Professor presents graphic novel at conference

By Ciarra Leathers

Geo Sipp, an assistant art professor at Missouri Western for six years, has been selected to present a lecture and conduct a workshop at the Southern Graphics Conference, one of the largest print making conferences in the world.

“This is a real honor for me to present,” Sipp said. “This conference attracts print makers, professors, graduate students and students from universities – virtually every  continent. There are people who come from Japan, Austria, China, Russia and Europe – of course every state in the country.”

Sipp will speak about his unique print making method he developed for a graphic novel project. Some of Sipp’s prints have already been in exhibitions around the world, and he has won numerous of awards for them.

During Sipp’s time at the conference he, along with other participants, will have panel discussions, lectures and workshops on the idea of print making and what is changing in the art form. In addition, specific kinds of themes related to a mission statement of particular past conferences will be topics.

Sipp said that attending this conference is an opportunity for artists to come together.

“It’s an opportunity for people to engage with the artist – who are the best in the world at what they do,” Sipp said.

Western junior Harvey Jackson is an art major and has Sipp as one of his professors. He said that not only is Sipp great for this conference, but his work expresses a lot of passion.

“After having Geo Sipp as a professor for two semesters, I’ve noticed that he’s real creative,” Jackson said. “He shows a lot of passion for what he does, as a print maker and other courses that he teaches. Sipp knows printing making inside and out, so he knows the correct way and incorrect way of doing it. He doesn’t do things in series; he just does what he likes. He has a distinctive style – I guess his style is very GEO! I can say that.”

About two years ago, Sipp began researching unique print making techniques, along with developing his process. He began to form and create the illustrative narrative on  “Wolves in the City,” which is a graphic novel in the process of development that has as its subject the French-Algerian War.

The story focuses on a fictional character that happens to be a man in Kansas City who fled the United States in the early 1950s to avoid prosecution for murder. The man then enlists in the French Foreign Legion as a paratrooper and becomes involved as an interrogator in the war.

Sipp says with this particular piece, he and the author, Conger Beasley Jr., wanted to create a visual narrative that goes beyond the traditional graphics that appears in pen and ink illustrations colored using Photoshop.

“While I am using pen and ink for some of the illustrations, broad sections of narrative are being created as Solar plate prints,” Sipp said. “Many of these supportive prints have been exhibited as part of my Algerian Series.”

During Sipp’s visit at the national conference he will lecture and present a method of print making he developed on how to create four-color prints in page form for the graphic novel that he is producing. Sipp will demonstrate how he draws on pieces of grained glass, registers those pieces of glass and exposes them to a photosensitive piece of medal to make a print making plate and then make the print.

Since Sipp’s theme for his demonstration on “How to Make Prints for a Graphic Novel” was a rather unusual subject matter, Sipp thinks that it might have intrigued the committee.

“What’s unique about what I’m doing is that I’m using French and military newsreels from the French-Algerian War. I print steels from the newsreels off my computer, and then I redraw them. And when I redraw them, I assign color values to those images because they were originally in black and white. So by doing that – by appropriating that image and changing it and altering it – I’m making it my own,” Sipp said. “Then reinterpreting it for an audience that may not be aware of the war, but it’s a very topical subject because the French-Algerian War is a war that has been studied and documented because of its similarities to a lot of other military conditions in the Middle East. So, it’s a very topical subject.”

Allison Houston Sauls, department of art chairperson and associate professor of art history, is impressed with Sipp’s accomplishments.

“This is one of the most prestigious conferences in the world, and it’s an honor for Sipp to speak and conduct his workshop,” Sauls said. “He is extremely talented.”

Along with the support of his colleagues, junior art major Kimberley Morton explained why Sipp is a great pick for this conference.

“Sipp is a really good professor; he gets along well with all of his students, and he has a really good sense of humor,” Morton said. “He is a very good choice to represent the art department because he has a very distinctive style in his work that is part of his own.”

The conference is March 23-25. It is held at different locations across the U.S. each year, and this year it will be in Kansas City, Mo.