Words and Pictures

  In this extended conversation with animator Gail Noonan, S.W. Conser asks about the early artistic adventures with the Winnipeg Film Group that helped spark Gail's four-decade-long career in the world of Canadian independent film and led to her recent retrospective at Po... Read more

  Tom Gauld is best known to Americans for his droll and iconic cartoons in The New Yorker and The Guardian where literature and mythology get mashed up with pop culture.  But he's also the author of such imaginative graphic novels as Goliath, Hunter and Painter, and The G... Read more

  Words and Pictures kicks off its fifteenth season on the air at the Wordstock Literary Festival, where we're joined by graphic novelist Gabrielle Bell.  Best known for her diary comics Lucky and The Voyeurs, Gabrielle has also teamed up with filmmaker Michel Gondry to cr... Read more

  From its humble beginnings as Will Vinton Studios in the 1970's, Portland's Laika Entertainment has become one of the top studios in the world for stop-motion animation, producing the feature films Coraline, Paranorman, The Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings.  Now,... Read more

  In this expanded version of our visit to the Portland Art Museum, we take a more leisurely look at the exhibition Animating Life: The Art, Science, and Wonder of Laika. Join host S.W. Conser, and find out about the creative process behind the screen from Laika creatives... Read more

  In this encore episode, we're joined by Kathy Zielinski, the pioneering artist and filmmaker who's been called "The Queen of Animated Villains" for helping bring to life such characters as Ursula the Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid and Jafar in Aladdin. Wbile visiting P... Read more

  North of Blue is animator Joanna Priestley's first feature film, a deep dive into abstract imagery inspired by her winter sojourn in the Yukon at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture.  Joanna is joined in the studio by frequent collaborator Jamie Haggerty, who creat... Read more

  Summertime is not traditionally the season for animation festivals, but two grassroots events are setting out to buck the trend. We're joined by Overlapping Action Mini-Festival curator Ben Chapin, who is bringing his bi-coastal traveling show to the Po'Boy Art Space in ... Read more

  Digital technology is making animation and comics more immersive, and this month's guests are working at the forefront of the movement. Jeremy Rotsztain is creating an audio-visual experience to take place in Portland's Academy Theater.  Inspired by Frederik Kiesler's hi... Read more

  The National Cartoonists Society has been honoring cartoonists, animators and comics artists since 1946, and has finally brought their Reuben Awards event to Portland.  Author and "comics chronicler" R.C. Harvey joins us to talk about the history and the changes within t... Read more