5 minute read
The Art of Crafting Life Stories with Sarah Shaw
by Stephanie McGovern
As artists and creators, nothing is more abundant in source material than life itself. The nuances of our day-to-day routines, the quirks of our relationships and our memories can influence our practice and ignite a story to tell.
SVACE faculty member Sarah Shaw is no stranger to the world of visual storytelling.
In her course Graphic Memoir: Crafting Life Stories, Sarah encourages her students to traverse the stories of their lives through the lens of comics and illustration.
Get to know Sarah Shaw as a creative, educator and passionate storyteller:
Can you give me a bit of background on yourself?
I grew up in a relatively rural area in Maine where I spent large swaths of my childhood reading books, making art and daydreaming about all the places I could go. As an undergraduate, I studied art and design education, painting and art history at Pratt Institute, and, upon graduating in 2010, I began a career in international teaching. For a decade, I taught English in South Korea. I joined the Peace Corps in Colombia and taught middle and high school art at an international school in Nepal. In my free time, I would draw, paint, sculpt and write creative nonfiction. Inevitably, I found my way into comics.
In 2018, I joined SVA’s MFA Visual Narrative program with the intention to strengthen my visual storytelling skills and eventually teach at the college level. The low-residency model allowed me to study while teaching abroad in Kathmandu but stay in New York for the summer intensives.
Can you please describe your course Graphic Memoir: Crafting Life Stories?
Graphic Memoir: Crafting Life Stories is a 10-week course for adults to explore their life experiences through text and image. Each week, students analyze excerpts from a range of diverse graphic memoirs and develop skills to connect with their audiences on an emotional level. For the first five weeks, students advance their skills in script writing and visual production through short, one-page exercises. These assignments prepare them to craft a longer autobiographical comic that they workshop weekly in small groups.
Do you have a teaching ethos?
First of all, I believe in cultivating a class community. Although this course allows students to begin sharing their stories from day one, it’s often hard to connect with others over Zoom. I have students share their homework on discussion boards, where they are encouraged to leave comments for one another. Throughout the second half of the course, when students know each other better, I make a point to split students into small groups where they can workshop their stories indepth with each other.
I love how comics is such a democratic medium—all you need is a pencil and a piece of paper to start. I believe in showing examples from a diverse range of creators, mostly focusing on contemporary comics and visual essays. I push my students to develop stories that feature multidimensional characters and emotion-driven storytelling, and I encourage them to experiment and develop their own visual style and narrative voice.
What do you hope to impart to students who take your course?
Upon completing this course, I hope that students develop a broader understanding of the comics medium and learn some new technical skills, but more importantly, I hope they feel empowered to continue telling their stories.
How has your experience teaching for Continuing Education been?
I have been teaching this course, as well as Comics Journalism, for three years now, and each class continually exceeds my expectations. The students have such a diverse range of skills to share; they are illustrators, designers, journalists, photographers, psychologists, computer programmers, and more. I leave each class with more knowledge than when I started. I spend hours each week reviewing student work and giving written feedback, but the quality of their work makes it worth my time.
The online structure enables those who live as far away as San Francisco, London and Beijing to join, and Instagram allows us to keep in touch. I have met some students in person at indie comics events, and I am even tabling with one of my previous students at Small Press Expo this year! The students in this course are always kind and open-minded, and they support each other as they share their personal stories. After my first semester teaching, one of my students made a “yearbook” page where everyone wrote or drew something and it almost made me cry. I am so privileged to interact with their stories and to be part of this community.
For the expanded story on Sarah Shaw, please visit https://sva.edu/blog/continuing-education.
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