Geoff Olson pens last column for The Vancouver Courier

May 27, 2017, 8:44 am

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From Scribble and Skvetch.

I’ve been terminated as a columnist to The Vancouver Courier. The May 18 piece, noting the news, was also rejected.

It appears my May 5 article, “Clark Government’s Record Dismal”, didn’t go down well with the owners, Glacier Media. In fact, the article was scrubbed from the Courier’s online edition days before the election. 

The official story communicated to me – which I believe is trivially true – is that the paper is making way for new voices. 

Budgetary considerations were also likely in play. A month earlier, Alan Garr, a longtime contributor to the paper, had his column reduced from weekly to biweekly. 

My column was already running on a biweekly basis (reduced from weekly over a year ago) and I suppose the next print stop after biweekly is never. 

It’s customary for long-time newspaper columnists to offer a farewell column to readers. Not in my case. The column was nixed. 

I will be continuing to contribute editorial cartoons to the paper until such time I’m replaced with Garfield or Nancy.

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Pieter De Jaegher wins the 5th Niels Bugge Cartoon Award

May 28, 2017, 4:35 am

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From Niels Bugge's website.

Cartoonists Alexandr Pshenyanikov, Pieter De Jaegher and Vladan Nikolic.

Artists from Belgium, Ukraine and Serbia have won the Niels Bugge Cartoon Award focusing this year on communication.

Cartoon by Pieter De Jaegher (Belgium)

Jury chairman Lars Refn announced that Pieter De Jaegher won 3,000 euros ($3,340) on Saturday for his man sitting under an open umbrella while it rains letters, a nod to Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

Cartoon by Alexandr Pshenyanikov (Ukraine)

Ukraine's Germany-born runner-up Alexandr Pshenyanikov won 2,000 euros for a drawing of a suicide bomber holding a city map and asking for directions on a street corner.

Vladan Nikolic from Serbia placed third.

Ann Telnaes Wins Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year

May 28, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From the National Cartoonists Society website.

The recipient of the profession’s highest honor, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year is chosen by a secret ballot of NCS members and was awarded this year to editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes for her unmatched cartoon coverage of the 2016 election and ensuing Trump Administration. 

She is the current President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

A former animator, Telnaes’ cartoons are easily recognizable for their fluid lines and bright colors. Her cartoons tend to be quite liberal in tone and have a special focus on women’s issues, such as third world pregnancy and abortion rights. In 2001, she became the second female cartoonist to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning.

She is syndicated with Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate/New York Times Syndicate, with her work appearing across the United States in such publications as The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times,Newsday, and the Austin American-Statesman; and internationally in Le Monde and Courier International.

Telnaes also contributes an exclusive weekly cartoon to the nonprofit online news service Women’s eNews.

Her animated editorial cartoons are featured on The Washington Post’s website.

Some other winners:

EDITORIAL CARTOON
Recipient: Mike Luckovich
Best Editorial Cartoonist went to last year’s Reuben Award-winner.

NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIP
Recipient: Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker
Best Newspaper Comic Strip went to Steve Kelley and Jeff Parker for their work in Dustin.

NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION
Recipient: David Rowe (Australia)
Best Newspaper Illustrator went to David Rowe for his work in the Australian Financial Review.

GAG CARTOONIST
Recipient: Will McPhail
Best Gag Cartoonist went to Will McPhail for his work in The New Yorker.

NFB movies become books

May 31, 2017, 5:32 am

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From CBC Books.

The National Film Board of Canada will be adapting celebrated NFB animated and documentary films and media projects into books.

The inaugural program will launch this fall with the publication of a pair of children's books adapted from Oscar-nominated films: The Cat Came Back by Cordell Barker, which was nominated in 1989, and My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts by Torill Kove, which received a nod in 2000.

It will also include the publication of George Hunter's Canada: Iconic Images from Canada's Most Prolific Photographer, an adaptation from the photo essay Legacies 150 - George Hunter featuring the work of the late pioneering photojournalist.

"The NFB has always been about telling timeless Canadian stories, in all genres, and for people of all ages," Claude Joli-Coeur, chairperson said in a release.

In its 78-year history, the NFB had produced more than 13,000 animated films, documentaries, fiction features and interactive productions, which have won more than 5,000 awards, including 12 Oscars.

Firefly Books, which has been publishing children's books since 1980, will be the official book publisher for the initiative.


The Cat Came Back

Cordell Barker

Firefly Books

48 Pages
11" X 9" 

$ 19.95 CDN
EAN: 9781770859296
ISBN: 1770859292

My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts

Torill Kove

Firefly Books

32 Pages
10 1/4" X 8 1/2" 

$ 16.95 CDN
EAN: 9781770859678
ISBN: 1770859675

CNN cuts ties with Kathy Griffin for gruesome Trump video

May 31, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From CTV News.

