Cartoonists Linda Barry, Ivan Brunetti, and Chris Ware spoke at the University of Wisconsin last week at a special event held in conjunction with Barry’s semester as Artist in Residence at the University.  Barry is teaching a semester-long course, bringing in guest artists for lectures and workshops, and hosting lectures open to the public at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the University’s Chazen Museum.

At this event, Barry and Ware introduced Brunetti (Brunetti and Ware are close friends, dining together once a week), who spoke on how he makes comics in a lecture titled "Seeing, Drawing, Writing, and Cooking through a Cartoonist’s Eye."  Brunetti wrote Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, which Barry described as one of her favorite books.

The room was packed for the Barry event last week, a great demonstration of how academia and the surrounding community can come together for serious discussion of comics as an art form.