2024
2024
Jarnac International Comics Workshop 2024
June 2024 meeting included the participation of Higinia Garay and Genis Rigol Alzola, artists from Spain, Murat Mıhçıoğlu, editor, writer and artist from Turkey, Gordana Basta from Serbia, and Xavier Girard from France.
Xavier presented his collection of handmade comics he found on a flea market in his home town of Orléans, France. The comics were drawn by Norbert Moutier, then a boy, in the late forties and fifties. Moutier passed away in January 2020 and was a known figure in the Z movie world, both for his own films and his fanzines, but his childhood comics have remained completely unknown.
Aside from the slide shows which introduced the work of the participants, we used the opportunity to learn about how comics are being produced in different countries, and the drawing sessions were quite inspired and productive.
A visit to Angouleme enabled our group to see the Comics Museum’s Comics and the Food exhibition, but also an exhibition of drawings and models of animals made of paper by French artist Anne-Lise Koehler, in the nearby Museum of Paper.
Meet The Artists
Xavier Girard
France
Xavier Girard lives in Orléans and works as Director of Studies at the Bourges National Art School (France). In 2020, he discovered by chance the Norbert Moutier collection at a flea market in Orléans. He devoted three years to studying and showcasing this archive of 1,000 booklets handmade by the boy and his mother, Simonne, between 1950 and 1960.
Aleksandar Zograf
Serbia
Aleksandar Zograf (www.aleksandarzograf.com) is the pseudonym of Saša Rakezić, who began publishing his comics in the former country of Yugoslavia in the mid-1980s. During the 1990s, his work gained international recognition, with publications through Fantagraphics Books in the United States and L’Association in France, among others. Collections of his comics have also been published in Italy, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Japan, Hungary, and various other countries.
Higinia Garay
Spain
Higinia Garay (1978) A graduate in Fine Arts in the University of the Basque Country and a Postgraduate in Publication Design at the European Institute of Design in Madrid. She has been working as an illustrator and graphic designer since 2002, and has been running her own studio since 2013, currently focused on illustration. She combines these activities with teaching in Masters and various workshops.
Gordana Basta
Serbia
Genís Rigol
Spain
Genís Rigol is a Catalan comic artist and animator. Currently living in Angoulême, he is trying to find a way to earn a living with comics. He has been author resident at La Maison des Auteurs between 2021 and 2024. During this time, he finished an animated short film, and recently finished his first comic book. It will be published in France and Spain in 2025.
Murat Mıhçıoğlu
Turkey
Murat Mıhçıoğlu was born in Kayseri, Turkey in 1972. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1998 following an education in English Literature at the University of Istanbul, all the while contributing as a polyglot to local and international publications as writer, critic, translator, editor and artist. His involvement in comics began to bear more serious fruits after he founded Studio Rodeo in 2004, an initiative to create and curate independent material freely, which, among other projects, also gave birth to Comicstanbul, an anthology of comics dedicated to the city, featuring works of masters like Charles Vess, Roberto Diso, Dany and Zograf. Currently, Mihcioglu is also focused on scripting movies and writing short stories, and has won several awards in the past years, one of which is for best sci-fi movie screenplay.