Description:

What is a comic jam?
ALL ARE WELCOME. Artists meet once a month in a bookstore or comic store to socialize and draw collaborative art, strips, and comic projects. Samples and books of the work are provided free to those attending the following month as well as here in PPT format. We try to meet each month on the 3rd Sunday in the afternoon for three to four hours.

Jason Bullock founded The NIS Art Jam in November 2003 as a safe haven for the alternative comics community -- a place where artists could meet, exchange ideas, and find moral support, using comics as a basis for social interaction. Inspired by Rupert Bottenberg's comic jams in Montreal, regularly-held monthly comic jams in Toronto have helped to build a sense of community and local history around this often underappreciated art form.

An "Art Jam" is a constraint-based exercise reminiscent of Raymond Queneau's Oulipo (Workshop for Potential Literature) and its subsequent comics arm, Oubapo (Workshop for Potential Comics). Participants take turns contributing ideas, stories, drawing consecutive panels, composing spontaneous, collaborative art. In the process, art become a vehicle to explore narrative, a template for self-expression, and a form of social exchange - and participants get caught up in the sheer joy of drawing. Finished pages are compiled in PPT, DOC, print formats as well as put on the wall for all to see.

In social situations, many artists find themselves doodling in notebooks and drawing on napkins. These people find the comic jam to be a wonderful inversion - everybody's drawing. In fact, to not draw is an anomaly.

Atlanta artist and illustrator Jason Bullock says of the jam process, "I believe that we understand each other best through the stories we are able to exchange with each other. If we can record these stories in an inventive and engaging way, then we may be able to connect to others and impart our views, our knowledge and experience."

The comic is a medium in which anyone and everyone can participate, and that this is part of its power. At the comic jam, experienced artists are challenged to expand themselves, given the different requirements of each jam page, while people new to the medium can discover the wealth of graphic language they may not realize they already possess.

Everyone is invited to join us at our designated locations on the 3rd Sunday of each month in the afternoon fior a couple of hours to help energize the creative air, develop art, produce comics, or act as art resources to aspiring artists and writers. Every event is free but we always try to donate to the GIRAFNetwork's Paypal account because they, as a non profit organization, flip the bill for all the arrangements and supplies. Check it out !