EXHIBIT: Towle to show 'Earhart' work

Like untold numbers of American boys and girls, I loved comic books when I was a child. I also loved to draw, and one of my favorite scenarios of my

adult future involved being a comic-book artist -- a fantasy no doubt common among children of the 20th century.

Ben Towle (pronounced like toll) conjured that same fantasy during his childhood, but he has distinguished himself by going on to make a career drawing comics. In the seven years since he moved to Winston-Salem, Towle has developed a growing reputation, in part through his two comic books from SLG Publishing--a collection of sequentially illustrated folk tales titled Farewell, Georgia, and a historical-fiction graphic novel Midnight Sun.

Towle's most recently completed project is a graphic novel about the pioneering woman aviator Amelia Earhart, scheduled for publication in February 2010 by Disney/Hyperion Books. Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean is an 80-page paperback whose sequential drawings were made by Towle, while the story was written by novelist Sarah Stewart Taylor. Aimed at a young-adult audience, it's likely to attract somewhat broader attention in the graphic-novel field, which is evidently flourishing these days.

Viewers of all ages with more than a passing interest in graphic arts are likely to be engaged by the exhibition of Towle's original drawings from the forthcoming book, which opened this month at two venues in the Downtown Arts District. The exhibition "Amelia Earhart: Drawing from History" remains on view through Oct. 19 at the DADA Center for the Arts and in the Artists on Liberty building across the street.

The artist

Towle's first published comics appeared in the newspapers of elementary schools he attended. At Davidson College he majored in philosophy but also took a few art classes, and he kept drawing comics. After graduating from Davidson in 1992 he created a series of full-page comic strips for an alternative-weekly newspaper in Charlotte, based on his own concurrent experiences as the bass guitarist in a traveling rock band.

Towle eventually went back to school, enrolling in the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he earned a master's degree in cartooning in 2002. Around that time, he said, he and his wife Katherine came up with a "short list" of cities they liked, including Winston-Salem. "I knew Winston from my days as a musician, when we used to play here occasionally, and I liked the city," he said. "Katherine knew the town a bit because her college roommate and best friend is a Winston native."

They submitted applications to potential employers in their short-listed cities, and the first response either of them got was his teaching offer from the western branch of the North Carolina Governor's School, headquartered at Salem College. They moved here in late 2002, and Towle worked an art instructor at the school in the summers of 2003 and 2004. His classes encompassed comics and related subjects, including trading cards and mail art.

Towle has spent much of the last five years teaching cartooning and comics classes at schools, libraries and workshops in Winston-Salem and elsewhere. In conjunction with his teaching, he co-founded the National Association of Comics Art Educators, an online clearing-house of free comics-related teaching materials for classroom use. Towle's increasing prominence in his field is reflected in his selection as a juror for the 2008 Will Eisner Awards, the comics industry's most prestigious awards.

The book and show

Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean tells the story of key episodes in Earhart's flying career from the vantage point of Grace Goodland, whom the reader meets as an aspiring teenage journalist growing up in Trepassey, Newfoundland, the fishing village from which Earhart made her historic 1928 flight to Wales. The story of the problems Earhart faced in preparing for the flight is anchored by the story of Grace's determined efforts to cover the feat for the single-sheet newspaper she singlehandedly publishes -- her village's only news outlet. In the book's final section the story flashes forward to 1937 and Earhart's disappearance while attempting to fly around the world.

For the exhibition, Towle's original bristol-board drawings for the book are mounted unframed on the walls in the order in which they're published. Seventy percent larger than the individual book pages, the drawings reveal signs of Towle's hand that aren't discernible in their printed counterparts, including traces of brushwork and some of the structural under-drawing in pencil.

The show begins inside the entrance to the DADA Center, where a pre-publication copy of the book is displayed on a central pedestal. The first panels are sequentially arrayed along the south wall, on the left as you enter, beginning downstairs and continuing upstairs, where viewers can follow the story by moving clockwise through the space. A few ancillary panels that contain drawings edited from the final version of the book (including a two-page bird's-eye view of late-1920s Los Angeles, drawn for a flashback scene) are displayed downstairs on the DADA Center's north wall. The drawings for the book's final pages are in the storefront display of the Artists on Liberty building, directly across the street. The drawings are augmented by Towle's informative printed statement about the exhibition and the collaborative effort that went into into its creation.

Towle's command of his medium is impressive, and some of his drawings here stand out in particular, including several relatively minimal two-page spreads dominated by vast expanses of ocean water and cloud-dappled sky that render humanity diminutive and even the most heroic human endeavors seemingly insignificant.

Ben Towle's exhibition "Amelia Earhart: Drawing from History" is on view through Oct. 19 at the DADA Center for the Arts, 526 N. Liberty St., and the Artists on Liberty building, 521 N. Liberty St. The show will be open for the Downtown Arts District Gallery Hop 7-9 p.m. Friday, and is otherwise open by appointment. For an appointment or more information, call Jack Horwitz at 503-888-5930.