Named after Merle “Ting” Tingley, London Free Press’ editorial cartoonist from 1948 to 1986, Tingfest is an annual celebration curated by TAP Centre for Creativity that showcases the work of past, present and future comic and graphic artists from Southwestern Ontario.
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While this festival is an homage to Ting’s work and influence on generations of artists, Tingfest is a rare forum for emerging and established artists to present their work to the public through a gallery show that is complemented with free events and programs.
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This year the fest takes place from Tuesday, April 16th - Saturday, May 11th. Opening Reception will be Saturday, April 22nd and it will be one for the books. A list of events will be available soon. You won't want to miss the party!
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2023 ARTISTS
Watch for details about our Ting programs, kids station, and the Ting shop!
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Jacqueline Demendeev
Jacqueline Demendeev is an award-winning and collected artist working primarily in cartooning. She strives for her work to be a site of intersection for otherwise fragmented things: poetic forms, scientific concepts, daily life, and forgotten histories. Her practice has resulted in a body of short-form works in fiction, non fiction, and zine formats.
She is currently pursuing a long-form work tracing the history of the American spiritualist movement from its inception to its ongoing influence on contemporary culture, and she'd love for you to invite her to your next seance, please.
You can find her on instagram @badjacqueline, or at www.badjacqueline.ca
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Brenda Fuhrman
I am a visual artist focusing on drawing, painting and print. I currently live, primarily, in London, Ontario but divided my time between London and Montréal, Québec.
From 1975 to 1999 I lived in Sudbury, Ontario. During my time in Sudbury I contributed posters for the women’s movement, in general, and specifically for the Sudbury Women’s Centre and the Northern Lights Folk festival. I also had the privilege, during one miner’s strike, of drawing a comic book for the children of striking miners. The comic explained the history of and reasons why their parent’s were on strike. For a number of years, I produced editorial cartoons for Sudbury’s weekly newspaper, Northern Life.
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Since leaving Sudbury I have attended law school, at Queens University and Graduated in 1995. In the spring of 2012 I started art school and in 2019 I graduated with my Bachelor of Fine Arts- studio, from Western University.
Whether it is through drawing, printing or painting my works communicate my version of the world. I present community, home, and friends, everything that I experience around me. I find the everyday fascinating.
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Most recently I have been working with a group of women comic book artists, in London, and have experience the joy of working collectively in the wonderful art world of comics.
Sherry Garcia
(poster artist)
Born, raised and now returned to Ottawa during the mass reshuffling brought on by the pandemic . After following my heart to Toronto, I traded in the chaos of a bigger city for the chaos of being a new parent and moved to London, Ontario for 6 years.
It was during my time in London that I shifted from figurative work in acrylic to digital art, adjusting to the new work flow of being a stay at home parent. What started out as a pragmatic choice ended up reinvigorating my practice and helped me to carve out a new direction and a new more illustrative style.
Playing with colour, imagination and humour I turn the results of my illustrations into prints, greeting cards, tees, totes and autobiographical comics. After many years away from the easel I have now returned to incorporate elements from my digital work onto the canvas, excited to see where the next season of life takes me.
@okeydokeyvariety
Andrés Garzon
Andrés Garzon Espitia is a multidisciplinary queer Colombian-Canadian artist, based in Antler River, Treaty 6, London, Ontario. A new generation artist and first generation immigrant, the central parts of his practice – history, family, love and identity – inform his artwork and writing practices. Through drawing, painting, sculpture and installation, he naturally gravitates to self-portraiture, nature motifs, and bright colour palettes as avenues through which to tell stories of hurt, peace, love, and healing. Andres’ artwork and writings have been featured in CBC News, Femme Art Review, and Huron & Erie Regional Digest. He is a current resident artist at Good Sport Gallery & Studio. (Instagram: @studioandresgarzon, Website: andresgarzon.ca)
Mazie Lovie
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Mazie Lovie is a freelance illustrator and cartoonist who has lived in a number of places near London, Ontario and the GTA. Mazie is a two time art school graduate, who likes to work in a variety of mediums, though most visual art she makes is digital. She also dabbles in screen printing, paper craft, zines, designing products, and writing when she can. She creates a number of different products for her business; her art focuses on magical tales and silly ideas, while her comics are usually autobiographical in some way. Mazie has produced a few small comics on her own and through traditional publishing, but her debut graphic novel memoir, the Lucky Poor, will release later this year from Iron Circus Comics. Over the years, she has illustrated for a number of organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, the Nib, and Gamma Space. When she’s not creating, she can be found scrolling various social media websites under the name Amaziement.
Jason McLean
Brooklyn based Canadian artist, Jason McLean, creates autobiographical imagery, through scavenged objects, and memory mapping. Jason McLean’s diverse art practice includes sculpture, sound works, zines, book works, mixed-media installations, correspondence art, curatorial explorations, puppets, and performance, but he is probably best known for his diaristic mapping and surreal drawings. Inspirations fueling his daily observations are relationships with local and visited environments. His works are often described as mental maps, where samplings of his daily observations are mashed-up into antiheroic, yet poignant combinations. Grounded in family life as Husband and Father, McLean works by using humour to touch upon challenging subject matter, such as sadness, loss, displacement, and economic hardship.
