Time Stolen from James

Attack of the Pom Pom Zombies brings zany 1950′s b-movies to life on stage, with some contemporary twists. C’mon out and support Drama @ Lavilla!!

Lavilla 8th graders take MIAMI! Highlights from our trip with a focus on our walking tour of Wynwood, where students of Greene tried their hand at sticker bombing! Check back with more images from this year’s 8th Grade Visual Art Showcase and ART ON!

Kaitlyn Griffin, 9th grade. Untitled as of yet. India ink and watercolor on 11x17 inch bristol. 

The Lavilla Visual Art Department Takes Miami! We had a visually stunning and memory-making trip to Miami last week, and these are just a few of the colorful moments from a trip that took us to the University of Miami, The Lowe Museum, Wynwood Art & Design District, The Perez Art Museum, South Beach and the Coconut Grove Art Festival! Huzzah!

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS go to my 8th grade comics students for receiving awards in this years’ National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Northeast Florida Regional competition! Altogether students from the after school program took home 3 Gold Keys for their comics and political cartoons! These works will go on to be judged for the National show in NYC this spring! HOO-RAH! So proud of Katelyn, Alli, Larry, Steven and Lily!

MIAMI HERE WE COME! It’s getting close to the time of year when Lavilla takes Miami! Bring your cameras, Lavilla!

2015 was a BIG year for Comic Book Studies at Lavilla. It literally went on for the ENTIRE year, with after-school comics instruction continuing through he spring. In May, we published our second all-student comics anthology “Cities of the Future” (see posts below) featuring work by both college and middle-school comics creators. We also got an opportunity to hang out with acclaimed Japanese game artist Mitsuhiro Arita, who demonstrated his skills for us in grand fashion. The year climaxed in June with one of our 7th-graders traveling to NYC to accept a National Scholastic Art and Writing Award for her comic submission. This excitement led into an all-summer-long Comics Camp where students beat the heat by creating their own comics ‘zines. In addition, I was asked to do a city-wide literacy program for the Jacksonville Public Library system (see poster above) promoting reading amongst under-resourced populations thru (what else?) COMICS! In October, Lavilla 8th graders began creating their submissions for the 2016 NSAWAs and we even had one student submit work for the Herb Bloc political cartooning prize. Thank you to everyone who has helped us out, including Mia Clarke- teen librarian superstar at JPL, Mitsuhiro Arita, everyone at NSAWA, and everyone at Lavilla who helped make our study of the invisible art possible. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

KAIROS Volume 2: Cities of the Future is GO! Former students who are featured in this volume, please come see me this Saturday May 2nd at the Beaches Library from 11-4 to claim your copies! Everyone else can purchase a copy from me at my table. HUZZZZAH!!!

Cities of the Future is COMING in 2015! This anthology of student comics from Northeast Florida focuses on stories of possible future worlds, from the far-out to the close-to-home. This is the second volume of KAIROS, a student journal of sequential art by creators ranging from middle-school to college. For more info, email [email protected].

Some pages in progress by 7th grade comics students at Lavilla School of the Arts! Onward!

'Hero' written by Al Letson, illustrated by James Greene, 2015.

"Teaching Art: A Brief Primer (Part 1)" written by Nestor Armando Gil, art by James Greene. A fun, ever-evoloving metaphorical manual about preparing the student brain for artistic growth. Step one: get all the cliched, hackneyed, lazy crap out of their brains. If only it were this easy.

Stuff's happening

Teaching Comics Camp gives me opportunities to reflect on the state of kids' knowledge of pop culture history. And it ain't good. So teach the children well.

This summer I taught comics-making at my school's arts day camp. I worked with a rotating crew of 11-14 year olds each week and focused on good storytelling in the medium. While the students made their comics, I worked on my own as a demonstration of how to thumbnail, pencil, hand-letter, ink and digitally color. Here is the first in my series of Comic Book Camp Confessions! Huzzah!

James Greene discusses teaching comics and other stuff on Jacksonville's premier comics podcast- The Short Box! Hosted by Badr Milligan and Cesar Cordero and featuring special guest Adam Wollet- enjoy Episode 51- "Summer School with Professor X"

Comics class @ MOCA Jacksonville rolls on! Inks due next week but from the looks of it they'll have no problems! Go UNF Ospreys! COMIX! Hoo- rah!