October 2022
Agitator Comics! began as a pandemic project. Agitator Gallery left its previous space in September of 2020; and for two years we focused on pop ups, virtual exhibitions, and printed publications. There was so much interest in the first call for entries, we printed two volumes of comics in 2021.
I conceived Agitator Comics! as an open-call, open theme publication. This approach recalls the independent compilations of the 90s, where you could see a wild range of artists presenting stories on just about anything. As with all my curation, Agitator Comics! puts experienced artists alongside newcomers, and everyone elevates each other.
In 2022, Agitator’s new, larger space is allowing us to expand our vision of exhibitions, programming, publications, and more. For Volume 3, book designer and new Agitator member Alex Wilson has created a unique, handcrafted paperback. We’re all excited to bring this ongoing compilation series into the world of Book Arts.
Welcome to Volume 3. We are just getting started.
Gretchen Hasse
Interdisciplinary Artist and Agitator Cofounder
Curator, Agitator Comics!
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All work copyright of the artist(s)
Cover Art by Anna Mielniczuk
Edited by Gretchen Hasse
Book Design and Production by Alex Wilson
Agitator Comics! Volume 3, October 2022
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The Adventures of Lady Stardust by Anna Mielniczuk
anna-mielniczuk.com | @aniagreta.studio
Guided by curiosity and imagination, Anna Mielniczuk is an interdisciplinary artist who describes her practice as an ongoing exploration of mystery, hope, humor, and beauty. Within her body of work she captures a whimsical and poetic spirit that aims to uplift, provoke thought, and instill wonder in the viewer. She also creates work under the guise of Ania Greta Studio.
Anna Mielniczuk studied at City Colleges of Chicago and earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 2019. She has exhibited her work at the Chicago Public Library, as well as in numerous galleries and educational institutions in Chicago, Louisiana, Michigan, and multiple cities in Italy. Her paintings and writing have been published in several publications including: Werks Magazine: Chicago Artist Survey (2021); And Then- Stories About What Happens Next, by Agitator Gallery (2020); and Fragments by Thalia Magazine (2019). She is a current vendor at Buddy-an artist shop and project by Public Media Institute as well as Good Things Vending located inside the Chicago Cultural Center. She has worked as a designer and illustrator for 826CHI as well the Ukrainian Art Bridge Fellowship at the John David Mooney Foundation. In 2018, she participated in IVYnode’s transdisciplinary residency, ‘A Call to Origins’, in collaboration with Stazione dell’Arte and BecomeBecome, culminating in an artist talk at the The Stazione dell’ Arte Contemporary Art Museum in Ulassai and an exhibit in Nurri. Her work has also been featured on contemporary digital galleries such as Still Here, Still Life; Primer Contemporary; The Idea Foundation; and The Hopper Prize.
Inspired by the mischievous and playful nature of Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller, The Adventures of Lady Starudust is a mini comic series.
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Life in the Stone Age by Andrew Vickers
@andrew_the_rose_artist
I am a Chicago based artist and have been so for the past five years. I was born and raised on the lower eastern shore of Maryland. My interest in the arts first developed when I left high school. Most of my community college career I was part of the local art club where I developed my interest in the arts. What influenced my art over time was my traveling experience with my father who worked for the fish and wildlife service. Seeing so much of the United States and experiencing the beauty of the land made me as an artist value the small bit of nature that often goes unnoticed.
I became more involved in the arts when I reached my four year college of Towson University. I studied a wide range of art and became active with the Towson art department. I also became active with the marketing department and helped design promotional material. I even had a chance to do a special exchange program with Texas State College, which allowed me to be featured in a few art shows around the Austin Texas area. I began to be featured and active with the Baltimore art scene from being in art shows in the area to making chalk art wherever I could. After college I relocated to the Chicago area.
In Chicago I am an active member of the AnySquared art group. We have done many collaborative art projects along with setting up art shows in Logan Square. I have often been a competitor for the Chicago Art Battle, which is a competition where artists are timed to see who can make art in a short amount of time. I am active around the city in making chalk art and have begun to set up chalk art events where artists come to make art together. I am often active in featuring my work in shows around the city of Chicago. Some galleries I am often a regular at are Agitator gallery, Project Logan and Pilsen Art House. I currently teach at Pathways in Education. I run the art club in the Avondale area and I run art projects with the school.
