Gabe Fowler

Gabe Fowler serves as The Frank Stanton Chair in Graphic Design for Fall 2024 at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, affiliated with the School of Art and Department of Graphic Design.

He is a prominent practitioner in alternative comics and independent publishing, owning Brooklyn's Desert Island art and comics store, publishing the free tabloid Smoke Signal, and producing numerous zines. His decade-long curation of the Comic Arts Brooklyn festival established him as a key figure in contemporary comics culture, with his collaborative project Rescue Party forthcoming from Pantheon in 2024.

His educational background includes:

• BA from the University of Florida
• MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

His creative scholarship spans Comics, Graphic Design, Zine Publishing, and Art, emphasizing grassroots distribution models and community-driven artistic production within alternative publishing ecosystems.

Fowler's work bridges commercial practice and academic inquiry through his operational leadership of Desert Island and festival curation, though no formal grants or funded research projects are documented in the source material.