Graphic Novels: Buddy Bolden's Last Parade

Stefan Berg

May 2014 · Graphic Novels Issue #1 · The Porcupine's Quill

About this ebook

Stefan Berg revives the wordless graphic novel in his portrait of the ‘first man of jazz’. Very little is known of Buddy Bolden. His music was never recorded and there is only one existing photograph, yet he is considered to be the first bandleader to play the improvised music that has since become known as jazz. Let That Bad Air Out tells the tragic end of a brilliant nineteenth-century jazz pioneer using traditional linocut printmaking techniques executed with a sharp and contemporary boldness.

About the author

Stefan Berg is a painter and printmaker who was born in Toronto in 1985. He finished his final year at the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2008, winning the Eric Freefield Award, and since then has lectured at the college on occasion. In 2009 he founded the Lower Dawes Studio in Toronto. Stefan currently works with intaglio and relief printmaking mediums. He has been featured in the Toronto Star and in Canadian small press publications ‘Cut And Print’ and ‘Block Cutters Social Klub’, published by the Free North Press. The Free North Press also published Stefan’s first independent book, After a While, a selection of block work from 2002 to 2006.

The recipient of multiple scholarships for excellence in painting, photography and printmaking, including a post graduate entry scholarship, Stefan’s intent is to uphold the traditional methods of printmaking as a contemporary artist.