The Art Students League Of New York’s This Quarantine Life: A Covid-19 Era Comics Anthology To Be Published November 13th

Release Event Set For November 19th At 6PM ET Via Facebook Live

The Art Students League’s This Quarantine Life: A Covid-19 Era Comics Anthology will be published on November 13th. The digital comics anthology, which will be released via iBooks, was edited by Art Students League instructors Steven Walker and Greg Follender. The graphic novel features stories by League artists and 76 artists-in-quarantine from around the world including New York, Australia, China, Bahrain, Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, and more. This book is a snapshot of a frenzied time in history, filtered through the lens of these artists and imbued with their insights, concerns, anxieties, and passions.

The Art Students League of New York is the alma mater of numerous comic luminaries including Will Eisner, Gene Colan, and Ramona Fradon - pioneers in the medium of graphic storytelling and sequential art.

"The stories by the students of the comics medium are thoughtful and energetic,” ComicCon International’s Inkpot Award Award-winning artist and author of the introduction to the anthology Jamal Igle says. “They're taking the times we're currently living in and, as some of the best storytellers often do, present us with something heartfelt and deeply personal."

This Quarantine Life: A COVID-19 Era Comics Anthology will be available for free in digital format on iBooks on Friday, November 13th. The book will also be available to download via the League’s website and will later be published via Comixology.

More info here: https://theartstudentsleague.org/event/this-quarantine-life-comics-anthology/

Credit: "Adulthood: Interrupted" by Ebrahim Aldoseri

To celebrate the launch, The Art Students League will host a live-streamed event via Facebook on Thursday, November 19th at 6pm ET. The event will be hosted by League artist Andrew Drilon and feature discussions with editor Steve Walker, Inkpot Award-winning artist Jamal Igle, and four contributing artists from all over the world, sharing their individual quarantine experiences and how they expressed it in the medium of comics.

More info on the event here: https://theartstudentsleague.org/event/this-quarantine-life-facebook-live-event/

Credit: "Open Up Your Eyes" by Zuzana Matysova

ABOUT STEVEN WALKER:

Steven Walker is a League instructor with a B.F.A. degree in comics illustration from the School of Visual Arts. Mr. Walker has an eclectic portfolio of work and has published with companies such as Image Comics. He cites creators Walt Simonson and Jamal Igle as influences. He has also published graphic novels with Random House, most notably The Sons of Liberty (volumes 1 and 2) and The Battle of Blood and Ink for Tor Books. instagram.com/the_stevewalker

ABOUT GREG FOLLENDER:

Greg Follender is a League instructor whose passionate pursuit of rendering the human form has taken him from the dynamic world of comic books and graphic novels to character design and costume fabrication in the industry of film and television. After receiving his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, he worked as an illustrator for many years for such prestigious clients as The New York Times, Scholastic Publishing, and Time Magazine. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is represented in many private and public collections. He also published his episodic graphic novel, The Pugilist, in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. Mr. Follender holds gestural life drawing workshops in La Morra, Italy annually and is deeply influenced by the draftsmanship of the Italian High Renaissance. His allegorical paintings are firmly rooted in this classical tradition, and the dynamic figure drawing tenets of that time continue to inspire his personal narrative imagery. www.gregfollender.com

ABOUT THE ART STUDENTS LEAGUE OF NEW YORK:

The League was founded in 1875 by students breaking away from the National Academy of Design. That independent spirit remains at The League today, where students pursue their work unconstrained by dogma, politics or burdensome tuition. We educate students in the language and process of making art in an environment where anyone who wishes to pursue arts education can realize his or her full potential. The League fulfills this mission by offering affordable, high-quality education and instruction in painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and assemblage. Artists who have studied at the League include Georgia O'Keeffe, Norman Rockwell, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, James Rosenquist and Ai-Weiwei, among others. www.theartstudentsleague.org

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For More Information:

Rebecca Shapiro

rshapiro@shorefire.com

Mikaela Duhs

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