TPL Teens TCAF recap
Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) is a celebration of comics and art brought to you by the Beguiling and presented by the Toronto Public Library. The drive behind this festival from its conception is to promote the literary and artistic virtues of comic arts and graphic novels. This isn’t your run of the mill Comic-Con with celebrity press conferences, and dozens of Spider-man prints. What TCAF is in reality is a week of art exhibitions, social gatherings, educational talks leading up to a two day exhibition of comics, illustration, animation, and wider artistic creativity in the field of comics.
What is new to TCAF in 2016
TACF has grown considerably from a collection of exhibitors tabling in Honest Ed’s parking lot (2003) to 24,000 attendees across all events in 2015. This year saw the growth of TCAF in an additional exhibitor venue, the Masonic Temple. There is limited room in the Toronto Reference library so they used this new space to give the featured guests. This space worked very well giving creators bigger tables and festival attendees more space and opportunity to meet them. TCAF also used the stage to showcase artists Live-Drawing, each hour there was an artist on stage and another doing a signing at Masonic Temple.
Programming Highlights
Like other Comic Conventions TCAF Programming includes fan favourites like creator signings and panels, however TCAF goes beyond industry standards and dedicates programs to every genre and type of fan. The panels were a little bust this year, because of the sheer volume: 10 program rooms, including the Kids spotlight & draw along but excluding the signing rooms, many had poor attendance. However the signings ran very smoothly with the exception of fans glaring daggers at any passerby looking at the artists table while there was a line (in the Masonic Temple). Overall the Masonic was a great addition to the festival, it had a dozen tables and a lot of pedestrian room, as well as a few dozen chairs set up in front of the stage – featuring an artist drawing every hour of the show. The bonus of the new venue is a lot of people didn’t know about it so in the height of the festival when it was too crowded (Saturday afternoon) I could still feel the AC in the Temple and had time to chat with the artists and wasn’t rushed by the press of thousands around me.
Toronto Art
In the weeks leading up to the TCAF exhibition the festival brought comic art to Toronto though a series of gallery exhibitions. PHONO+GRAPHIC celebrates the crossovers between comics and music through this gallery show of vinyl album art created by comic book professionals at Nuvango Gallery till May 25th. Other gallery shows include Lou Skuce at JetFuel Coffee Shop, Shintaro Kago at Narwhal Art Projects, and Manuele Fior Solo Exhibition at The Italian Cultural Institute showing until June.
TCAF notoriously bring together emerging local talent with internationally acclaimed artists. This year the featured guest list included mainstream alternative creators like Sean Phillips, Jeff Lemire, Brian K. Vaughan as well as international alternative arts creators like Rokudenashiko, Boulet, for signings and talks all weekend.
Fresh Content
Over the years TCAF has become a launching point for many new comics, from both independent creators and alt comics publishers. Here are some of my personal highlights from new books at TCAF (full list)
Turning Japanese – MariNaomi
What Is Obscenity? – Rokudenashiko & Anne Ishii
Chirault: Volume 2 – Ally Rom Colthoff
Talk Dirty To Me – Luke Howard
Beauty and The Beast: Act Two – Megan Kearney
Toronto Comics: Volume 3 – Various
GIRLS #2 Jenn Woodall
Brobots and the Kaiju Kerfuffle J. Torres & Sean Dove
TACF will be back next year and many of the debuting books will soon be available in the Toronto Public Library keep an eye on the new releasesx`