Cartoon by Michael Ramirez

Comic Kathy Griffin has lost a decade-long gig ringing in the new year for CNN as a backlash builds over her video displaying a likeness of U.S. President Donald Trump's severed head.

CNN, which had called the images "disgusting and offensive" after Griffin posted the video on Tuesday, announced Wednesday it would not invite her back this year for the Times Square live New Year's Eve special she had co-hosted annually since 2007 with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

Griffin, a comic known for her abrasive style of humour, had apologized on Tuesday, conceding that the brief video, which she originally described as an "artsy-fartsy statement" mocking the commander in chief, was "too disturbing" and wasn't funny.

"I went too far," she says in her contrite follow-up video. "I sincerely apologize."

4th Rosemère International Caricature Biennial

June 1, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From the City of Rosemère website.

The City of Rosemère, in the lower Laurentians, will present, from Friday June 2 to Sunday June 4, the fourth edition of its' International Caricature Biennial, in the H.-J.-Hemens Municipal Library . 

The 2017 edition will be held under the honorary chairmanship of Serge Chapleau, editorial cartoonist at La Presse.

Well known for his creation of Gérard D. Laflaque, Chapleau has published, since 1993, a collection of his best caricatures entitled L’année Chapleau. 

In a nod to Montreal’s 375th anniversary, participating caricaturists will be presenting works with a metropolitan flavor showcasing events and personalities that have influenced the city’s history. 

Throughout the weekend, visitors can take in exhibitions of caricatures and editorial cartoons produced by renowned caricaturists. 

They will also have the opportunity of participating in live caricature workshops as well as various conferences and round table discussions on this topic. 

Finally, the event’s international facet will involve a projection of caricatures of US President Donald Trump produced by various artists from around the world. 

Friday June 2

10 am to 3 pm

School visits and workshops on caricature art

Saturday June 3

11 am to 3 pm

Live caricatures (at the library and Pioneers Park)

11 am to noon

Workshop on digital caricature

11 am to 3 pm

Art activity for children: Caricatures and creatures

1 pm to 2 pm

Conference on Albéric Bourgeois, editorial cartoonist at La Presse between 1905 and 1957 – with Nancy Perron, Ph.D. student in Art History at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM)

2:30 pm to 3:30 pm 

Conference on caricature

Sunday June 4

11 am to 3 pm 

Live caricatures (at the library and Pioneers Park)

1 to 2 pm 

Conference on Aislin's 50-year career - with Christian Vachon of the McCord Museum.

2:30 pm to 3:30 pm 

Round table with guest cartoonists

Throughout the weekend

10 am to 4 pm (except on Friday - 3 pm)

Exhibition and projection of caricatures and editorial cartoons: Montreal Chronicles, 1837-2017 — a selection of caricatures from the McCord Museum

outdoors
50 years of Aislin’s career exhibition

in the atrium 

Serge Chapleau exhibition

in the activities hall 
Projection of international caricatures on Donald Trump

in the library
Exhibition of works by various cartoonists: Bado, Goldstyn, Garnotte, Lacroix, Roland Pier, etc. 

The First Woman To Draw ‘Wonder Woman’ Series

June 3, 2017, 4:32 am

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Joanna Molloy in Fresh Toast.

Trina Robbins is the artist behind 'The Legend of Wonder Woman,' which envisioned the amazing Amazon with a female focus.

As the screen lit up at the premiere of Wonder Woman at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood last month, a woman in the audience cried out,“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!” to laughter and applause. 

Trina Robbins, the first female artist to draw a Wonder Woman series, was inside the venerable venue. “I thought, you know what? Me, too,” Robbins said.“And, I think, most of the women here, and many of the guys, too.” 

The legendary comics pioneer, whose 1986 four-part“Legend of Wonder Woman,” co-authored with Kurt Busiek, said of star Gal Gadot’s performance, “She’s perfect. Just perfect.”

It was Robbins who brought the female force for good back to her origins, as first envisioned by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston.“When DC [Comics] asked me, ‘How would you like to do a series of four Wonder Woman comics?’ I said,‘Well, I’d like to set them in the Golden Age,’ and they said okay.

“In the beginning, Wonder Woman had Amazon training, which showed that if you work hard and you train, you can be a wonder woman, too. But as the comic progressed, they started giving her weird powers, like they allowed her to fly, and I didn’t like that. She wasn’t that kind of superhero. Thankfully, in the movie, she doesn’t fly. Oh, she’s an amazing Amazon, all right. She can do all kinds of leaps and flips, but it’s more like in a Chinese action movie where the heroes are fabulous human beings.”

