Residency

The Arts Institute and the Art Department are thrilled to welcome cartoonist and author Lynda Barry to the UW-Madison as our spring 2012 interdisciplinary artist in residence.

Lynda Barry is an author and cartoonist credited with expanding the literary, thematic, and emotional range of American comics. She is best known for her groundbreaking weekly comic strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” which ran for thirty years throughout the US and Canada. She also adapted her novel, “The Good Times are Killing Me” into a long-running off-Broadway play. Barry has authored 17 books, worked as a commentator for NPR, had a regular monthly feature in publications such as Esquire and Mother Jones Magazine, and been a frequent guest on David Letterman. She is the recipient of many awards, including two Eisner Awards for her graphic novels “What It Is” (2008) and "Picture This" (2010). She lives in rural Rock County, Wisconsin.

While in residence, Barry will bring in three visiting artists who will offer lectures and workshops open to the public on the subject on cartooning and the image in writing and picture-making. Barry will also teach a semester-long course entitled "What It Is: Manually Shifting the Image." Using writing and picture-making, students will investigate the relationship of the hand to images, creativity, and the brain, and will each produce a short book and teach an off-campus workshop.

Lynda Barry’s residency is sponsored by the Art Department and cosponsored by the Center for Visual Cultures, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Department of Art History, the School of Library and Information Studies, and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Community partners include the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Isthmus, and the Goodman Atwood Community Center.