Waleed Mohammad
Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Waleed Mohammad is an award winning cartoon illustrator and founder of The Iraqi Caricaturists Committee. First showcasing his creations at the early age of 17 years old, Waleed has since worked for the Iraqi Press, The Children’s Press, participated in many group shows throughout Iraq, Cuba, England, Cairo, Baghdad, Tunisia, Algeria, Romania, Turkey, China, Spain, Sweden, France, India, Syria (just to name a few). In 2005 he was honoured with the Best Six Cartoonists Globally award. To this day, Waleed continues to hold memberships with The Federation of Arab Journalists, The Syndicate (Association) of Iraqi Journalists, The International Organization of Journalists, The Syndicate of Iraqi Artists, and The Caricaturists Arab League. Waleed moved to Canada in 2013, and is currently very active in the London, Ontario, arts scene. You can follow Waleed's work via his Instagram, @waleed.cartoon
Sylvia Nickerson
Sylvia Nickerson is an artist, writer, and scholar who lives in Hamilton Ontario whose art has examined gender identity, social class and religion. Her graphic novel Creation won a Doug Wright Award and she received the Hamilton Arts Award for Visual Arts in 2018. As artist-in-residence at the Art Gallery of Hamilton from 2020-21, her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. She is currently working on a new graphic novel, Dark Mirrors, set in a speculative technological future. See more of her work at www.sylvianickerson.ca
Sammy Orlowski
Sammy Orlowski is an award-winning cartoonist currently based in London, Ontario. She works in ink, watercolour, collage, and more to express herself through comics, zines, and other odds and ends. Sammy has self-published over 30 zines, and an anthology of her zine work, Big Dumb Brain, was published by Brown & Dickson in 2022. Her work has been shown in Forest City Gallery, Support Gallery, Satellite Project Space, and Good Sport.
Sammy is interested in both the poignant and the (seemingly) pointless, drawn repeatedly to subjects from self-compassion and queer joy to early 2000s internet nostalgia and meme culture. Her wide-ranging artistic interests convene in a goal to capture, remix, and explode out the absurdities of life by pairing dark humour with expressive, colourful cartooning. (Instagram: @sammy.makes.things , Website: sammyorlowski.com
Jamie Q
Jamie Q is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work includes painting, drawing, publication, printmaking, multiples, sculpture, tattooing, fabric and garment design, quilting, and other textile art. They hold a BFA from the Alberta College of Art & Design (2002) and an MFA from Western University (2010). Their academic research focused on the politics and aesthetics of the do-it-yourself ethic, as well as the social potential of art objects and DIY distribution strategies. Their projects work through ideas around arts economies and creative labour, gender and queerness, craft and repurposed materials, and process-based play.
Jamie is a queer non-binary artist and a settler of Norwegian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Irish ancestry. They were born on Treaty 6 Territory, and currently live in Toronto within the Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. They have taught art classes at Western University, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Make Den Sewing Studio. As a union member of IATSE 873, they have worked as a textile artist in costuming on Star Trek: Discovery S3, Sneakerella, Clarice, and The Handmaid's Tale S5.
Jenna Rose Sands
Jenna Rose Sands is a Cree Anishinaabe artist who is turning her emotional exhaustion over the current state of Indigenous affairs into informative zines that educate and question wide spread prejudice regarding Indigenous people. Focussing each zine on the experiences and stories of Indigenous people who have endured a multitude of atrocities committed by the Canadian government, Jenna Rose is able to pair words with dynamic mixed media works for a final result that is both powerful and visually engaging. An ongoing series, Jenna Rose is trying to change language and ideas around Indigenous issues one zine at a time.
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Merle “Ting” Tingley
Ting was editorial cartoonist for the London Free Press for over 40 years (1947-1986). His illustrations attracted a loyal following, not only in the Free Press but across Canada in more than 60 daily and weekly publications. His famous cartoon mascot, Luke Worm, is a widely recognized icon in the Canadian comic scene.
Well-loved for his caricatures of local politicians and business owners, Tingley was also admired for his ability to capture not only the essence of everyday moments but the important issues that challenge a community in a thought provoking way. His work is a record of the political and social events of our region and as such have become an important archive of the history of our city and has won national and international awards.
Ting’s work continues to inspire generations of comic artists in Southwestern Ontario. It is always a pleasure to rediscover Merle’s clever wit and commentary in the selected work for this exhibition. We hope you enjoy rediscovering the comics of your youth; and if you are new to Merle’s work that you enjoy discovering his brilliance as an illustrator.
Eric Vedder
Eric Vedder’s career has spanned over twenty five years in the entertainment industry. From comic book artist, illustrator, animator, painter to concept artist, writer and art director, he’s had the honour of working on many high profile projects. By day, he's currently the Director of Concept at Digital Extremes, a triple A studio responsible for the smash hit game, WARFRAME. By night, he works alongside S. M. Carter and The Raid Studios on the epic sci-fi/fantasy world of Aardehn, a cinematic novel set to release in 2023.