Associated with the exhibition Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. Exhibition open daily, Noon – 5 PM. Admission is FREE.
Opening Weekend Events | All FREE and all at the Gladstone:
Thursday, February 17 | 7:30 – 10 PM | FREE
• Co-curators Michael Kaminer and Sarah Lightman will speak at 8 PM
• Live music by the dynamic female duo, Amy and Tova Play Bossa Nova
Tova Kardonne and Amy Medvick have been performing together since they met in the Indo-Jazz Fusion Ensemble led by Ravi Naimpalli in 2006. They have since collaborated in Tova's Balkan/Jazz fusion ensemble, The Thing Is, the large-scale choral installation Sound Forest in Nuit Blanche 2008, madrigal singing and other forms of hilarity. Amy and Tova have been playing their chill mix of Bossa Nova, Choro, French Cabaret standards and originals in that vein since 2008, to the delight of audiences around Toronto.
Sunday, February 20 | Noon to 5 PM | FREE
• Contemporary Art Bus Tour, 12 – 5 PM
Tour Graphic Details then visit the Blackwood Gallery, Art Gallery of York University and Doris McCarthy Gallery. RSVP 416.638.1881 x4270 or kofflergallery@kofflerarts.org
• Life in the Day Of.... Comic Workshop for Teens, 1 – 3 PM
For teens ages 14 to 18; FREE but pre-registration is required – space is limited, download registration form here and send to koffler@kofflerarts.org
Artist and Graphic Details co-curator Sarah Lightman will guide teens in the creation of a one-page comic in response to the exhibition. The “Life in the Day of” diary comic can be autographical, fantastical (aka. A Typical Day for Harry Potter) or surreal (ie. Goldy the Goldfish’s Day). No art experience is necessary – just bring your imagination!
Sarah Lightman is an award-winning artist, curator and arts journalist based in London, England. Herself a visual diarist for over 15 years, her PhD at The University of Glasgow is on Autobiographical Comics and she organized a conference at the University of Cambridge on Women in Comics.
• From Collector to Curator: Exhibition Tour and Discussion with co-curator Michael Kaminer, 3 PM
In 2008, Michael Kaminer wrote an eye-opening story for the Forward: “Graphic Confessions of Jewish Women: Exposing Themselves Through Picture and Raw Personal Stories.” The piece grew out of a personal passion for collecting alternative comics and unearthed a wealth of material that was unacknowledged for its sheer diversity, raw honesty, and particularity to Jewish women’s experience. Kaminer will share insights into the works on display and the process of developing the exhibition together with artist Sarah Lightman out of the seeds planted in that story.
Michael Kaminer is a New York journalist and collector. He has contributed to the Forward, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
• Confessional Kvetch: An Exhibition Tour Gone Wild, 4 PM
Ever feel awkward as a guest at someone else’s Friday night dinner? Worried that your daughter won’t marry someone Jewish? Did you feel less at home in Israel than you thought you would? Had dealings with a Hassidic real estate agent? Join co-curator and artist Sarah Lightman in discovering what you have in common (gevalt!) with the Jewish women of Graphic Details.
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Wednesday, February 23, Noon to 1 PM | FREE
crEATivity Club
Drawing Memoir and Memory
Prosserman JCC, Lounge | 4588 Bathurst St
Artist Bernice Eisenstein’s captivating illustrated memoir is I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors and her drawings are featured in the current Koffler Gallery exhibition, Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women. Through text and drawings, including panels in the comic-book format, Eisenstein captures memories of her 1950s’ childhood in Toronto with her Yiddish-speaking parents, whose often unspoken experiences of war were nevertheless always present. Winner of a Canadian Jewish Book Award, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors has been adapted into a NFB film, voted by TIFF among Canada's Top Ten Short films of 2010. Eisenstein will share images from the book while reflecting on the process of creating her memoir and the larger process of memory and storytelling.
“A powerful and emotionally charged memoir. . . . Some of the best writing ever on the subject of the 20th century’s most brutal human catastrophe.” — NOW magazine (5-star review)
Presented together with the Prosserman JCC and the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre
Bernice Eisenstein was born in 1949 in Toronto, shortly after her parents immigrated to Canada. She is an artist whose illustrations have appeared in a variety of Canadian magazines and periodicals, including the Globe and Mail. She has worked as a freelance editor while also writing the occasional book review for the Globe and Mail. She lives in Toronto.
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Tuesday, March 15 | Doors 7 PM, Program 7:30 – 9:30 PM
Seen But Not Heard
$15 at the door, $12 members and students
An evening of voice, movement, art, and learning in anticipation of the holiday of Purim. We’ll look at the “masks” we all wear... and enjoy Purim treats.
• "Unmasking Vashti and Esther"with Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, looking at the ancient Rabbis take on the characters of Vashti and Esther from the Purim story. Who is the heroine? The anti-heroine? Are they both a little of both? What do they offer women today?
• Hands-on comics workshop with Graphic Details artist, Sarah Lazarovic. Your own confessional comics become noise-makers to use on Purim or any time you need to “shake it up.”
• Composer, vocalist and dancer Rabbi Miriam Margles will use movement and voice to inspire getting into the Purim theme of being what you are not and revealing what you truly are. Get ready for serious exploration and guided ridiculousness!
• Tours of Graphic Details with Mona Filip, curator of the Koffler Gallery.
Come early to see the exhibition (extended hours from 5 – 7:30 PM); stay late to chat!
Presented together with Kolel: The Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning
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Sunday, March 27 | Doors, 1:30 PM, Performance 2 PM | FREE
Animated with Ariel Schrag
Graphic Details artist Ariel Schrag presents a multi-media reading of her comics. Like a live animated movie, the performance includes projected slides from her comics, a musical soundtrack, and Schrag reading all the voices. She will perform work about being Jewish, being queer, and being in high school.
