The Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent:
A Ten Year Study
An Exhibition by Caitlin Cass
Western New York Book Arts Center
An opening reception to celebrate the exhibition will be held Friday, October 4th from 5-9pm at 468 Washington St. in downtown Buffalo. This event is free and open to the public.
This show collects the first ten years of Caitlin’s Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent, a bimonthly comic periodical. 72 self-published comics will be displayed along with original art and handwritten analysis.
“I started the Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent in 2009. I had studied the Western Canon, and now I intended to make my own canon. I cut this brazen notion with satire to defend myself. It wasn’t just me, I was the Great Moments in Western Civilization Cooperative and as such I could do whatever the hell I wanted to. What I wanted to do was to make a history that prioritized failure instead of victory. My histories studied the striving and the anticlimactic fizzling out instead of the path of progress. I found that storytelling allowed me to explore ideas without trying too hard to understand them in logical sentences. I hoped that once I’d assembled enough of these stories they would begin to mean more in the in-betweens. The glory of studying a canon often lies in these in-betweens; in the connections we draw and in the synchronicities. I wanted to see if this could work on a smaller scale. I figured some day, I could step back and study my own work, in the way others studied classic texts. This show, is that some day. It will collect over seventy comics with hand-written wall analysis. I will analyze my own canon in all of it’s messy, brazen, eagerness,” says Cass.
Caitlin Cass examines the horror and wonder of being through gag cartoons, history comics, comics about the not-so-distant-future, tall-tale-history exhibits and the occasional diorama. Since 2009 she has drawn and published a bimonthly comic periodical under the moniker The Great Moments in Western Civilization Postal Constituent. Her cartoons and comics have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Lily and The Nib. Caitlin was a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction. She lives and works in Buffalo, NY and teaches Art at Buffalo Seminary.
Cass will also host an Artist Talk and Round Table Discussion at Book Arts on October 5. For more information about the workshop and exhibition, please visit https://wnybookarts.org/
The Western New York Book Arts Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of printing and book-related arts through education, creation, and exhibition for a broad and diverse community. Book Arts is located at 468 Washington Street, Buffalo, NY 14203. For more info visit www.wnybookarts.org, email info@wnybookarts.org, or call 716-348-1430.
