Cartoonist, musician, and educator Marek Bennett visits ConVal High School and presents a TASC Talk on cartooning and graphic novels.
Bennett’s work includes the local history webcomic LIVE FREE AND DRAW!, the graphic novel travel memoir SLOVAKIA: Fall in the Heart of Europe, numerous community-specific mini-comics projects (such as serving as the Official Cartoonist of New Hampshire’s Weeks Act Centennial), the long-running Xeric Award-winning weekly newspaper strip “Mimi’s Doughnuts,” and others.
Bennett’s educational programs incorporate sequential narrative cartooning techniques & music into community-based projects that explore and develop the participants’ sense of history, culture, and individual & collective identities. Artists of all ages, backgrounds, abilities discover their own unique capacities for storytelling, performance, and communication as they contribute to projects and presentations in workshop- and discussion-based events. Through focused webcomics like LIVE FREE AND DRAW! and COFFEE+DUMPLING+KOMIKS, Marek shares his own experiences of travel, research, and community with a wider audience of readers and contributors. More on Marek Bennet’s work can be found on his website.
Mr. Bennett’s visit came as the result of a Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) project entitled “Making A Living | Making Art.” The project was funded in part by a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. The NHSCA is a state agency devoted to enhancing the quality of life in New Hampshire by stimulating economic growth through the arts, investing in the creativity of students, making the arts accessible to underserved populations, and preserving heritage arts.