Robbins’ Wonder Woman uses only her magic lasso, weaponized cuffs, and super-strength to battle evil queens, mindless warriors, and other villains to save the little girl they threaten. 

The girl in the pink pinafore looks an awful lot like photos of Robbins when she was growing up in New York City, devouring comic books and science-fiction, then immersing herself in fantasy classics like JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. 

All the while, she drew the characters and lush worlds she imagined. 

“I was the school nerd, basically,” Robbins recalls. 

As soon as she graduated in the 1960s, she took her school’s Art Medal and ran to Greenwich Village, and was soon drawing for fanzines and the counter cultural East Village Other. 

But she also expressed her creativity through bohemian clothing she made for Donovan, David Crosby, Mama Cass, and others. 

She became friends with Jim Morrison and Roger McGuinn and other members of the Byrds, and yes, she is the Trina who “wears her wampum beads and fills her drawing book with line” in Joni Mitchell’s song “Ladies of the Canyon.”

But then there was a sea change in the world of comic books. “Comics had been really dull stuff for little kids for a long time,” Robbins muses. “Just kind of wooden characters. And suddenly, Marvel and DC started given characters depth — you had Spiderman with teen angst. It was revolutionary. It was really great stuff to college students and to hippies, which I was by then.” 

Robbins’ early “nerd” erudition and drawing chops would lead her not only to join the underground comics movement — but to lead it, with a lot of firsts. 

Besides being the first female ever to draw a Wonder Woman series, Robbins produced the first all-women’s comic book, It Ain’t Me, Babe Comix, in 1970. She was the first to create a comic book featuring an openly gay character, “Sandy Comes Out,” published by Wimmen’s Comix, an anthology she co-founded and which ran for 20 years.

But she found the underground comics world“highly misogynist,” and forged a new path as arguably the preeminent historian of women cartoonists going back to the 19th century. 

She’s written 12 books about female comic artists and their female characters, including Nell Brinkley, who drew exquisite Art Nouveau drawings of flappers, and even made Eleanor Roosevelt look glamorous, and Rose O’Neill, who created the Kewpie doll, and Dale Messick, who conceived Brenda Starr, Girl Reporter.

Robbins, who’s lived with partner Steve Leialoha in San Francisco for 40 years, isn’t slowing down. She has transformed Sax Rohmer’s 1919 mystery Dope, filled with delicious characters like“Mrs. Sin” and various opium-smoking aristocrats, into a noir graphic novel, which will be published in September by Drew Ford’s It’s Alive! imprint at IDP Publishing. 

Robbins’ memoir,Last Girl Standing, will also be published in September by Fantagraphics. 

Will we hear more about the nature of her relationship with Jim Morrison? “That’s in my memoir,” Robbins says coyly. “You’ll have to read it when it comes out.”

6 Films About Comics and Their Creators

June 6, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From the NFB blog.

Comic strips and comic books are universal art forms, and give their creators a direct line to wide, wide audiences. Some comics are serials, some are satirical, some offer insight, and some just want to make you laugh.

Here is a look, from political cartoonists to the creator of a world-famous superhero, at a variety of comic strips and their creators who have been the subject of an NFB film. 

• Seth’s Dominion (featuring Seth)
• Laughter in my Soul (featuring Jacob Maydanyk)
• The Persistent Peddler (by Claude Cloutier)
• The Death of Kao-Kuk (a Seth comic animated by Luc Chamberland)
• The Devil You Know (featuring Todd McFarlane)
• Understanding the Law: The Worm (by Diane Obomsawin, aka Obom)

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Merle “Ting” Tinley 1922-2017

June 7, 2017, 9:00 pm

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Merle “Ting” Tingley, the editorial cartoonist for The London Free Press from 1948 to 1986, died last Sunday at the age of 95.

Born and raised in Montreal, he studied art for one year and then worked briefly as a draughtsman until joining the army at the beginning of the Second World War.

Known for his pipe-smoking worm named Luke Worm by a reader, he received the National Newspaper Award for editorial cartooning in 1955.

Dan Brown in The London Free Press:

An era of London newspaper publishing came to a close on Sunday with the death of Ting, as he was known by fellow Free Press employees and also readers, was loved for his enthusiasm for local subjects and gentle sense of humour. 

Many a fan noted how his cartoons touching on subjects like London transit, city hall politics and Forest City personalities could run in the newspaper today. Simply put, his work was timeless.

“Ting charmed the world with his editorial cartoons and playful spirit,” his family said in a death notice.

Ting was inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame two years ago by Seth, one of the many artists who followed in his footsteps. As a young child, Tingley came to Seth’s Grade 1 class in Strathroy, serving as an example of a real-life creator who was making a living by putting pen to paper.

