Dear Kenneth

Alone in Japan, a travelling artist writes to a beloved poet while trying to reignite the urge to draw. Continued correspondence reveals loneliness and desperation that stretch far beyond the isolation of solo travel and the typical self-reckoning that comes with it. Composed as a series of illustrated letters, Dear Kenneth is a sensitive work of comic auto-fiction that touches on themes of projection and selfishness set to the backdrop of a months-long trip to Japan. Rendered entirely in graphite and coloured pencil, Degenstein examines the desperate act of taking things and making them into what we need them to be, rather than trying to connect with them in a genuine way; when desperate enough, anything can be projected upon: a person, a poet, an artist, a city. Numbed by medication and burning under the Kyoto sun, the artist is forced to self-evaluate, face the consequences of running from oneself, and confront what it means to make artwork out of misery.

Hailing from the prairies and based in Montreal, Cole Degenstein is an artist whose work takes form in illustration, comics, and bookmaking. Tenderness is at the core of his work, which centres itself in storytelling about intimacy, rural life, gay history, and domesticity. His graphic novel 10-10 to the Wind (Fieldmouse, 2021) received the 2024 Cartoonist Studio Prize from the Center for Cartoon Studies for best Graphic Short, and was nominated for an Ignatz Award.