John G

2019 Creative Access Fellow

John G

John G is an illustrator and comic creator who has been actively contributing to the Northeast Ohio arts and comics communities for over two decades. His comics work includes the autobiographical comics Tales To Demystify, as well as collaborating with Jake Kelly on six issues of The Lake Erie Monster. Tales to Demystify: Not Welcome Here, a series about accessible housing, is currently being published online by Signal Cleveland. He also curated and edited the annual Comics Issue of Cleveland Scene magazine from 2013 to 2018.

In 2016, John G was one of 40 artists awarded the Creative Workforce Fellowship grants by The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. In 2017 he was selected as the first Artist-in-Residency for the Gordon Square Arts District. In 2017, 2018 and 2019 John G was awarded a Creative Access Fellowship from the Neilsen Foundation to attend residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, PLAYA in Summer Lake, Oregon and The Santa Fe Art Institute, respectively.

John G is a founding organizer of Genghis Con, an annual independent comic convention in Cleveland, started in 2009. His outreach and education efforts also include comics-making workshops with Cleveland Public Library and Cleveland Museum of Art and teaching cartooning through Progressive Arts Alliance in Cleveland Public Schools, working with grades 3 through 12. He also taught a Comics Intensive for students ages 10 to 15 at The Girdwood Fine Arts Camp in Girdwood, Alaska in 2018.