| Chris
Ware was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1967. While attending the
University of Texas at Austin, he published a regular comic
strip in the student newspaper, which Art Spiegelman happened
upon and then subsequently gave the unknown cartoonist four
pages in RAW magazine. Ware moved to Chicago in the early 90s
and began publishing in the pages of the Chicago alternative
weekly New City and then until 2006, The Chicago Reader,
which has formed the bulk of material that he's been collecting
in his regular periodical, The ACME Novelty Library,
since 1994. Offering both serialized stories and short experiments
in comics form, a confusing collection of the same name was
issued in a large-format hardcover by Pantheon Books in 2005.
From both this strip and periodical emerged the graphic novel
Jimmy
Corrigan — the Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2000)
which received an American Book Award in 2000, the Guardian
First Book Award in 2001, and the obscure French comics award
"L'Alph Art" in 2003. Ware is also the author of The
Acme Novelty Datebook Volumes 1 and 2 (Drawn & Quarterly,
2003, 2007), Quimby
the Mouse (Fantagraphics, 2003), was the editor of the 13th
issue of McSweeney’s
(2005), and is the guest editor of Houghton-Mifflin's Best
American Comics 2007. He is a contributor to The New
Yorker, and was the cartoonist chosen to inaugurate the
New York Times Magazine’s “Funny Pages”
section in late 2005. He is currently at work on two long-form
graphic novels, Rusty Brown and Building Stories.
Chris Ware's work has
appeared in many national and international art exhibits, including,
inexplicably, the Whitney Biennial exhibit in 2002. He continues
to publish his strips as he finishes them in the pages of the
Virginia Quarterly Review. His ongoing Acme Novelty
Library series reaches its 18th issue in 2007. He was recently
awarded the Hoi Fellowship by the newly formed United States
Artists, a non-profit organization that makes direct grants
to working artists. Ware lives in Oak Park, Illinois with his
wife, Marnie, a high school science teacher, and their daughter,
Clara.
•••
“The most versatile
and innovative artist the medium has ever known.”
— Dave Eggers
“If any one writer
can turn around the declining course of the medium, it's Chris
Ware, who has gone further in creating a beautiful comic book
than any other artist.”
— Richard von
Busack
|
