BIO
Sylvia Rossi is a D.C. based printmaker and comic artist. She was born in Fairfax, VA and remained in the area through college where she attended George Mason University. She began studying printmaking and specifically screenprinting, eventually moving her focus to risograph printing. She began publishing her own comics and cartoons with the risograph printer and delved into the world of art tabling events where she was able to make connections with peers within the indie comics community. Her works have a large focus on the mundane and everyday aspects of life, and finding the extraordinary in them. She enjoys exploring themes of family and relationships through humor, both physical and verbal.
She is heavily influenced by a variety of sources, a few of which include American cartoons Adventure Time and OK K.O. She primarily looks for media with exaggerated expressions and expressive art styles for the purpose of conveying emotion and storytelling. Her artistic career goals include having her work be professionally published, being able to make a living off of freelance illustration work, and self publishing her own comics.
Artist Statement
The relationships I hold in my life are very important and ever present, so that is one of the biggest themes I incorporate in my work. Just as families have their imperfections, I embrace the imperfections that come with analog methods of creating. Since starting at GMU I’ve worked almost exclusively through traditional means and this project is no exception. I create my prints via a risograph (or “riso”) printer, which requires you to break your image into multiple layers for printing. I typically do that with paper and a lightbox rather than digital programs. While some would be upset that they could never get a “perfect” result with a riso print, I hope for a flawed print and find that much more visually and thematically complex. My senior project addresses all of this in a comic entitled “Regulate”. This story, and the larger Full-Moon Inne series it is a part of, is one about family. What does it mean to be a family? To have one? Juxtaposing these complex questions with a deceptively simple and humorous method of cartooning helps to make them a bit more digestible. Combined with an imperfect printing method, these ideas and themes all work together to make my practice what it is.