CONTEMPORARY ART IN CONTEXT JOEL CHRISTIAN GILL CARTOONIST, EDUCATOR, AND AUTHOR Celebrating Personal and Historical Legacies Left: Artist Joel Christian Gill works on a digital illustration in his studio. Right: Joel Christian Gill, cover banner for Strange Fruit, Volume II: More Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History , 2018. Images courtesy of the artist. J oel Christian Gill is a cartoonist, historian, and sto-ryteller who stresses the importance of building con-nections with readers through his self-referential and historical graphic novels. They emphasize the need for empathy, understanding, compassion, and overcoming dif-ficult circumstances. Historical and Autobiographical Tales Two of Gill’s graphic novel works, Fights (see p. 26) and the series Strange Fruit (see centerspread, pp. 24–25), are mark-edly different in their approach to storytelling. Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence is the autobiographical story of Gill’s experiences with the violence, bullying, and personal abuse he suffered as a young man, and how he overcame them, eventually becoming an artist and educator. Strange Fruit showcases the artist’s love of historical research, uncov-ering relatively unknown African American figures who have made significant contributions to American history. Both series are visually stunning—painting-like passages contrast with the linear figures. They are also delightful in the accurately depicted historical references to culture, costume, and objects. In all of Gill’s graphic novels, there is an overriding sense that these are not simple stories, but sig-nificant histories of the Black experience in America. Art History Connections Gill’s histories compare favorably with work by artists such as Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) of the Harlem Renaissance. Lawrence, too, chronicled Black histories that were little known at the time in his multipart series about the Great Migration and Toussaint L’Overture. While these histo-ries did not include personal stories like Gill’s Fights , they addressed the same issues of violence, racism, and abuse. Similarly, Kerry James Marshall’s (b. 1955) paintings of the marginalization of African American communities addresses the same issues as Gill’s Strange Fruit —the fact that African American contributions to American culture have been marginalized or ignored for generations. About the Artist Born in 1975, Gill grew up in Rocky Mount, Virginia, where he avidly read comics, one of his mechanisms for escap-ing from the bullying he experienced as a young person. In college, he majored in graphic design while exploring his interests in artists such as Basquiat, and making comics. He holds a BA from Roanoke College and an MFA from Boston Universit y. Gill was Chair of Foundations and Comic Art at New Hampshire Institute of Art, and is currently an Associate Professor of Illustration at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He has worked for clients such as NBC, the Boston Globe , and the Huffington Post . His graphic novel Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence was cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by the New York Times , and he received a 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize for it. SCHOOLARTS.COM 23
School Arts Magazine September 2021: Page 23