“It left a real impression on me,” Seth told this paper in 2014. “It was a significant event that I never forgot.”

Ting’s blocky caricatures are recognizable “from 50 feet away,” Seth added.

Ting included Luke Worm in every piece of work he did. The pipe-smoking, top hat-wearing worm would be hidden away in a corner of the drawing. This meant Ting’s work appealed not only to adults, who could understand the political meaning of any given cartoon, but also to children – finding Luke Worm was a point of pride among his younger readers.

Seth said he came to read Ting’s work “religiously” following that Grade 1 visit. “I’m not going to pretend that I was precocious enough in Grade 1 to enjoy cartoons about John Diefenbaker or Robert Stanfield. Nope–it was his little trademark drawing Luke-Worm that impressed me,” Seth said in Tingley’s induction speech.

Also among his many fans is Diana Tamblyn, the founder of the Ting Comic and Graphic Arts Festival, which runs annually every spring at the Arts Project. It brings together many of the young talents Ting inspired to pick up pen or brush and will mark its fifth anniversary in May 2018.

“There are so few editorial cartoonists left these days, and the ones who are still around cover national and international events,” Tamblyn said.

“Ting was first and foremost a regionalist — his work reflected his local environment — London and Southwest Ontario. He loved this Forest City, and that love shone through each one of the lines he put down on paper, whether it was a cartoon about city hall or a map of Storybook Gardens. And London loved him back.”

At this year’s Ting Fest, one of the cartoons that caught the eyes of attendees shows a commuter reading a headline from the local paper while stopped at a rail crossing. The message of the cartoon? High-speed rail is in the works, but Londoners may not see any progress for a time. In a preview of a transit debate that would take place in London in 2017, Ting had published that cartoon in 1975.

“Ting was a professional cartoonist with all the chops of a real professional,” but chose to exercise his skills in a regional market, Seth said three years ago in an interview with The London Free Press.

“There’s a reason why the Ting Comic and Graphic Arts Festival was named after him,” echoed Tamblyn.

“How many artists did his decades of work inspire? It’s countless I’m sure, but when you talk to a fellow cartoonist from the area, it’s not long before Ting comes up in the conversation as an inspiration,” she said.

According to the death notice, a visitation will be held at A. Millard George Funeral Home, June 23 at 7-9 p.m. A celebration of his life will be held June 24 at 2 p.m., with visitation one hour prior.

danbrown@postmedia.com

Seth on Virtual Memories podcast

June 8, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From Chimera Obscura.

In the episode 220 of Virtual Memories, cartoonist Seth talks about Palookaville, making a living, his changing relationship to comics and cartoonists, his retrospection on the ’90s cohort he came up with, the creative sanctity of the studio and the creation of art no one will see, finishing his Clyde Fans serial after 20 years (and what he wants to work on next), being the subject of a documentary, seeing his work animated, doing collaborative work, taking up photography, a key lesson he learned about marriage, the disadvantages of being a people pleaser, why Kickstarter may be like an IQ test, and more!

“I’m over that hump, where I’m no longer as engaged with the medium of comics as I used to be.”

Seth is the cartoonist behind the long-running comic-book series Palookaville. His books include Wimbledon Green, George Sprott, and It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken, all published by Drawn & Quarterly. 

He is the designer for The Complete Peanuts, The Portable Dorothy Parker, The John Stanley Library, and The Collected Doug Wright. 

From 2014 to 2016 he partnered with Lemony Snicket on the young readers series All The Wrong Questions. 

He is the subject of the recent award-winning NFB documentary Seth’s Dominion, and was the winner in 2011 of the Harbourfront Festival Prize. 

In 2017, he collaborated with the musician Mark Haney for the musical performance Omnis Temporalis, and his cardboard city installation was featured in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s sesquicentennial group show Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood.

World Press Cartoon 2017 (Results)

June 11, 2017, 2:29 pm

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From World Press Cartoon.

The results:

The cartoon «Immigrants» by Iranian cartoonist Alireza Pakdel, published in the newspaper «Etemad» in August 2016, was awarded the Grand Prix of the 12th edition of World Press Cartoon.

First prize in the Editorial Cartoon category, the author received a monetary prize of 10,000 euros. 

Also in this category, the jury awarded the 2nd prize to «Nice Attack», published in the newspaper Efimerida Ton Syntakton, by Michael Kountouris from Greece.

Third prize was awarded to French cartoonist Constantin Sunnerberg for «Welcome», published by Courrier International.

The awards ceremony took place in a show where humour reigned, with the presence of important personalities from international cartooning and the cultural landscape of Caldas da Rainha, the city hosting the 2017 event. 

