Rodney Lambright II
Central Library Bubbler Room
January - February 2019
Rodney Lambright II is an illustrator, animator, and writer whose main focus is storytelling. Rodney graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Art and Communication Arts (TV, Radio, and Film,) but would still consider most of the skills he’s obtained as an artist to be self taught, as school served more as a place that sparked his mind to further investigate his craft. He has always gravitated to cartoons; using it as a vehicle to express honest narratives that expand beyond the reality that we see in front of us.
The subject matter that surrounds Rodney’s work usually explores the depths of the individuals perceptions and how they affect their outlook on life while at the same time trying to question binary thinking and investigate the grey areas of life. The world of cartoons presents itself as a place of endless possibilities; to stretch reality beyond it limitation, which Rodney enjoys to play with within his works.
In his residency, Lambright focused on building an exhibition called Unwanted Sympathy about interpersonal investigation, of our psychological traumas, embedded within our unconscious minds. These are the realities we create to cope with pain, the manner in which we express emotion, and the ways in which we see through our own perception. “I want to explore this idea of imagination and how opening up a book opens up a new world,” Lambright said in a 2019 Tone Madison article. For the residency, he focused on honing that energy to develop unique stories within the mediums of comics and animation.
Return to the residency archive.