DISCOVER BIG IDEAS AT MoCCA!

Preview the 2025 Programming Schedule

Organized by MoCCA Programming Director Bill Kartalopoulos, this year’s programming features a wide range of discussions reflecting the current state of the art form, the industry and the world.

Programming attendees must check-in at the SVA Flatiron Gallery at 133 West 21st Street and then MoCCA staff will direct you to the correct programming room.

SATURDAY SCHEDULE |SPACE ONE

12:00 pm | New York City: History, Fantasy, and Reality
Many New Yorks exist simultaneously: the New York of the past, storied and romantic. The modern fantasy of New York is fueled by television and movies, iconic in its promise of excitement and personal adventure. And then there is reality. In Amalgam, Frances Jetter traces her ancestors’ immigrant journey through the city. In This Beautiful, Ridiculous City, Kay Sohini compares her expectations with the city she encountered as a more recent arrival. In her graphic novel Simplicity, Mattie Lubchansky imagines the city’s possible dystopic future. Comics Beat Editor-in-Chief Heidi MacDonald will ask them all if they still heart New York.

1:30 pm | Comics and The Arts
Comics stand on the outskirts of the artworld–just as they once did relative to the publishing industry–and periodic flirtations maintain an ongoing sense of potential engagement between these two fields. What would comics gain from engagement with the artworld, and what might they lose? Can comics disrupt the traditional hierarchies of art or would they serve as another site upon which the artworld would inscribe its own rigorous hierarchies? Moderator Bill Kartalopoulos will consider these issues with John Hankiewicz and Aidan Koch, two artists who draw comics and produce gallery art. Joining them will be New York Times art critic Jillian Steinhauer and Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of the Drawing Center.

3:00 pm | Drawing Bodies: Chloé Wary & Lale Westvind
In their very different work, Lale Westvind and Chloé Wary draw the human body – particularly the bodies of women – in motion. In Westvind’s science fiction, strong women stride across futuristic landscapes, transcending limitations. In Wary’s realist fiction, young women push their bodies to show that their capacities equal those of men. Their expressive drawings employ line, design and color to render the feeling of embodiment. And in each of their works, the artist’s own bodies interact with pen and marker, leaving a legible trace across the page. Artist and educator Kriota Willberg will lead this conversation about bodies drawing and drawing bodies.

4:30 pm | Professional Development: I’ve Graduated, Now What?
Young artists often face a post-graduation future with no certain career track or obvious starting point. They can experience great pressure to establish themselves fast while overestimating the consequences of decisions and opportunities right after graduation. SVA BFA Comics and BFA Illustration chair Viktor Koen will speak with artists Sarula Bao (Endless Editions, The New Yorker) and Nakata “Knack” Whittle (Sweet Valley Twins) and with publisher and editor Robyn Chapman (First Second Books, Paper Rocket) about their own experiences and the advice they give to beginning artists. This special professional development panel is co-organized and sponsored by the School of Visual Arts, Division of Continuing Education.

12:00 pm | Comic Strips Today
Comics entered American mass culture in the late 19th century through the newspaper comic strip. For much of the twentieth century, newspaper strip cartoonists were popular auteurs of long- running series that absorbed readers’ daily attention. In the 21st century, the comic strip persists even as it confronts the challenges of a fragmented, electronic media environment. Karen Green (Columbia University) will discuss comic strips today with a panel including Isabella Bannerman, Maritsa Patrinos and Bianca Xunise, three of the artists behind the daily Six Chix strip; Keith Knight, whose experience ranges from alternative weeklies to syndicated dailies; and more.

