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Drawn In: Wordless Stories & Mise-en-scènes

Exhibition at the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center

2nd floor of the Alfred R. Goldstein Library

Ringling College of Art + Design

On view now through April 16, 2018

No captions. No speech bubbles. No sound effects. Drawn In: Wordless Stories & Mise-en-scènes presents new and recent graphic novels, alternative comics, zines, and artists’ books that communicate by other means.

Sometimes this illustrated craft has been referred to by what it 1.) lacks, e.g. as wordless stories (without language) or silent narratives (without hearing); 2.) privileges, e.g. as visual storytelling (with its emphasis on sight); 3.) exchanges, e.g. as wordless picture stories (subtracting literacy and adding visual literacy); or 4.) professes as its medium, e.g. as a novel in woodcuts (a specific vehicle of expression). To pull from Scott McCloud’s storytelling terms, this genre might best be dubbed moment-frame-image-flow stories. While a name reliant on strategic attributes is at once a positive definition of the genre, it is matter-of-factly, a muddle of words. The exemplification of linguistic deficiency is not surprisingly, unavoidable.

The forms of graphic narration on display at the Brizdle-Schoenberg Special Collections Center represent an array of approaches. Inventive narratives (José Domingo, Adventures of a Japanese Business Man; Vincent Perriot, Entre Deux; Aidan Koch, The Dancer at Midnight) are met by less-sequential and outright non-sequential narratives (David Sandlin, Lobe Story; Adam Shecter, Like Ghosts). Non-narrative sequences (Chris Uphues, Black Hair; Allyson Mellberg and Jeremy Taylor, Lichen Ocean; Mel Kadel and Travis Millard, Who’s Gonna Empty the Catbox???) cue up beside illustrated panoramas and carousels-in-the-round (Ugo Gattoni, Bicycle; Radha Pandey, Hibernation; Carrie Ann Plank and Macy Chadwick, Span). Protagonist-less scenes (Jason Roy, A Masterless Universe; and Roxane Lumeret, Dialogue De Souris) find company among thrillers (Noel Freibert, Mr. Cellar’s Attic), murder-ballads (Ian Huebert, Knoxville Girl), and erotic quests (Edie Fake, Gaylord Phoenix).

Readers can check out additional wordless stories and mise-en-scènes on a bookshelf of rotating materials.

For more information, contact Janelle Rebel, Digital Curation and Special Collections Librarian ([log in to unmask] / 941.359.7583)