Rice-developed exhibition ‘Between Love and Madness’ opens at Lawndale

When Rice Associate Professor Christopher Sperandio stumbled on a treasure trove of original Mexican comic books from the late 1960s and early ’70s, the artist in him knew he’d found something truly special — and the educator in him knew he’d found a unique opportunity to work with students on a one-of-a-kind exhibition.

The result is “Between Love and Madness — The Art of the Mexican Micro Comic,” which opened Jan. 18 at the Lawndale Art Center. Outside of a special international preview that ran in Berlin last month, it will mark the first time these original drawings have been presented in the half-century since their creation. It also marks the premiere of a brand-new type of collaboration for Rice undergraduates interested in the arts.

“This is the first time we’ve done any large-scale exhibition like this with students,” Sperandio said.

Undergraduates Kari Leigh Brinkley, Grace Earick, Julia Fisher, Zach Gwin, Kai Holnes, Clair Hopper, Priyanka Jain, Ilya Rakhlin, Zachary Tu and Heather Wright are all enrolled in Practical Curation, an innovative course in exhibition design through Rice’s Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts. In addition to smaller-scale exhibitions of their very own, the class has allowed them to construct “Between Love and Madness” alongside their professor from the ground up.

Sperandio, who teaches painting and drawing, initially began collecting original comic art as a classroom aid. “I think it’s better when you’re trying to learn how to draw that you see original drawings, rather than look at pictures of them in a book or online,” he said. But it was the “micro-cuentos,” pocket-sized ink-on-paper comic books published in Mexico, that captivated him the most.

“I did more digging and found out that they have this tremendous history,” Sperandio said. Before mass-produced comics from U.S. publishers such as DC and Marvel began dominating the market, indigenous comic books were all the rage in countries like Mexico, where the art form dates to the 1930s.

These micro-cuentos frequently served as satire and social commentary before American superhero comics overtook them in popularity beginning in the 1980s. “I immediately started thinking, ‘This should be an exhibition.’ And then, of course, I thought there should also be a class about this exhibition.”

Fisher, a Lovett College freshman, explained the process as a hands-on approach, with Sperandio spreading out hundreds of the 1,400 collected comic drawings across tables and then allowing students to select those that stood out most to them for display. “We all tried to find strong visual pieces that we could then recreate as murals on the wall,” Fisher said.

“Chris has a ton of experience in setting up gallery spaces and exhibitions, and so we’re all just out here following his lead and learning on the go,” Fisher said. “It’s a lot more arts-and-craftsy than I thought.”

Holnes, a McMurtry College senior, echoed that sentiment. “You gain an appreciation of what it takes for an exhibition to exist, because there are so many parts you don’t know about.” For Holnes, those parts included technical skills that she learned on the fly while installing “Between Love and Madness” — “all those small parts that you learn only by doing,” she said.

Practical Curation and its ensuing exhibition at Lawndale are part of a new interdisciplinary minor in museums and cultural heritage, which was introduced last year.

“I think it’s a really smart way to capitalize on what I think is a world-class Art History Department,” Sperandio said. “Rice has some really great art historians doing some great work, and frankly a lot of the work that art historians do does end up in the museum zone, so I think it’s smart to actually help the students focus on what it means to work in that world.”

This isn’t the first time that Sperandio has collaborated on an interdisciplinary effort with real-world results. Along with Jane Grande-Allen, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor of Bioengineering and chair of the Department of Bioengineering, the pair wrote an engineering-education grant to bring comic artists to Rice to work with engineering students. The idea? Helping the students figure out how to successfully combine words and pictures in advance of Rice Engineering’s annual Design Showcase and Poster Competition.

“The engineering research manifests itself as a poster, but (the students) could use more training in combining words and pictures; they get feedback on what they do, but we’re hoping to elevate the quality of communication in general across campus and in particular in these posters,” Sperandio said. “The whole job of the comic book artist is to be clear and persuasive. And that’s what you want from an engineering poster — clarity and persuasion.”

The comics on display in “Between Love and Madness” offer the sort of thoughtful persuasiveness one may not typically associate with those produced by, say, DC or Marvel. That’s because many of these micro-cuentos were actually written by leading Mexican philosophers of the day and illustrated by well-known artists. “They worked with pseudonyms,” Sperandio said. “They didn’t want to be associated with comic books. These were serious artists.”

Most of the artists have since died; the remaining micro-cuento creators are likely unaware their work is being exhibited in a Houston gallery, nearly 50 years after it was first published. But for students like Earick, a Lovett College junior, generating interest and renewing awareness in these comic books is part of the appeal of Sperandio’s course.

“I wasn’t familiar with Mexican comic art from the 1970s,” Earick said. “Beyond the cool practical experience of getting to go out in Houston and do something that feels more substantial and real than taking a test or writing an essay, I really appreciate that we’re focusing on this underappreciated medium in the art world.”

“Between Love and Madness — The Art of the Mexican Micro Comic” runs through March 25 at Lawndale Art Center, 4912 S. Main St. Admission is free. For hours, call 713-528-5858 or visit lawndaleartcenter.org.