What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1474220
JULY 24-30, 2022 WHAT'S UP! 9 After more than a decade of work and funded by a month-long Kickstarter campaign in 2021, "What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel," Fitzgibbon's 240-page, fully painted nonfiction graphic novel, will debut July 29 at a Launch Party from 5 to 8 p.m. in the McCoy Gallery at the Community Creative Center in Fayetteville. Part of "The Great Beyond: Comic Art in the Ozarks," the exhibition, open through Aug. 6, also features Chad Maupin, J.L. Morris, John Lucas and Gustav Carlson. Books will be for sale at the meet-and-greet or can be ordered at seanfitzgibbonart.com. Fitzgibbon's fascination for the Crescent Hotel goes clear back to family visits to Eureka Springs when he was a kid, he says. "I was always intrigued by its charming Queen Anne dwellings perched on limestone bluffs, steep elevations and serpentine roads that don't intersect. However, the most compelling and mysterious feature to me has always been the old Crescent Hotel with its bizarre, dark and varied history. Years later, I stayed at the hotel and went on the ghost tour. What lingered with me was the story of the fraudulent medical practitioner that transformed the hotel into an abnormal hospital. Elements of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and Stephen King's 'The Shining' left me morbidly intrigued. Who was he and how could something like this have happened? This is my best interpretation of this peculiar person, place and time." Having written and illustrated "DomestiCATed: Paths Once Crossed," "a graphic novel made up of three dark short stories that follow a black cat as it ventures into the nefarious underbelly of domestic human existence," and a short story for Cemetery Dance Magazine's Grave Tales call "Ubiquity of Strangers," Fitzgibbon didn't hesitate to choose the graphic novel format to tell the Crescent Hotel's story. "I'm a visual person, and I think in terms of images. In college, I studied both studio art and graphic design, and I've always had a love for both literature and film. I think graphic novels are a wonderful way to communicate stories utilizing techniques derived from all the above. "I've also gained a lot from watching documentary films. Documentary filmmaking has evolved over the years without clear set boundaries using a collage- like array of filmmaking techniques and media, and I like bringing that experimental, collage-like approach to my nonfiction graphic storytelling." Graphic novels, Fitzgibbon asserts, are for everybody. "Artists and writers from all disciplines, cultures and ages now see the medium as a way to tell stories of any genre and using virtually any method and bringing new and exciting work to the table." Memories of its days as a fraudulent cancer hospital linger at the Crescent Hotel in Sean Fitzgibbon's just released graphic novel, "What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel." (Courtesy Images/Copyright Sean Fitzgibbon) "When I was a kid, my family would visit Eureka Springs," says artist Sean Fitzgibbon. "I was always intrigued by its charming Queen Anne dwellings perched on limestone bluffs, steep elevations, and serpentine roads that don't intersect. However, the most compelling and mysterious feature to me has always been the old Crescent Hotel with its bizarre, dark and varied history." Sean Fitzgibbon created this rendering of himself at work on his just released graphic novel, "What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel."