DAVE ORTEGA
Cartoonist & Illustrator
Días de Consuelo
Graphic Novel suitable for Middle Grade and Up
Best Young Adult Nonfiction Book - International Latino Book Awards
Overfloweth Title - Graphic Novel Diversity Award, Virginia Library Association
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Nominee - Graphic Novels & Comics
Official Selection - Book Series
Society of Illustrators Illustration 65 Annual
Días de Consuelo is an intimate immigration memoir in the graphic tradition of “Persepolis” that connects the personal recollections of the author’s abuela with the storm of events that made up one of the most important uprisings of the 20th century: The Mexican Revolution. Published by Radiator Comics.
The scope of the story is wisely kept small, allowing the complexity of the Mexican Revolution and its impact on the characters to serve as a backdrop for this deeply personal and affecting narrative.
Amazing. At first, I felt like I was watching a classic movie with Pedro Infante and María Félix, but then it became my story and made me feel closer to my own history and to the parts of my family that I didn’t know.
Hacienda
One-person comics anthology series
MICE Mini Grant Winner 2023
Each issue of "Hacienda" features short story experiments that jump across time and reality to reflect on media, manipulation, and memory--including acts of collective forgetting. Suitable for Ages 16+/ Adult
"Ortega is some kind of narrative virtuoso."
Review of Issue 3, March 2025
"There's a clear VISION animating this entire project, and the degree to which Ortega is able to REALIZE and IMPLEMENT that vision is commendable in the extreme."
- Ryan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse
Review of Issues 1-3, January 2025
"Ambitious... Comic book writing doesn’t get much smarter than this."
Review of Issue 2, October 2023
"An ambitious, multi-layered narrative."
- Comics Workbook (Refers to "Spirit Search", Issue 1)
River
Middle Grade and Up
A single issue comic made up of vignettes about immigrant life on the Rio Grande where Texas, New Mexico and Mexico meet. The main character, as in "Dias de Consuelo", is the author's grandmother, Consuelo, whose early life in the United States offers new opportunities--and new dangers. Stories contained within this small collection involve a brush with death, tequila smugglers and a magical wedding.
'Dave Ortega: Hacienda and Other Comics'
Solo Gallery Exhibition - Winter 2023
From the Lesley A+D website:
The Lesley College of Art and Design is pleased to showcase the work of cartoonist and illustrator Dave Ortega. "Dave Ortega: Hacienda and Other Comics" celebrates the artist’s work in the spheres of comic art, zines, and graphic novels, as well as his narratives that tell the stories of the Mexican and Mexican American histories that are deeply rooted in Ortega’s life and familial lineage.
Special thanks to curator Andrew Mroczek, Director of Exhibitions at Lesley A+D
Comics: Frame by Frame
I was invited by the ICA/ Boston Art Lab to create an interactive educational experience about telling stories through comics. I turned the art lab space into a comic book where participants were able to move the panels around to create a new narrative and experiment with telling their own stories.
More Comics + Zines
Dichos 1 (with Raúl Gonzalez)
I'm Dave and I tell stories through the power of words and images.
Thanks for looking at my work. I was born in El Paso, Texas where I began my art education and discovered the passion for narrative storytelling through comics.
My self-published comic book series Días de Consuelo is about the early life of my grandmother who was born during the Mexican Revolution. Those issues were collected, edited and published as a graphic novel by Radiator Comics in March 2022. Días de Consuelo was selected by Society of Illustrators for their Illustration 65 annual. Some original comics pages are in the collections of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles (opening in 2025) and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.
I teach classes in the Illustration and Integrated Studies departments at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. In 2024, I was invited to be a Visiting Artist at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) for a 3-Week Comics Intensive for undergraduates. I have also been a Visiting Artist at Montserrat College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA).
I am a 2021 grantee of the Collective Futures Fund, a program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. I am also a recipient of multiple artist grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. My comics have been published in several periodicals and anthologies, including Tales from la Vida: A Latinx Comics Anthology, New Frontiers: The Many Worlds Of George Takei, Irene Book 5, and Beautiful/Decay Book 6. An excerpt of Días de Consuelo appeared in the Illustrated PEN section of the PEN America site. My short comic Hacienda won First Place in the Comics Composition Competition by Comics Workbook.
Other self-published publications include a short comic about my grandmother’s teenage years living on the Rio Grande (River), historical works about the Mexican Revolution (Battle of Juarez and Zacatecas 1 and 2), a zine about U.S. influence in Central and South American governments (School of the Americas), and a short series of illustrated Latin American sayings (Dichos 1 and 2).
I was invited to create "Comics: Frame by Frame", an interactive educational comics project in collaboration at the Art Lab at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. My comics have been featured at many international fairs, notably Toronto Comic Arts Fair, Comic Arts Brooklyn, New York Art Book Fair, Boston Art Book Fair, Small Press Expo, and Latino Comics Expo.
I live near Boston and divide my time between comics, illustration, and teaching. I also create and edit video media including motion graphics. If you're an art director, I'd love to discuss how we can work together on your project.
(Photo by Michelle Falcón Fontánez for Boston Art Review)