Comic Conference with Hoover Middle School

Wow- what a day... 32 middle school students, one cute ELP teacher (my husband) one crazy art ed professor who talked 3 really nice (and maybe slightly crazy, too) UNI students to come and ride a bus to Iowa City. As you all know, I am not always the most organized person so...we made students their sketch books on the bus and it worked great with one extra to spare :)
The students listened to James Sturn first about his love of comics. He runs the Center for Cartoon Studies. We then went to some break out sessions on Manga, comics and poetry, making comic buttons, owning a comic store, etc... Next we met Jessica Abel who showed us comic artists work- from drawing with blue pencil, to inking, and fixing mistakes with white paint. Last we saw a comic exhibit featuring lots of famous works and way cool action figures!  We saw a Ray Pettibon, a Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, and a Pablo Picasso comic.  Blew me a way...  the kids of course were blown away by the drinking references and slight nudity that appeared in some. I got to have a lot of interesting conversations about those!
Thank you Bethany, Karla, and Justin for taking time to come along, hopefully you learned a great deal and were able see how to get 32 middle school students around a college campus with out losing your mind. It is a lot like herding cats.