Feature Photo: Art Spiegelman at Convocation
October 10, 2014
Cartoonist Art Spiegelman peers over the shoulder of saxophonist Phillip Johnston during their joint convocation, titled “Wordless!”, in Finney Chapel Wednesday. Despite technical difficulties, the pair combined their respective art forms in a display of collaborative mastery.
Spiegelman is best known for his graphic novel Maus, a lengthy retelling of his father’s life as a Holocaust survivor that earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Maus is often cited as the work that first drew scholarly interest to comics as an art form. Spiegelman’s initially brief, experimental writing rose to prominence in the 1970s, and he has since enjoyed a prolific career
as a cartoonist, editor and teacher. A respected jazz composer and performer, Johnston is a New York native currently based in Sydney, Australia. During the 1980s, Johnston founded and led The Microscopic Septet and toured around the United States and Europe. He maintains an active interest in composing for the concert hall, theatrical productions, dance and silent films.
