Literary Arts Nominates PNCA Alumna for Graphic Literature Award
January 16, 2012
PNCA is pleased to announce that alumna Aidan Koch’s book The Whale was nominated for the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award. This new award, offered through Literary Arts and sponsored by PNCA, honors outstanding published work by Oregon cartoonists and graphic novelists. It was created in April 2011 amid a week that included a visit to Portland by award-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman, author of Maus.
The creation of this award and Koch’s nomination speaks to the increasingly popular Illustration program at PNCA that emphasizes a strong interdependence between timeless technical mastery and contemporary marketplace savvy.
Look at a preview of The Whale on the Arthur Magazine Archive.
Koch’s The Whale has received much critical press. Liza Darwin of Nylon Magazine writes “In her debut graphic novel The Whale, 22-year-old artist Aidan Koch manages to conjure up some major emotions with barely any words. Instead, her drawings take center stage.” Matt Seneca of Death to the Universe called it Comic of the Year: “My favorite comic of the year is stripped down to the bones. As a package, not a piece of art or a story but a thing, it’s like a challenge.”
View a list of the other awards and nominees. Read more about the creation of this award here.