Comics Society established in 2013, studied graphic design at the Estonian Academy of Arts (graduated 2004). Since then. he has been working as a freelance comic artist, illustrator and designer.

Sildre likes to experiment with different ways of telling stories in the comics medium. He has published two children’s comic books. in 2009 and 2016, and one graphic novel, Between Two Sounds, last year,  a biography of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

He has compiled anthologies and organised several exhibitions of Estonian contemporary comics, has been teaching comics in art schools for about ten years and sometimes gives workshops on the subject.

Veiko Tammjarv

Veiko Tammjarv

Veiko Tammjarv graduated from the graphic arts department of the Estonian Academy of Arts in 1996. His interest in comics probably grew out of his love of Herluf Bidstrup’s comic strip collections, seeing the works of Roy Lichtenstein and the music video for Take On Me by the Norwegian pop group A-Ha.

He has cultivated a personal style that mixes pop art, infographics and classic comic book style, stories that lack traditional speech bubbles and texts. “They are similar to guidelines for using a ship’s life jacket in an emergency, so readers of any nationality or language can follow the narrative through the pictures,” he says. “My works cover relationships, urban culture and Estonian folklore.”

Since the late 1990s, his comics have been published in various magazines and anthologies in Estonia and abroad.

"Lost Love" by Milena Huhta

“Lost Love” by Milena Huhta

COMIC CREATORS FROM FINLAND

Taina Hakala

Taina Hakala

Taina Hakala is mainly a self taught artist and works on comics, painting, collage and textile art. She’s participated in several group exhibitions, including the RIKKI project – art about mental health with exhibitions in Finland and in Berlin, Germany, and the Girl Gang International, an exhibition in Angoulême, France, a collaboration with groups from United States, Britain and Finland).

In her cut-and-paste collages, Hakala combines images from the shiny world of strict beauty norms in women’s magazines and cuts from animal encyclopaedias into surreal visions and plays with basic emotions such as fear, envy and the need to be noticed and seen. Her comics have been published in zines (Mums’ collective, and Namifetsi, in Finland, Dotterbolaget, in Sweden), magazines (Kuti and Ananda, a magazine about yoga) and anthologies (Girl Gang International, RIKKI).

Hakala has made comics about beauty expectations, mental health issues, gender roles and family life. In her documentary comics she often shows her love and bitter sense of humour for everyday life.

Lately she has been working on histories of women artists and has arranged exhibitions, workshops, Finnish-Swedish residencies and public readings of comics of her own and colleagues comics in Finnish, Swedish and English. Her main work in public readings has been a piece called As Time Passes, a comic in progress that handles her childhood and family histories, a poetic testimony of love, loss and the inevitable flow of time.

Milena Huhta

Milena Huhta

A Finnish-Polish artist with macabre inclinations, based in Helsinki, Milena Huhta has worked on everything from record and book covers to editorial illustrations to tattooing; she incorporates a wide range of inspirations into her multidisciplinary work. Some of those include 1990s Japanese manga and animation, sci-fi films and literature, contemporary and historical fashion, gothic subculture, Slavic and Asian folktales and many more.

Huhta weaves a pastel-coloured web of dreamy landscapes filled with conflicted and melancholy characters. With her work including both the magical and the mundane, she strives to tear down the thin veil between dreams and reality, making her illustrations a vessel of escapism. More often than not, her femme characters also channel a strong sexuality with a fetishistic flair. Huhta tries to portray the many layers of femme identity, from vulnerability to monstrous energy manifesting in the characters’ metamorphic states.

In her most recent collaborative project, Thaumaturgy, with photographer Diana Luganski, Huhta transformed models posing against a dark background into omnipotent characters from Russian mythology, like the witch Baba Yaga or the prophetic bird Gamayun.

FUN by Paolo Bacilieri

FUN by Paolo Bacilieri

FROM ITALY

Paolo Bacilieri

Paolo Bacilieri

Born in Verona in 1965, Paolo Bacilieri is a comics artist based in Milan, Italy whose works include Barokko, Durasagra and The Supermaso Attitude.

He is also the creator of Zeno Porno, whose madcap adventures are collected in the books Zeno Porno and La Magnifica Desolazione.

His recent graphic novels include Adiòs Muchachos, Sweet Salgari, Palla and Tramezzino.

FROM MEXICO

Kurly Tlapoyawa

Kurly Tlapoyawa

Kurly Tlapoyawa (The Hardcore Archaeologist) is an author, archaeologist, filmmaker, and professional stuntman. He’s a long-time champion of independent filmmaking, and is best known for starring in the cult horror film The Stink of Flesh. His credits also include Breaking Bad, Crank 2, Get Shorty and Sicario.

Kurly co-wrote the book Direct Your Own Damn Movie with Troma President and Indie Film legend Lloyd Kaufman, and most recently appeared in the sequel to Sicario, Day of the Soldado.

FROM THE UNITED STATES

Lee Loughridge

Lee Loughridge

Lee Loughridge is an artist and colourist, possibly best known for his work on DC Comics various Batman Adventures titles.

Most recently, he’s been working on the new creator-owned miniseries Ruby Falls, launching this this October from Berger Books, an imprint of US publisher Dark Horse.

He was nominated for the International Horror Guild Award for best illustrated narrative in 2001 for his work on the comic edition of The House on the Borderland, and was also nominated for a Hugo Award for his work on Fables; War and Pieces.

• The Lakes International Comic Art Festival returns to Kendal at various venues across the town 11th – 13th October 2019

• Tickets for the 2019 Festival are on Sale Now at www.comicartfestival.com/buy-tickets

• Web: www.comicartfestival.com | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Podcast



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