Words and Pictures

  Jan Eliot got her start in the 1970's drawing for alternative newspapers in and around Eugene, Oregon, her weekly comic strips Patience and Sarah and Sister City focusing on the then-novel (for the funny pages) concepts of single moms and blended families.  In the 1990's... Read more

  During the presidential campaign of 2008, Weather Underground co-founder and Distinguished Professor of Education Bill Ayers teamed up with cartoonist Ryan Alexander-Tanner to adapt Bill's groundbreaking education textbook into comics form.  The result is To Teach: The J... Read more

  Rapper, cartoonist, and social activist Keith Knight is a longtime fan of the Portland comics scene as well as community radio.  He was delighted to make a detour to the KBOO studios during his visit to the 2006 Stumptown Comics Festival, where his slideshow and stage pe... Read more

  For half a century, Bruce Bickford ran a one-man clay animation production house, constructing surreal miniature worlds in a cavernous Seattle studio and bringing them to life through the magic of stop-motion.  Bickford gained notoriety in the 1970's as the fertile mind ... Read more

  Shary Flenniken is one of the most influential figures in the history of underground comics.  Her comic Trots & Bonnie burst onto the pages of the National Lampoon in the early 1970's, and with its mix of radical politics, coy sexuality, absurd situations, approachable ... Read more

  Marjane Satrapi is the artist and writer behind such graphic memoirs as Persepolis, Embroideries, and Chicken with Plums, and is the co-director of the animated feature film version of Persepolis.  She grew up in Tehran during the revolution that toppled the Shah and led... Read more

  In this encore episode of Words and Pictures, we welcome fimmaker Gus Van Sant, whose directorial work has ranged from the avant-garde (Gerry and Last Days) to the transgressive (Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy) to Hollywood crowd-pleasers (Good Will Hunting and Finding ... Read more

  Charles Brownstein is the Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit advocacy organization that moved its headquarters from New York to Portland in 2016.  The CBLDF provides aid to artists and publishers facing legal threats such as censorship,... Read more

  Sibling filmmakers Sarah and Zachary Ray Sherman have spent years working in the local production scene, and are now premiering their debut feature film Thunderbolt In Mine Eye at the Portland International Film Festival.  Their work has brought together actors, crew mem... Read more

  Portland media artist Rose Bond is celebrated around the world for her animation installations — large-scale projections that intensify architecture, interpret history, and magnify music. Following up her acclaimed 2016 collaboration with the Oregon Symphony, accompanyi... Read more