Amber Carvan b. 1973
- Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator)
- Name
- Amber Carvan
- Birth date
- 1973
- Gender
- Female
- Roles
-
- Artist (Cartoonist / Illustrator)
- Residence
-
- Sydney, NSW
- Other Occupation
-
- Producer
- Editor
- Active Period
-
- 1995-
- Languages
-
- English
- Is Indigenous
- No
Biography
Comic artist, artsworker and producer.
Amber started her first mini-comic, Big Smoke , in 1995 and went on to publish eight issues of the comic and a Big Smoke collection called Therapy: The least embarrassing comics from Big Smoke .
Carvan received significant attention through the 1998 Loud youth media arts festival. In November of that year her work appeared in the now defunct HQ magazine , she was profiled on radio station Triple J and appeared on the Saturday morning television show Recovery.
Amber was greatly inspired by the encouragement she received during and following Loud, and went on to work as a producer at the Noise festival (the successor to Loud). While at Noise she produced a range of books that profiled the work of young writers and artists including the women’s comic anthology How Comics Can Change the World .
Amber has also self-published a standalone mini-comic called Back in the Driver’s Seat (1996) and co-edited Milk Bar – The Australian Journal of Small Press with Richard Vogt.
Carvan’s comics have appeared in numerous anthologies and publications including Girlfrenzy , HQ Magazine , The Australian Journal of Career Development , How Comics Can Change the World , One , Nice , Pure Evil , Silent Army , Pantry , Circumstantial Evidence , Milk Bar, My Soiled Sample , Dee Vee and the French comic anthology Stereoscomic .
In 2002 she received a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts to produce an autobiographical comic book with Mandy Ord . The resulting work, Brick Dog and Other Stories , was published by Pluto Press in 2002.
Since 2002 Carvan has pursued an interest in rules-based autobiographical comics. In 2007 she started an online project called Comic Artist Rehab – a space where slack comic artists are encouraged to draw more often than they would otherwise. The program, which runs monthly, co-opts four artists to each draw a four-panel comic every four days for four weeks.
Carvan also draws a comic weekly and publishes it on her website.
- Writers:
- Carvan, Amber
- Date written:
- 2008
- Last updated:
- 2008
Kirrily Schell
InSideOut at the West Space Gallery
Recognitions
- Carvan, Amber & Ord, Mandy, (2002), Brick Dog and Other Stories, (Place: Pluto Press)
- Carvan, Amber & Vogt, Richard (co-editors), Milk Bar - The Australian Journal of Small Press
- How Comics Can Change the World., (Place: Noise Festival, Melbourne, Vic.)
- Carvan, Amber, Therapy: The least embarrassing comics from Big Smoke