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August 18, 2005
An Evening with a New Yorker Cartoonist
Susanne and I had quite the social evening tonight. First, I swung by a gathering of Boston-area video bloggers hosted by Steve Garfield, where a group of us enjoyed some beers while chatting about video blogging, community media and other topics interesting to us media geeks. I then grabbed a cab and headed to Cambridge, where I met Susanne for an evening with New Yorker cartoonist Drew Dernavich. The event, hosted by the magazine and Grand Marnier, was an opportunity to sample a range of Grand Marnier cocktails on someone else's dime (their margaritas were wicked strong) and snack on as many crab cakes and asparagus fritters you could shove down your gizzard.
After 30 minutes of lounging, Drew Dernavich took the stage, which in this case was just the front of the bar. Unfortunately, the bar was configured as a long, thin space, so unless you were within 15 feet of the cartoonist or the PA system adjacent to him, it was almost impossible to hear a word he was saying. I made out a few random facts, though, such as it took him 12 years before he got published in the New Yorker, and that he studied sculpture in Italy.
After his presentation, he invited guests to chat with him and make requests for drawings. I had my digital camera with me, so I figured we could sneak back to the front, observe him in action, and maybe ask a question or two. One aspiring cartoonist asked him some questions about the biz, but after that, Dernavich started taking requests. After drawing a picture of a man covered in grass cuttings from his neighbor's lawn mower, Chewbacca-style, he made eye contact with me and paused to see if I had a drawing request. I drew a blank for a moment, but then asked him how he would portray Boston's notorious problem with bad street signage. (If you want to get lost in Boston, follow the signs and it's inevitable.) Dernavich smiled, paused another moment, and got to work, drawing a "Welcome to Massachusetts" sign almost completely obscured by a giant tree:
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Video of Drew Dernavich drawing a cartoon of Boston's infamously poor street signs. |
Before leaving, I asked Dernavich about the New Yorker's habit of running cartoons in which generic individuals are portrayed, rather than caracatures of famous people, as often seen in newspapers. Was this practice a challenge to him as a cartoonist, or did he find it liberating?
"I like it, because from a standpoint of being timeless, in a newspaper, what you find are cartoons being published about a specific politician or a specific event," he replied. "The New Yorker publishes ones that are... Well, even if you know it's in the news, still a lot of people will see it and say, 'I don't get it.' But if it's not about a specific event or a specific person, that way it can still be funny on its own, five or 10 years down the line, once that person's gone from the news. So I consider this more of an opportunity."
With that, Dernavich ripped the cartoon of the street sign off his drawing pad, rolled it up, and handed it to me. eBay, anyone? -andy
Posted by acarvin at August 18, 2005 8:10 PM
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