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Age Before Beauty by Camille Severino
camillejseverino.com
Camille Severino is a lifelong artist who paid the bills bartending. Her disposition and curmudgeonly ways have been shaped by the people she's waited on over the years. Her first comic strip, 3 feet of Wood, was created to let go of the frustrations that come with any customer service situation. Camille is also the creator of Age Before Beauty, a tale of two females who become great friends even though one is an alien and the other a zombie. Their mutual love for devouring human flesh is where their story begins.
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How to Make French Toast | Owl in the City by Jacqueline Wolk
discountinferno.wordpress.com | @jacqwolk
I am a garden variety neurotic and artsy-craftsy type; I'm also an aging hipster, frugalista and navel-gazer. I draw comics, among other things. When not drawing, writing or making fiber art -- that's the fancy term for "knitting"-- I advocate for chumps and for change. she/her
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Don't Touch by Genae Grabowski
genaegrabowski.weebly.com | @xwitchyxdeerx | @WitchyDeer on Twitter
Genae Grabowski is a mixed media designer who specializes in illustration and layout design. Comic making is one of many ways she can use both techniques at the same time. Don't Touch is about Haphephobia (the fear of being touched), and includes visual representation of that fear coming to life in a panic episode.
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The L by Kaylee Hamm
keivari.com | @keivari
I, Kaylee Hamm, am a concept artist and illustrator based in the southside of Chicago. "The L" reflects my thoughts from my final semester of college. It was about two weeks until graduation when time just stopped and I felt like I wasn't going anywhere.
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Do Not Shake by Nathan Becka
@cheapamericandomestic
Cheap American Domestic is an impossible company that exists in an alternative reality made up only of its own endless and inescapable offices, factory floors, parking lots, warehouses, and other workshops. It's always late afternoon and there's no one here but me. I've wandered all over and it seems like this place makes some bizarre products. I like to share them when I can.
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Uni The Donkey Unicorn by Edgar Reynoso
I grew up in Summit, Illinois. I am a web and graphic artist who created a thriller that continues from the pages of Agitator Comics Volume 2, July 2021. In part 2 of my Uni comic readers can witness Martín's consequence. After his night of cheating and neglecting his wife and kids. Uni puts Martín into a strange supernatural trauma, forever changing Martin's perspective and responsibilities.
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Millenium by Pascal Saint-Clair
pascalstudio.net | @pascalsaintclair | deviantart.com/pa5cal
Pascal Saint-Clair is a fantasy illustrator, comic book artist, graphic novel illustrator and sometimes writer. With a previous long existence in the video game industry, the present focus is on graphic design, illustration or sequential artwork. Primary influences are artists Hans Ruedi Giger, Geof Darrow and Enki Bilal. Most projects begin with traditional means and end digitally, though fully digital work is very common.
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Amariyo, asul y rrojo by Juan Pizzani Ochoa
Juan Pizzani Ochoa (Caracas, 1979) authored the art books Enclopedia Ilustrada del Arte (2002), Crayon Picture Books (2003), and Nuevo Abesedario Digital Version (2020). He published some of his poems in the compilation Voces Nuevas (2004, CELARG), the novella Visita guiada (2007) and autoethnographic texts like Autoetnografía en una agencia de marketing de Lima (2020) and Onaka Ga Peko Peko (2021). He has been making digital art since 2020.
I have worked in satirizing educational / school textbooks since the late 90s. Like "Enciclopedia ilustrada del arte" (2002), and "Nuevo Abesedario" (2020), "Amariyo, asul y rrojo" is a series of three collage-lo-fi art pieces remixing pedagogical bibliography for children to protest against the political/ideological indoctrination that has been going on in Venezuelan elementary schools during the Bolivarian regime.
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Mood Shoes by Olivia Arrow Dhamee
oliviarrow.com | @olivia.arrow.dhamee
I am an artist living in Chicago and I like taking a multidisciplinary approach to creating. Drawing is one of my favorite disciplines. These drawings were part of a larger group of drawings I did for a 100-day project exploring emotionalism. They were originally created for 14 mini-zines I made for each of the emotions listed in Mood Shoes.
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Build A Bike Out Of The Box I New Delhi Jitney Cab by Alex Wilson
@bikefreeek | arcaneobject.bandcamp.com
Alex Wilson is a Designer, Producer and Collaborator of art and audio works made in Chicago. He studied painting and printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on artists' books. He is co-founder and producer of Arcane Object, a project that collaborates with Chicago sound artists using cassette tape to make original audio art objects. Alex is the founder and Executive Director of West Town Bikes, a non profit community bike shop, located in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood, that offers youth programs, adult classes and community events. Alex is excited to be collaborating with Agitator to offer printed artists' books that elevates the content of contributing artists.