The salon director, the Portuguese cartoonist António Antunes, highlighted the important role that humour has for the vitality of the press: «Cartoons are a critical segment and an exercise of freedom, without which newspapers can not survive and fulfil their social and civic goals.» 

The mayor of Caldas da Rainha, Fernando Tinta Ferreira, highlighted the international projection that World Press Cartoon brings to the city: «This is an event that brings to Caldas da Rainha great artists from all over the world who find, as is our tradition, an environment conducive to creation in freedom. 

In a city marked by the work of the great caricaturist tradition of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro it is natural and logical this connection to a contest that celebrates what is best done in the world in this art.»

The World Press Cartoon also distinguishes works in two other categories. 

In Caricature, two winning pieces came from Brazil: a Fidel Castro by Luiz Carlos Fernandes, published in the magazine Veja, and a Bob Dylan by Eduardo Baptistão, published in Diário do Grande ABC, first and second prizes respectively.

The 3rd prize, for a «Trump Punk» from the pages of the newspaper Unità, was awarded to the Italian artist Mariagrazia Quaranta. 

In the Gag Cartoon category, the first prize was awarded to Serbian Toso Borkovic, for the work «The Speaker» published in Ilustrovana Politika, 

the 2nd prize went to «Rio», from Swiss Silvan Wegmann in Schweiz am Sonntag, 

and the 3rd prize distinguished «Ludopatia», from Ecuadorian cartoonist Xavier Bonilla, published in Our World. 

All these cartoons are part of the selection made by an international jury among the hundreds of works presented to the contest and coming from all continents. 

This selection of the 267 best competing works forms the exhibition that will be open to the public at the Cultural and Congress Center of Caldas da Rainha, with free admission, from June 11 to August 10. 

Cartoons that shape a fun portrait of the world, were published in 168 newspapers and magazines in 51 countries. 

The visitor can take all these drawings home by purchasing the beautiful catalogue, for sale at the exhibition site.

The 2017 George Townsend Award

June 13, 2017, 9:00 pm

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Since 2015, the Association  of Canadian Cartoonists has presented the George Townsend Award, named after the first Canadian cartoonist, to the member of the association it deems to have created the best drawing of the year.

Bruce MacKinnon of The Halifax Chronicle-Herald won the honour this year, followed by retired Ottawa Sun cartoonist Sue Dewar.

Carl Giles Cartoon Exhibition

June 14, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From Eventbrite.

The Political Cartoon Gallery will be presenting an exhibition of Carl Giles’s original cartoons, to be opened by Alan Frame, a former editor of the Daily Express on Tuesday 4 July.

Carl Giles OBE was voted Britain's 20th century's favourite cartoonist. Giles remained with Express Newspapers for 48 years, from 1945 to 1991. He is best remembered for the fictional Giles family and particularly the matriarch, known simply as‘Grandma’. 

Giles saw his cartoons as social satire. He was the first social cartoonist to have a truly national appeal and he became an institution as his annuals continually topped the bestseller lists at Christmas. Giles was a true giant among Britain's cartoonists.

To coincide with the opening of the exhibition, the Gallery will be launching a new biography of Carl Giles entitled Giles’s Warand edited by Britain's leading authority on political cartoons, Dr Tim Benson. 

The book is the first to use material from the cartoonist’s own archives.

Carl Giles Cartoon Exhibition
Tue, 4 July 2017 – Sat, 28 Oct 2017
The Political Cartoon Gallery and Cafe
16 Lower Richmond Road
London  SW15 1JP
United Kingdom

Helmut Kohl 1930-2017

June 16, 2017, 11:41 am

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A studious Helmut Kohl by the great Austrian cartoonist Erich Sokol.

François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl as seen by Swedish cartoonist Riber Hansson.

Create the National Portrait Gallery of Canada

June 18, 2017, 8:36 am

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From Change Org.

There are strong rumours that Justin Trudeau will NOT allow the former U.S. Embassy across from Parliament Hill to be used for the creation of a long-recommended National Portrait Gallery of Canada but will use it instead for political purposes.

PLEASE show your support for creating such a gallery NOW before it is too late!

The National Archives of Canada has the second largest collection of portraits in the world but has nowhere to put them. An Ipsos poll found that 2/3rds of those polled supported the creation of such a gallery.

More excellent reasons can be found in: “It’s time for Canada to create a national portrait gallery” (Globe and Mail, March 31, 2017) by Lawson A. W. Hunter, chairman of the Ottawa Art Gallery, and author Charlotte Grey and in “For Canada 150, let’s build a national portrait gallery” (Ottawa Citizen, May 25, 2017) by Doug Black, senator for Alberta:

My own reasons are:

1) If Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. can have one, why can’t we?

