I Seen Ya Sistuh Yestuhday, 2025

Michelle Maguire is an archivist at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, a wonderful and robust research collection bursting with books and periodicals, original art, newspaper tear sheets, fan mail/hate mail, journals/diaries/sketchbooks—anything that helps to paint a picture of the life of a cartoonist. She is also a visual artist whose work often takes on book form—her self-published, small-edition books that draw from family anecdotes, personal memories, and everyday observations are held in the permanent collections of university and museum libraries. A 2023 New York Public Library Picture Collection Artist Fellow, her work has in recent years become more research-based—she enjoys all of the different directions she’s taken when digging through an archive, relying on and trusting chance and intuition, as well as an openness to connection and surprise.

http://michelle-maguire.com