Tara Seibel

Tara Seibel
Born Tara Murphy
(1973-02-04) February 4, 1973
Cleveland, Ohio
Nationality American
Area(s) Artist, cartoonist, illustrator, designer
Notable works
 adaptation of "The Great Gatsby" Graphic Canon, Seven Stories Press
www.taraseibel.blogspot.com

Tara Seibel (born February 4, 1973) is an American cartoonist, graphic designer and illustrator from Cleveland. Her work has been published in Chicago Newcity, Funny Times, The Austin Chronicle, Cleveland Scene, Heeb Magazine, SMITH Magazine, Mineshaft Magazine, Juxtapoz, Jewish Review of Books, Cleveland Free Times, USA Today, US Catholic, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Paris Review.

Early life

Tara Seibel was born Tara Murphy in Cleveland, Ohio, to Lauren Murphy (née Gieseler) and Robert Murphy. Seibel grew up in the town of Wickliffe, Ohio, an industrial east-side suburb of Cleveland. She attended Wickliffe High School and won second place in a national baton twirling competition held in Disney World, She earned three varsity letters in track and field for the high jump. Her mother is a homemaker and her father is a self-made businessman and local political talk show host. Her grandfather Richard Giesleler was a foreman for Cleveland Twist Drill, and met his wife (Dorothea) who also worked at the Cleveland Twist Drill Company. Her grandfather (John "Buck" Buchan) was a local musician who played with Cleveland's polka king Frankie Yankovic and comedian-musician Mickey Katz. She won the school poster contest at Lincoln Elementary School, when she created a Valentine's Day theme by using the slogan from a 1982 mouthwash commercial, "kiss me I've got the signal".

Seibel is the oldest of three siblings, Lauren Murphy-Holder a psychologist and Robert Murphy Jr. a business owner. Her sister also is an Edinboro University of Pennsylvania graduate, her brother graduated from Baldwin Wallace College. She learned to draw from her grandmother, Dorothea (née Newman) Gieseler, who lived down the street, drawing pictures and creating paper dolls in her kitchen. Her first illustration was done at the age of eight, drawn in the attic of her grandparents' house. It was a caricature of the double comedy act Laurel and Hardy and still today, she draws comedians, poets, musicians, actors and artists.

Career

Seibel earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree after majoring in Applied Media Arts at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where she studied drawing, painting, documentary film, illustration, animation, journalism, photography and graphic design. Her first printed piece was a poster design for the Edinboro University Alternative Film Festival. She completed this accredited project during her internship at Murphy Design on East 40th Street in Cleveland.

After completing her internship, Seibel began her professional artistic career in Chicago illustrating covers for restaurant menus and food packaging. Eventually she moved back home to Cleveland. She was hired as a line designer and illustrator for American Greetings where she designed and illustrated gift wrapping and greeting cards. After leaving American Greetings she became a freelance editorial cartoonist. Over a span of four years, she created editorial cartoons for US Catholic Magazine, various newsletters, Cleveland Scene and illustrated a cover of the Cleveland Free Times. This led her to a collaboration with the late Cleveland-based cartoonist Harvey Pekar, the author of American Splendor.[1]

After headlining the Pekar Project for SMITH Magazine, Seibel's work was discovered by editor Russ Kick. Kick is the editor of a three-volume, 1500-page anthology set titled The Graphic Canon which features the world's great literature interpreted by over 120 artists and illustrators including R. Crumb, Maxon Crumb, Will Eisner, Molly Crabapple, Sharon Rudahl, Dame Darcy, S. Clay Wilson, Gris Grimly, Roberta Gregory and Kim Deitch.[2] For the Graphic Canon Volume One, Seibel contributed adaptations of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. For Volume Two, Seibel adapted, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and a series of graphic biographies of Jack Kerouac, Diane di Prima, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams". She is currently working on the graphic adaptation of Oscar Wilde's, The Nightingale and the Rose."

Seibel is also the curator and gallery owner of Tara Seibel Art Gallery in Cleveland's Historic Little Italy in University Circle where she exhibits her sunset paintings and work of other local artists.

Personal life

Seibel resides with her family in the Cleveland suburb of Pepper Pike. Her husband Aaron is an optical engineer, who graduated from Marquette University. The Seibels have three children: Lauren, Patrick and Oscar. Tara taught watercolor workshops at Ursuline College, a small, Roman Catholic liberal arts women's college in Pepper Pike; she currently teaches "How to create your own greeting card line" for adult education classes at the Pepper Pike Learning Center.[3][4][5]

Selected bibliography

Solo editorial cartoons and comic strips

Collaborative comix and cartoons, illustrations and comic strips

Self-published comix

Illustration and comics for anthology projects

References

  1. ↑ Alex Dueben (21 January 2010). "Seibel illustrates Harvey Pekar". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved 9 December 2015.
  2. ↑ Annie Weatherwax (30 November 2012). "Graphic Lit, The Graphic Canon". New York Times. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
  3. ↑ Carolyn Kellogg (July 11, 2009). "Celebrating humanity, the surprise Impac Dublin winner and more literary news". Los Angeles Times. 'Tara Seibel's "The Vestibule" is the 29th in the series."
  4. ↑ Ada Price (August 25, 2009). ""The Pekar Project" Webcomic Debuts on 'SMITH',". Publishers Weekly. Seibel first worked with Pekar in Cleveland for a year and a half on a strip called Rock City.
  5. ↑ Thessaly LaForce (July 23, 2010). ""Staff Picks: Harvey Pekar, Henry Luce, Lost Critics" Retrieved 2013-01-16 "I was keen to catch a glimpse of what is being called the "last comic" of Harvey Pekar, which is a collaboration with Tara Seibel, a Cleveland cartoonist and graphic designer. Seibel's story of her final moment with Pekar is comforting in its ordinariness: she dropped him off at the public library, where he had parked his car."". The Paris Review.

Notes

External links

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