SUNDAY SCHEDULE |SPACE ONE

1:30 pm | Color, Composition, and Emotion: Brian Blomerth & María Medem
As AI-generated images encroach upon the domain of art, art’s irreplaceable role as a site of emotional connection and meaning-making for human beings becomes more evidently precious. Brian Blomerth (Bicycle Day) and María Medem (Land of Mirrors) are both artists whose inimitable personal approaches to color and composition evoke and elicit pronounced emotional states. Blomerth’s psychedelic color palettes evoke psychological responses to experimental pharmacology, while Medem’s rich, minimalist images are a conscious oasis of calm in a troubled time. Art director Alexandra Zsigmond will lead a conversation with these artists.

4:30 pm | Professional Development: How to Be a Mentally Healthy Artist
American culture has only begun to recognize mental health as a concern equivalent to physical health. The world we live in offers ample mental health challenges, including the expectation of high productivity, digital distraction, and troubling world events. Artists manage particular stresses, from the economic uncertainties of freelance employment to facing regular rejection, all while trying to maintain a healthy artistic practice. Bill Kartalopoulos will lead a conversation with therapist and illustrator Katie Brookoff, LCSW and artists Hyesu Lee and Fran Meneses. This special professional development panel is co-organized and sponsored by the School of Visual Arts, Division of Continuing Education.

SUNDAY SCHEDULE |SPACE TWO

1:30 pm | Jaime Hernandez in the Spotlight
For more than forty years, Jaime Hernandez has chronicled the lives, loves, heartbreaks, and joys of Maggie, Hopey, and the diverse network of interrelated characters he gives life to in the ongoing Locas saga he serializes in Love and Rockets. His work marries the duration of the American daily comic strip with the flexibility of the ongoing, serial comic book format to produce a complex body of work that transcends comparisons to literary formats. To mark the release of his latest book collection, Life Drawing, Hernandez will discuss his life and work with Marc Sobel, author of Reading Love and Rockets and The Love and Rockets Companion.

3:00 pm | Comics and Ecology: Aidan Koch & Linnea Sterte
Few issues are more timely or more universal than the imminent threat of climate catastrophe. Comics can seek to communicate urgent information on this subject, and many do informatively engage ecology as a subject matter. The work of Aidan Koch and Linnea Sterte, however, does something else. These artists use the unique structural tools of the comics form to create a sense of the deep time within which ecological change happens, while eliciting a sense of empathy with the natural world and the many species with whom humans share this planet. They will discuss their work with environmental artist and teacher Matthew López-Jensen.

12:00 pm | Between Two Worlds: Anders Nilsen & Michael DeForge
Another world is possible. Michael DeForge and Anders Nilsen have both just published graphic novels that juxtapose one reality against another as a way of processing the here and now. In Holy Lacrimony, DeForge’s protagonist is unwillingly transported to an alien world to gain perspective on the abundant sorrows of this one. In Tongues vol. 1, Nilsen’s protagonists interact with figures from ancient Greek mythology while navigating contemporary sites of armed conflict. New York Times graphic novel columnist Sam Thielman will speak with these two artists about their distinct creative worlds.

3:00 pm | MoCCA Presents: R. Sikoryak’s Carousel
Cartoonist and Master of Ceremonies R. Sikoryak returns with another installment of Carousel, his long-running series of comics readings! This year he will be joined on stage by satirical autobiographical cartoonist Caroline Cash (Pee Pee Poo Poo); Swedish cartoonist Bim Eriksson (Baby Blue); illustrator and cartoonist Olivia Fields, who drew this year’s gorgeous MoCCA badge art; woodcut cartoonist John Vasquez Mejias (The Puerto Rican War); genre synthesist Katie Skelly (The Agency, My Pretty Vampire); and more. These artists will all read live from their work, accompanied by projection. Join us for an audio-visual journey to the place where comics and performance collide!

