Ellen Forney's Blog

Please visit my Ellen Forney – Cartoonist Facebook page for news, sketches, and fascinating insights!

I was the representative freelancer on a Career Panel for the Cornish Design seniors yesterday. Of course, all of us panelists insisted that a clear, up-to-date website is beyond essential. (Me, thinking, wincing: “Note to self: update website already.”) In the meantime, please enjoy the vintage animated gif on my home page, and you can check out these links for my more recent work:

My professional Facebook page has news, links, and upcoming events. Photos and information about my public art for the Sound Transit Capitol Hill Light Rail Station – one of my biggest professional projects to date – are here, and here’s an article about it by the art editor at the Stranger, plus a few pics below.

“Crossed Pinkies,” one of my two murals at the Capitol Hill light rail station, is 10′ high and 40′ wide. Find this at Broadway & John, a major intersection smack in the middle of Capitol Hill. It’s at ground level, so you can see it from the sidewalk, or even just driving by.

“Walking  Fingers” is 20′ high and 28′ wide. We’re setting up the lights next week, which should be the last step (except for its ultimate role: interacting with the public). The station is scheduled to open at the end of March, 2016.

Today I am sick. I was also sick for the first week and a half of my residency at Civitella Ranieri this past summer, and I did a couple of comics about living in a castle and being sick, so here is one of them.

I laugh a lot as Sherman Alexie and Jess Walters interview me for their new podcast, A Tiny Sense of Accomplishment, posted today. The podcast is about works in progress, which I successfully avoid discussing.

Posted yesterday as the lead story in the Healthy Living section of the Huffington Post: What Bipolar Disorder Really Feels Like, a big excerpt from Marbles with my commentary,  which created a flurry of attention, which has been nice.

Hellooo from Baltimore, Maryland! Off to visit a teen summer class at Johns Hopkins, and wanted to have access to The Toilet Demon, the comic my pediatrician mother used to have laminated and hanging in her exam rooms so she could talk with parents about their children’s somewhat irrational fears. It’s in Monkey Food, The Complete Seven in ’75 Collection. Here:

Boggles my mind: I will be doing a six-week residency in June/July 2015 at Civitella Ranieri. Civitella Ranieri is a castle in Umbria, I was invited to go, there will be artists from all over the world. I have time to learn a little bit of Italian if I can manage to pry my eyeballs off the photos on their website. Ecco tutto..!

Conversations captured for your reading and listening pleasure! With…

…Cartoonists Megan Kelso and Raina Telgemeier, for The Comics Journal’s “Women and Autobio Comics Roundtable”, moderated by TCJ’s Kristy Valenti. Megan sticks up for fiction comics, Raina wrote bad poetry in her diary as a teen, and none of us care what terminology people use as long as they’re reading comics.

…Dan Savage, on the May 6 Savage Lovecast.  A bipolar woman called in to ask about dating etiquette – when do you tell the person that you’re crazy? – especially complicated since she’s a lot flirtier when she’s hypomanic – and Dan asked me to be “the Bipolar Emily Post.” Okay!

Just got back from a few talks on the east coast (hello, Spring!) The first at Rutgers University Camden was part of a big graphic novels art exhibit, “Compulsive Narratives: The Graphic Novel as Confession and Inspiration,” and the second was part of George Washington University’s “Composing Disability: Diagnosis, Interrupted” symposium, an interesting array of talks on topics including sex and disability, how the DSM is used and misused by lawyers, and the different ways personal stories can be told. I also wandered around on the Mall, and saw an fascinating exhibit about creation and destruction at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Art Museum. (Note to self: COME BACK TO DC AND VISIT THE MUSEUMS.)

Signing books at Rutgers U!

Emerald City Comicon used to be tiny, and now it is HUGE! I’ll be there on Friday (that would be TOMORROW!) on a 3:20 panel about comics and healthcare, and at 4:30 signing at Fantagraphics.