Jan Marc Quisumbing should be familiar to you.
If you don’t recognize that name, perhaps “The Janimal,” Quisumbing’s artist/stage name, rings a bell.
Over the last year and a half, Quisumbing, a transplant to Sedona from New Jersey, has worked diligently to make himself known — as a comic book creator, art teacher and event planner. His brainchild, the Verde Valley Comic Expo, attracted hundreds of people to the Cottonwood Recreation Center this April.
With each passing month, he becomes involved in a new venture. He has been instrumental in helping local Mary Pallais get this year’s inaugural Sedona Books and Arts Festival off the ground. Not long ago, he began teaching once-monthly drawing classes at the Cottonwood Public Library.
“Moving out here, opportunities whether big or small have been a plenty. All you have to do is ask,” Quisumbing said. “I’m amazed with how much I’ve been able to do and accomplish out here by simply asking.”
Most recently, Quisumbing began teaching at Yavapai College’s College For Kids summer program. On Tuesday, June 7, he started the first two sessions of a three-week long class for children 5 to 12 years of age, “Comics and Cartoons.”
“It’s a lot of patience,” Quisumbing admitted. “After my first day of teaching, I was exhausted …. You have to gauge where the kids are coming from and at times rein them in. We only have a finite number of classes and the goal of having a mini comic con on their last day is what I really want to see happen.”
Quisumbing said he plans on allowing the children to exhibit and sell their books and art using Monoploy money.
“And these kids can draw,” he added. “You forgot about how a child perceives the world around them and how they break down shapes and concepts. It’s pretty fun and cool to look at their art after each drawing exercise.
“I’m happy to share what I know with others, especially drawing because it’s something I love to do. A mother of one of the students in the drawing class I’m teaching at YC told me that there are no art classes in the area available for kids …. Any opportunity where I can teach someone how to draw, I relish.”
Cartooning is a personal matter, as well as a professional matter, for Quisumbing.
“My late Uncle Bert would send my dad comics from the U.S. when we lived in the Philippines. They were bound into red leather books. My fondest memory of comics was going to the upstairs office my dad had at the newspaper office he had in the Philippines and looking at all the red covered books.
“All the men in my family, from uncles to cousins, can draw, except for my brother …. It’s all been trial and error, the creating, the refining of my art. It helps that I have made friendships out here with other comic artists and continue to learn from them.”
Apart from actively pursuing a permanent home in Sedona or elsewhere in the Verde Valley for teaching comic book art, next up for Quisumbing is a drawing class at Camp Verde Community Library, Saturday, June 11, from 2 to 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public. For more information, call 554-8380.
