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Colin Upton is a veteran of the Vancouver comics and Lowbrow art scenes and over a 25+ year career has created small press comics, comic books, comic strips, an award winning graphic novel (Diabetes Funnies), paintings, three dimensional art, political cartoons, web cartoons, cartoons for a play, cartoons for a movie, award winning illustration, historical reference for a Douglas Coupland War of 1812 sculpture and has contributed to a range of zines, magazines, mail art projects comic, freepapers and graphic novel anthologies. He has written essays about comics, lectured on comics and co-hosted two radio shows about comics where he helped interview some of the biggest names in comics including Art Spiegleman and Harvey Pekar. He has also been a drummer in a punk/garage band Puke Theatre and is a member of the pioneering noise art band "The Haters." Colin has an avid interest in history, he is a wargamer and miniaturist. He lives in Vancouver with his cat Lomu in an apartment crammed with books.
Commissioned by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Colin Upton’s limited edition, 24-page comic book Kicking at the Darkness (2016) depicts Canadian soldiers liberating the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. "When I look at Donald Trump, and the conspiracy theories I see on the Internet," said Upton, "it's very depressing but necessary that we have to tell these stories again and try to convince people that these things actually did happen." Research and writing for the VHEC’s accompanying Canada Responds to the Holocaust, 1944-1945 exhibit, under the direction of Prof. Richard Menkis and Ronnie Tessler, Upton afforded first-person perspectives from soldiers, survivors, aid workers and chaplains. It was touted as "the first major project of its kind, examining the encounters between Canadians and survivors of the Holocaust and the evidence of Nazi crimes at the end of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath."
[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Commissioned by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Colin Upton’s limited edition, 24-page comic book Kicking at the Darkness (2016) depicts Canadian soldiers liberating the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. "When I look at Donald Trump, and the conspiracy theories I see on the Internet," said Upton, "it's very depressing but necessary that we have to tell these stories again and try to convince people that these things actually did happen." Research and writing for the VHEC’s accompanying Canada Responds to the Holocaust, 1944-1945 exhibit, under the direction of Prof. Richard Menkis and Ronnie Tessler, Upton afforded first-person perspectives from soldiers, survivors, aid workers and chaplains. It was touted as "the first major project of its kind, examining the encounters between Canadians and survivors of the Holocaust and the evidence of Nazi crimes at the end of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath."
[BCBW 2021] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Articles: 1 Article for this author
Remembrance
Press Release (2012)
"Rememberance";
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nUjo9DVqI
This unusual collaboration is made possible by the internet. Colin Upton is a award winning cartoonist who has been self-publishing small photocopied mini-comics mostly about his everyday life in Vancouver on Canada's Pacific Coast for over 25 years. In far off England composer Jon Lee discovered Colin's mini-comics online and was inspired to create a series of jazz music soundtracks for some of the mini-comics. While Colin supplies a reading over the internet the rest is put together by John with some help from his more tech savvy friends. The first video of a planned series, "Remembrance"; (based on "Self-Indulgent Comics #33";) has been released. Work proceeds on further videos and there are plans to create a live performance bringing all the participants together, if funding can be raised. This is a unique combination of two of the youngest of art forms that emerged the America's in the 20th century, jazz and comics.
John Lee is a multi-instrumentalist, a composer and teacher who lives on the edge of an industrialized are of England called The Black Country. As a boy he was a naturally gifted musician, training classically on Piano Clarinet and Saxophone and a participant in award winning youth orchestras. He soon found that his abilities were best suited for musical forms like Jazz and World Music. After some forays into the world of popular music as a teenager, John now concentrates on projects that he believes are artistically valid with a particular interest in projects that involve multiple art forms. He composes music from Big Band swing to African folk music. He has specialized in world music forms studying Flamenco in Spain, Gypsy Jazz in France and Irish folk with the Irish community of the Midlands to name but a few. As a self taught Guitarist, Bassist and drummer his first batch of students are looking forward to their first year studying Jazz at conservatoire. He plays with various Jazz ensembles, Big Bands, World music groups and writes for them all. John uses the internet to connect with the artistic community. He is a Jazz musician, Teacher and devotee of The Arts marooned in an area almost totally devoid of Arts and strives to establish himself by producing work which is artistically significant.