2) It will serve as a cheering reminder of Canada’s fascinating history, rich diversity and vibrant culture with portraits in its collection of: Dan Akroyd, Pamela Anderson, Paul Anka, Louise Arbour, Denys Arcand, Will Arnett, Margaret Atwood, Randy Bachman, Jim Balsillie, Frederick Banting and Charles Best, Neil Bissoondath, Isabel Bayrakdarian, Samantha Bee, Archibald Belaney (Grey Owl), Jean Beliveau, Norman Bethune, Justin Bieber, Billy Bishop, Conrad Black, Joseph-Armand Bombardier, Roberta Bondar, Marguerite Bourgeoys, Joseph Boyden, Joseph Brant, Measha Brueggergosman, Michael Buble, Emily Carr, Alessia Cara, Adrienne Clarkson, Leonard Cohen, Raymond Collishaw, David Cronenberg, Sidney Crosby, Burton Cummings, Greg Curnoe, Yvonne de Carlo, Samuel de Champlain, Paul de Chomedey (Sieur de Maisonneuve), Arthur Currie, John Diefenbaker, Celine Dion, Shirley and Tommy Douglas, Drake, Atom Egoyan, Feist, Michael J. Fox, Terry Fox, Nelly Furtado, Frank Gehry, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ryan Gosling, Glenn Gould, Wayne Gretsky, Paul Gross, Lawren Harris, Ben Heppner, Gordie Howe, Jane Jacobs, Michaelle Jean, Carly Rae Jepson, Norman Jewison, Dwayne Johnson, Pauline Johnson, Karen Kain, Yousuf Karsh, Naomi Klein, Thomas King, K’naan, K. D. Lang, Avril Lavigne, Mike Lazaridis, Stephen Leacock, Rene Levesque, Mario Lemieux, Gordon Lightfoot, J.A. Macdonald, J.E.H. MacDonald, Chief Maquinna, Daniel, Raymond and Vincent Massey, Rachel McAdams, Nellie McClung, Ernest McCulloch and James Till, Sarah McLaughlin, Colin McPhee, Alanis Morisette, Deepa Mehta, Shawn Mendes, Lorne Michaels, Joni Mitchell, Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, L.M. Montgomery, Norval Morrisseau, Marjan Mozetich, Robert Munch, Alice Munro, James Naismith, Nanook of the North, Steve Nash, Leslie Nielson, Pierre Peladeau, Lester B. Pearson, Mary Pickford, John Polanyi, Sarah Polley, Oscar Peterson, Sandra Oh, Michael Ondaatje, Bobby Orr, William Osler, Raffi, Ryan Reynolds, Louis Riel, Laura Secord, William Shatner, Norma Shearer, Martin Short, Joey Smallwood, Hank Snow, Buffy Ste. Marie, P.K. Subban, Donald and Kiefer Sutherland, David Suzuki, Lilly Singh, Kateri Tekakwitha, David Thompson, Kenneth Thomson, Tom Thomson, Shania Twain, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, William Cornelius van Horne, Denis Villeneuve, Jacques Villeneuve, the Weeknd, Garfield Weston and Neil Young. To name a few. Pretty darned “far and wide”!

3) The gallery will boost tourism to Ottawa once the 150th anniversary of Confederation is past. Ottawanians especially should sign this petition!

4) Royalty will have an extra reason to open the gallery because it will display paintings of the “Four Mohawk Kings”, painted in 1710, which Queen Elizabeth gave to Canada in 1977 but which have been sitting in the National Archives of Canada ever since.

5) Canada’s national portrait competition, the Kingston Prize www.kingstonprize.ca will provide a ready-made exhibition each year.

6) Extra buzz will be accrued to the gallery when Canadian mega-stars drop by to see and pose with their portraits. (Will Joni Mitchell contribute a self-portrait?)

7) The gallery shop can be replete with cool souvenirs such as: postcards of the most famous subjects and/or popular portraits with English and French language biographies on the back instead of empty space; Laura Secord chocolates made specially for the gallery (the company is once again owned by Canadians); biographies in book and CD form; the best movie posters featuring Canadian stars, past and present; notebooks, cellphone covers, mugs, bookmarks, t-shirts etc. of specially commissioned portraits of some of the hottest performing artists on the planet by some of our greatest visual artists (for example, I would love to see a portrait of Drake by Andrew Salgado!) which would attract online sales to international fans; and adaptations of some of the best ideas from other portrait museums.

PLEASE help make this happen!

Cathy Schaffter Toronto, Canada


UPDATE

"100 Wellington isn't the right home for an indigenous cultural centre" in The Ottawa Citizen

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The Sunday Times and Gerald Scarfe part ways

June 18, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From The Times.