Ariel Schrag is a New York-based author, artist and writer for the HBO series How To Make It In America. She also wrote for the hit Showtime series The L Word. For her High School Comic Chronicles, Schrag wrote each of her four autobiographical graphic novels the summer after each year of high school. The books cover crushes, band obsessions, new friendships, coming out as bi, coming out as gay, falling in love, her parents’ divorce, and the personal and social complications of writing about life while living it.
Presented together with Kulanu, Toronto’s Jewish LGBTQ Social Group.
4:30 – 5:30 PM
Creating Comics Step-By-Step with Ariel Schrag
$15 in advance, $25 at the door
Space is limited, advanced registration is strongly recommended. Download registration form here. Advance registration taken until Friday, March 24, 4 PM.
Ariel Schrag's hour-long masterclass begins with a lecture on the elements of comics storytelling including outlines, rough drafts, style, inking, background imagery and comics' symbolic vocabulary. The class then leads into a workshop with students collaborating on jam comics and brainstorming their own individual projects.
Ariel Schrag was born in Berkeley, California in 1979. She is the author of the autobiographical graphic novels Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise, which chronicle her four years at Berkeley High School. The books are published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster. Potential, which was nominated for an Eisner Award, is being developed into a major motion picture by Killer Films (Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven, Mildred Pierce). Schrag wrote the screenplay adaptation. Schrag is currently a writer for the HBO series How To Make It In America. She was also a writer for Seasons Three and Four of the hit Showtime series The L Word. Schrag is the editor of and a contributor to Stuck in the Middle – 17 Comics from an Unpleasant Age, an anthology of comics about middle school, published by Viking. Stuck in the Middle was selected for New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age 2008. Schrag co-writes the online comic Ariel and Kevin Invade Everything with the comedian and writer Kevin Seccia. The comic recounts the adventures of two best friends in Los Angeles and is updated at www.invadeeverything.com
Schrag’s illustrations and comics have appeared in publications such as The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Juxtapoz, and Paper. Her original art has appeared in museums and galleries across the United States as well as in Austria, Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Schrag does live performances of her comics across the country and abroad. The show includes projected slides of comic panels with Schrag reading all the voices and a musical soundtrack. In 2009 she toured the U.S. and Canada with the writers performance group Sister Spit.
Schrag is the subject of the short documentary film Confession: A Film About Ariel Schrag by director/producer Sharon Barnes. Confession played on PBS and Channel 4 in England and won the Audience Award at New York New Festival. Schrag graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in English Literature. In 2004 she began teaching the course Graphic Novel Workshop in the writing department at The New School. She has also taught classes at Brown University, New York University, Kala Art Institute, The Contemporary Jewish Museum and Intersection for the Arts. She divides her time between Los Angeles and New York.
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Sunday, April 10, 3:30 PM
Back to Bach, Viva Vivaldi
Koffler Chamber Orchestra
$15 advance / members, $20 at the door, $10 students
Under the direction of acclaimed violinist and Music Director Jacques Israelievitch, members of the Koffler Chamber Orchestra will be featured in concertos by Vivaldi and Bach including soloist, 11 year old twin violinists, Angela and Emily Bosenius.
Come early for a special guided tour of the exhibition, Graphic Details, at 2:30 PM
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Closing Day Events at the Gladstone Hotel:
Sunday, April 17, 3 PM | FREE
Discussing the Details with Graphic Details Artists
Toronto-based artists Bernice Eisenstein and Sarah Lazarovic, featured in the Graphic Details exhibition will discuss how graphic storytelling became the medium for narrating their own life experiences. Moderated by Dan Friedman, Arts and Culture Editor of The Forward, the Media partner for Graphic Details.
Sarah Lazarovic is an artist and filmmaker based in Toronto. Her animation and film work has appeared in festivals and on television. Her most recent short film, The Way It Used To Be, premiered at the Worldwide Short Film Festival. Her first feature film, No Heart Feelings, recently screened at a number of festivals and was broadcast on Super Channel. She is presently at work on a series of twelve shorts, supported by a Chalmers Fellowship, as well as developing her second feature film, The Teplitskys are Furious, through the National Screen Institute’s Features First program. Her cartoons are featured weekly in a handful of Canadian newspapers. And someday she’ll finish her comic memoir of pregnancy. In her spare time, she runs The Montrose Portrait Gallery of Canada out of her garage. For everything Sarah, please visit SarahL.com.
Dan Friedman is the arts and culture editor of the Forward. A founding editor of Zeek, Dan has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Yale and an MA in English Literature from Cambridge. He taught poetry, literature, and film at Cambridge and Yale. His writing has appeared in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal and at NYTimes.com. As well as writing for publishing various scholarly articles on film, poetry, and photography he is a qualified soccer coach and certified lifeguard. Dan writes fiction and poetry but is better known for his writing for “Da Ali G Show.”
Sunday, April 17, 7 PM | FREE
Israel and Comics: Beyond Black and White
While comics are often drawn in black and white, the work in Graphic Details shows that the relationship of North American Jews to Israel is anything but. With deep affection and sincere struggle these artists illustrate the intertwining of the personal and political, from Sarah Glidden’s conflicted experiences on a Birthright Trip to Miriam Libicki’s service in the Israeli army as “the least-kickass soldier in all of comics.” Arts and Culture Editor of the Forward, Dan Friedman hosts a discussion about the challenges facing many Jews today, simultaneously hugging and wrestling with Israel.
Come early to see the exhibition (extended hours for the closing day from 5 – 7 PM); stay late to chat!
Presented together with New Israel fund of Canada.
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