STOPPING TIME:

A Fairy Tale for the Modern Day
An Online Gallery Talk
with Salzberg Resident
Maria Surducan

Video from JCBA's online gallery talk with Maria Surducan, one of JCBA's Helen M. Salzberg Residents in the Book Arts. The talk was broadcast live from Boca Raton and from Cluj-Napoca, Romania, on September 3, 2025.

Maria Surducan began her Salzberg Residency with JCBA in 2023, and her creative project for the residency, a limited edition pop-up book called Timemongers, is done. We'll soon be getting our copy here at the Jaffe Collection, and Maria will soon be teaching an online workshop from her studios in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, to complete her residency. Maria will be talking about her creative project, and all that went into its creation, in this online gallery talk that will be broadcast live from her studios. Timemongers was recently nominated in the Book category for Romania's Local Design Awards; should it win, the book will move on next to the European competition.

Maria Surducan is not your traditional book artist. She is an illustrator and comic book author in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Images, she says, are an imprecise way of translating reality and this, in a way, makes them more accurate than words. She is particularly drawn to comics as a storytelling tool, and has published several graphic albums in French, Romanian, and Hungarian. Her favorite subjects are Eastern European myths and folk tales and she is fascinated by finding ways to reshape them for new generations. Maria is a recipient of the 2020 Alfabéta Award from the Hungarian Comics Association, the 2021 Vladimir Colin SF–Fantasy Award, and the 2021 Comic Art Europe grant and residency.