Today, after a remarkable 50 years, we say goodbye to Gerald Scarfe. For half a century his superb weekly Sunday Times cartoons have lacerated generations of British political leaders from Harold Wilson to Theresa May. 

He has cheerfully courted controversy all the way. In 1964 The Times commissioned the 28-year-old Scarfe to sketch Sir Winston Churchill on his last day in parliament, but rejected in horror his brutally honest drawing of a shambling old man. 

We know Gerry, who is leaving us but continuing his career, as the kindest of men. His targets are the powerful, never the weak. His magnificent valedictory cartoon for us last week — depicting Jeremy Corbyn as a dog relieving itself on a slumped, splay-legged Mrs May — drew a final burst of praise and obloquy. 

It inspired George Osborne to laud Scarfe as the Gillray of our age, but one critic harrumphed: “May I ask how the cartoonist would feel if someone portrayed his wife/partner in this position?” 

As Mrs Scarfe is the charming actress Jane Asher, we doubt he will be put to the test.

Ross Thompson wins 34th Aydin Doğan Cartoon Contest

June 20, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Competition.

First Prize: Ross Thomson, UK

Other results:

2nd Prize: Shahram Reza, Iran

3rd Prize: Raimondo Ruch Santos Souza, Brazil

Achievement Awards

Luc Descheemaeker (Belgium)

Alessandro Gatto (Italy)

Darko Drijevic (Montenegro)

Dokhshid Ghodratipour (Iran)

Ehsan Ganji (Iran)

Ehsan Ganji (Iran)

Krzysztof Grzondziel (Poland)

Muhamed Djerlek (Bosnia)

Raimondo Ruch Santos Souza (Brazil)

Silvano Mello (Brazil)

Vasco Gargalo (Portugal)

The Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Competition this year received  2.220 cartoons by 641 artists from 63 countries.

Why Newspapers Need to Invest More in Political Cartoons

June 21, 2017, 9:00 pm

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Rob Tornoe in Editor & Publisher.

After an era marked by downsizing and low morale, many newspapers are experiencing a rebirth of their journalistic vigor thanks to the campaign and subsequent election of Donald Trump as president.

While the mission of watchdog journalism has been renewed by the Trump administration’s war with the press, there has been a notable absence of an important form of political satire long associated with newspapers that doesn’t appear to have benefited from a Trump bump.

Political cartoons, once a staple of newspapers that were as popular with readers as they were hated by those in power, have all but disappeared from the online offerings of many media companies ensconced in the brutal transition from a print-centric world to a digital-first mission.

Those media companies that do have editorial cartoonists remaining on staff, less than 30 by my count, largely relegate their work to less-trafficked internal pages of their websites, seemingly for no reason other than a lack of any idea how to properly utilize them.

That’s something Chris Weyant is trying to better understand. A cartoonist by trade, Weyant’s work stretches across the publishing world in many forms. He draws gag cartoons for the New Yorker, produces award-winning children’s books with his wife, Anna Kang, and is an accomplished political cartoonist who spent 15 years skewering Washington’s elite in the pages of The Hill.

Weyant is a year removed from participating as a Nieman Fellow, just the second cartoonist accepted into the prestigious journalism program in its nearly 80 years of existence. He left his wife and two kids in New Jersey and spent a full year at Harvard, taking classes, speaking with fellow journalists and editors and trying to tackle a question in the forefront of his mind: Why aren’t political cartoons more popular online?

“It just didn’t seem to make sense,” Weyant said of the lack of interest in digital political cartoons at newspapers with a history of cartooning. “The internet is a visual medium, so it seems obvious cartoons could be an important asset to journalism’s evolving digital business model.”

Not surprisingly, Weyant didn’t find much scholarly focus on political cartoons. In a way, it mirrors a major problem cartoons face getting traction at many publications –most editors are writers, and have a hard time understanding the importance of visual journalism, or how to best utilize it.

It’s actually a problem Weyant experienced first-hand while at The Hill, where his cartoons were barely an afterthought on the newspaper’s website. Quickly, Weyant devised a new strategy that involved a cropped version of his cartoon appearing on the website’s homepage, and quickly traffic to his work rivaled the top offerings presented on a daily basis.

It’s a trend he also discovered at other publications, like the New Yorker, which feature cartoons on their homepage. According to traffic numbers Weyant has been studying, readers that enter a publication’s website through a topical cartoon tend to spend 25 percent more time browsing the site than they do entering through any other type of content.

“They stay so much longer and go so much deeper when they click a cartoon versus any other type of content,” Weyant said. “That’s an amazing metric of real reader engagement.”