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A Day in a Nudist Spa Resort by flo pizzarello
flopizzarello.com | @flo_pizza
Flo Pizzarello (b 1986, Buenos Aires, Argentina) lives and works in Chicago, IL. She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2015, her BFA from the University of North Texas in 2013, and studied at the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte in Buenos Aires from 2006-2010.
As Ivan Brunetti writes in one of his comics panels, “Satire is the highest calling! I must ridicule the human race, so that we may laugh at life and thereby transcend the tragic acceptance of our fate, for only then may we evolve and improve!” A sense of satire and humor is central to my work, which ranges from paintings, to animation, to comics and illustration. The everyday world becomes cartoonish depictions and notions of the grotesque, the absurd, the silly in general, are all emphasized and celebrated.
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Lottie Thora | Gavino Spellbound | Zoe & Rory by Ryan Zorro
@rory.redfox | @davriann (cowriter)
I'm a small artist and writer from Chicago, and Garden of Eden is an illustrated novel I'm working on with a friend. Bits of the story line are told through these highly illustrated panels.
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The Art of a Flawed System: Underrepresented Criminal Justice Issues Through the Creative Lens of Cartooning by Anissa Figaro
For the past 4 years, I have studied varying aspects of the criminal justice system, with each class exposing me to more reasons as to why the system is so fundamentally flawed. The only caveat to this is that, I know and most people don’t. Society does a good job of deeming certain criminal justice issues more important than others and as a result, we are left with a broken understanding of what these problems are, who is affected by them, thus there is a lack of conversation regarding a viable solution. That is what I wanted to tackle with this project, I wanted to share my knowledge and research into criminal justice issues I feel are deserving of more attention, in a fun and engaging way. Since my topic is underrepresented criminal justice issues and I certainly don’t have enough time to talk about everything, I narrowed my selection down to 6 topics broken up into 3 categories. The ␣first chunk of issues deal with Policing; specifically racial disparities in traffic stops and the lack of mental health training in policing, then we go to Courts and we have the problematic cash bail system and Harsh juvenile sentencing, with the last section being corrections whose topic includes Maternal Care in Prisons and the negative effects of solitary confinement on an inmate’s mental health.The ultimate goal I had for this project is to answer the question: Can Opinion based Art be effectively used to interpret the scholarship around underrepresented criminal justice issues in order to raise public awareness and understanding?
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Untitled by Carlos Ayala
Carlos Josúe Ayala is an American artist born in 1978 in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. He grew up on the northside of Chicago, where he graduated high school in 1997. After being incarcerated he gained the knowledge of different mediums to become a self-taught artist. While incarcerated Ayala has achieved his paralegal certificate and has become a painter, print-maker, and sketch artist. His art expresses a wide range of themes from race and violence to representing positive outlooks on life.
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Untitled by Arkee Chaney
Arkee Chaney spent 34 consecutive years in prison. Arkee now spends his time pursuing his lifelong dream of making a living as an artist - and having his own art studio.
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The Big Stupid Pile of Love That No One Wants by Gretchen Hasse
gretchenhasse.com | freaksprogress.com | @gbhasse
Gretchen is a Chicago-based storyteller working in comics, video, animation, murals, and installation. She co-founded Agitator Artists’ Co-operative in 2017, and since then curation has also been a crucial part of her practice.
Gretchen’s documentary videos for social justice campaigns have educated policy makers, informed the general public, and inspired new activists. Her narrative videos have screened nationally and internationally. She publishes her ongoing graphic novel, Freaks' Progress, in monthly installments online and in print through Activator magazine out of Springfield, Illinois. In 2021, she published the first two volumes of Agitator Comics!, an open-theme compilation.
Gretchen received her MFA in Film, Video and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the summer of 2022 she completed a two month residency at Buinho Fab Lab in Messejana, Portugal, where she focused on fabrication and robotics. She is the recipient of a 2021 Make A Wave nomination-based grant from 3Arts in Chicago; a 2022 VIDA: Women in Literary Arts Fellowship for Writing Residency at Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee; and a 2022 Esteemed Artist Grant from the City of Chicago. She teaches drawing and writing at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.
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Bus Stop by Michael Abcede
I am a visual artist aiming to depict the mysteries of human living with a playful and satirical eye. I choose not to restrict myself to any one style or format or medium, but rather take the resources at hand and make objects that strike me at that moment. I have a varied background of living in Asia, Canada, and the United States. I am well versed in graphite, pen and ink, acrylic painting as well as digital visualization. Perhaps someday I will be a productive human being.
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