The Society of Illustrators has announced their schedule of events for the 2023 MoCCA Arts Festival. The event will be held on April 1-2, 2023, with programing at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, located at 133 West 21st Street in New York, New York, near the Exhibitor Hall at Metropolitan Pavilion.
Programming was organized by MoCCA Programming Director Bill Kartalopoulos with discussions focused on topics impacting comics today, such as censorship, the representation of queer youth, artificial intelligence, and labor issues.
Gender Queer author Maia Kobabe will have a spotlight session with writer Michele Kirichanskaya. Kobabe will also participate in a panel about comics and censorship with Mike Curato (Flamer author) and Cathy G. Johnson (The Breakaways author) that will be moderated by PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman.
In another spotlight session, Barbara Brandon-Croft (Where I’m Coming From) will discuss her career and being the first Black woman to write and draw a nationally syndicated daily comic strip. Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil) and Neil Gaiman (Sandman) will talk about her career and their collaborations.
Bill Kartalopoulos will lead a discussion on comics and labor with Lantz Arroyo and Sarah Lopez (worker-owned Radix Media) and O.K. Fox (Art and Labor podcast). Kartalopoulos and artists A ee mi and Akino Kondoh will discuss alternative Asian comics with publishers Orion Martin (Paradise Systems) and Emuh Ruh (Glacier Bay Books).
Viktor Koen, chair of SVA’s Comics and Illustration departments will lead the talk on art and artificial intelligence with illustrator Tim O’Brien (who led the ban of AI-generated art from major illustration competitions) and Carson Grubaugh (producer of the AI-generated graphic novel The Abolition of Man).
There will be an animation showcase organized by the Women in Animation advocacy group and an installment of R. Sikoryak’s ongoing Carousel series of performative comics readings. Panels will also feature artists Elizabeth Colomba, Kim Deitch, Drew Friedman, Glenn Head, Miriam Katin, Nora Krug, Toma Vagner, and more.
The full schedule of events can be viewed at www.moccafest.org/programming.