Weyant thinks this makes the case that cartoons should be featured more prominently on the homepages of news organizations and in their social media offerings, where a funny and engaging cartoon can act as a soft landing spot in an otherwise off-putting news cycle.

“The world is a goddamn mess, with one news story being more horrible than the next,” Weyant said. “But cartoons can cut through that, and once you get someone into your content, they’re more likely to be exposed to the great journalism you have to offer.”

Of course, not all media companies have ignored the potential cartooning has to offer their digital pages.

Politico is one of the leading digital publishers in the country, yet their sole Pulitzer Prize was awarded for the political cartoons drawn by their staff ink slinger, Matt Wuerker. Politico smartly features Wuerker’s work on their highly-trafficked homepage, and in addition to his daily drawings, Wuerker posts a round-up of the nations best cartoons each week, which is always among the sites most highly-trafficked and highest engaging pieces of content.

Over at the Los Angeles Times, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Horsey combines his daily political cartoons with a full column, giving the paper the best of both worlds in terms of commentary. The columns also helps traffic in two important ways—they drive up engagement time on Horsey’s cartoons and help drive search-engine traffic through the important use of keywords.

Then there are cartoonists like Jen Sorensen, whose was a Pulitzer finalist this year for her work in a variety of publications. Sorensen has done long-form cartooning for a number of publications, breaking down complex stories into an engaging form of storytelling that looks more like a comic book than a piece of journalism.

This allows Sorensen to explore subjects that are often off-the-radar for newspapers, who prefer to stick with more traditional journalism topics. One comic Sorensen drew for Fusion that quickly went viral focused on the story of a friend who told her about the time she was drugged and raped back in college.

“We couldn’t specifically name who her assailant was. So we just told her story,” Sorensen told the Nieman Journalism Lab. “I did have to be meticulous about it and make sure I got the facts right and was quoting her correctly. I would say that was a journalistic effort, but it’s a little different from, say, when we had someone go out and report on the California marijuana industry.”

So what’s stopping more media outlets, especially those with cartoonists already on staff, from experimenting and leveraging this unique content?

“I think it’s just atrophy,” Weyant said.“Thanks to layoffs, editors are busier than ever, and it means they have less time to devote to things like cartoons, which they don’t really understand anyway.”

Weyant’s hope is to finish amassing data from media organizations that do feature political cartoons and publish a report outlining some best practices, in the hopes that editors might realize that cartoons, done properly, can be an important component to a digital content strategy that values reader engagement.

“It’s personally edifying for me to be doing this research,” Weyant said. “But the larger part would be adding something useful to the conversation to convince editors of the opportunities having unique cartoons could provide them.”

Second Prize in the "Land Degradation and Climate" Cartoon Contest

June 23, 2017, 6:04 am

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The jury of the International Editorial Cartoon Competition, under the theme "Land Degradation and Climate: Europe and the World Facing the Ultimate Borders", selected 33 drawings to be exhibited at the Strasbourg City Hall from June 26 to 30 as part of the Desertification Summit 2017.

First Prize: Batti (France)

Second Prize (ex eaquo): Bado (Canada)

Second Prize (ex eaquo): Robert Rousso (France)

Chuck Asay announces retirement

June 23, 2017, 9:00 pm

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From the AAEC website.

Long-time political cartoonist Chuck Asay has announced his retirement. Again.

Asay stepped down from his post at the Colorado Springs Gazette in 2007, but continued to draw for Creators Syndicate until 2013.

He recently capped off his career by donating all his original cartoons, along with the publishing rights, to the Pikes Peak Library.

"The cartoons are in the process of being archived now," Asay wrote in an email. "It might take a few years to get everything up on site but you can find the ongoing work". 

The cartoonist, known for his strong conservative stance, also sent the following farewell note:

"My mom always taught us kids to leave a place just a little better than the way we found it. As I look at the issues I’ve visited in the past 30 to 40 years in my editorial cartoons, I’m finding almost everything has gotten worse. Sorry.

We have more government and less freedom. Addictions have grown stronger and families are weaker. There are still wars and rumors of wars. But it’s fun to look back and see how the more things change the more they stay the same.

In June of 2016 the Pikes Peak Library District had a show and a panel discussion about some of my more provocative cartoons. 

You can find this program at https://vimeo.com/180241372.

I’ve given all my cartoons along with publishing rights to the Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado Springs. It’s a legacy thing. The folks at PPLD have graciously accepted the donation of my life’s work. We want to make it available to the general public.

You can also find some Asay interviews, demonstrations and programs by doing a search on your internet provider at Youtube.com and type in chuck asay or go to https://vimeo.com/81060486 to see a little cartoon story about Xmas.