SATURDAY SCHEDULE |SPACE TWO

12:00 pm | Dissidents in Exile: Badiucao and Edel Rodriguez
Badiucao is a Chinese Australian artist and activist. His early political cartoons were censored by the Chinese government; his most recent work is the graphic novel You Must Take Part in the Revolution, produced in collaboration with Emmy-nominated journalist Melissa Chan. Edel Rodriguez is well known for his political graphics on the cover of Time Magazine and elsewhere, and for his graphic memoir Worm, depicting his family’s experience as Cubans who came to the US after Castro came to power. British comics scholar Paul Gravett will speak to these two artists about drawing comics as dissent from a position of exile.

1:30 pm | Uncanny Apparitions: Boum and Julia Gfrörer
David Lynch’s oeuvre showed the eruption of the monstrous into the everyday as a way of addressing unseen strands in the American social fabric. Towards different ends, cartoonists Boum and Julia Gfrörer depict uncanny apparitions intruding upon their characters’ daily life to visualize the unseen and the intangible. In The Jellyfish, Boum’s protagonist begins to see dark jellyfish everywhere as a metaphor for encroaching vision impairment. In World Within the World and other works, Gfrörer’s obscure wraiths emerge in tandem with emotional crises. The Comics Journal co-editor Sally Madden (Thick Lines) will lead this enlightening conversation.

3:00 pm | Rivers of Ink: Burns, Hernandez & Tomine
Three comics artists highly admired for their distinctive styles will discuss the evolution of their craft in this very special panel. In 1981, Charles Burns’s work first appeared in RAW magazine. That same year, Jaime Hernandez and his brothers self-published the first issue of Love & Rockets. Ten years later, high school student Adrian Tomine self-published Optic Nerve as a mini-comic. Since then, readers have enjoyed a relationship with these artists’ work and have followed the evolution of their art, sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic. Josh Bayer and Bill Kartalopoulos will talk to all three about their lifelong relationship to drawing.

An archive of professional development panels, co-organized and sponsored by the School of Visual Arts' Division of Continuing Education, is available to view here for free.

2024 Professional Development Archive

Financial Survival Kit
Featuring Viktor Koen, Orion Martin, Dave Roman, and Linda Secondari.

Entry Points into Comics Publishing
Featuring moderator Bill Kartalopoulos with Gary Groth, Cathy G. Johnson, John Vasquez Mejias, and Kiara Valdez.

2023 Professional Development Archive

Publishing Books Today
Featuring Robyn Chapman, Tom Devlin, Charlotte Greenbaum, and Gary Groth. Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.

Comics and Labor
Featuring Bill Kartalopoulos with Lantz Arroyo and O. K. Fox.

Art and AI
Featuring Viktor Koen, Rebecca Blake, Carson Grubaugh, and Tim O’Brien.

PEN America Presents: COMICS AND CENSORSHIP
Featuring Jonathan Friedman, Mike Curato, Cathy G. Johnson, and Maia Kobabe.

Want to view the entire

MoCCA Collection?

Members of the Society of Illustrators enjoy full access to the Society's extensive video archive through the Digital Membership Platform, featuring hundreds of hours of lectures, workshops, studio tours, online galleries, and more!

The MoCCA Collection includes some of the videos highlighted below. To access the full series, become a Member of the Society of Illustrators. Click here to join and unlock your benefits today!

  • Featured Artist Talk

    Adrian Tomine Spotlight

  • Very Funny Ladies

    Liza Donnelly with Roz Chast, Maggie Larson, Barbara Smaller, and Bishakh Som.

  • Featured Artist Talk

    Ronald Wimberly with Josh O’Neill.

  • Drawing Out The Past

    Featuring Natalie Norris, Karina Shor, Erin Williams, Tahneer Oksman

  • Featured Artist Talk

    Barbara Brandon-Croft with Calvin Reid

  • Featured Artist Talk

    Mike Mignola with Viktor Koen

  • Fantastic Landscapes

    Featuring Paul Kirchner, Peter Rostovsky, Miel Vandepitte, and Jason Little.

  • Picturing Queer Youth

    Featuring Ethan Aldridge, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, Quentin Zuttion, and Michele Kirichanskaya

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