Baskets Of Cartoons
Here at Spill central we (“we” meaning myself and my New Yorker cartoonist colleague, and wife, Liza Donnelly) finally decided to paint what we call the piano room (it’s called “the piano room” because there’s an old player piano in the room). But the room’s main purpose is not player piano music — it serves as a sort of a cartoon gallery, where we fill the walls with cartoon originals.
Some pieces have remained on the walls year after year, while other pieces just hang for a few months, only to be replaced by others; we try to let each piece in our collection have some wall time.
Painting meant (of course) removing every cartoon from the walls. We temporarily put all of the originals in baskets and carried them in another room away from potential paint splatter.
What’s become apparent in the week or so since we finished painting the room is our inability to begin rehanging work. Much is made of how intimidating it can be to face the empty sheet of paper before beginning to draw (or before writing); we momentarily have met our bare sheet of paper, in the form of bare walls.
Visible in the photo: a Johan Bull design for The New Yorker‘s Skyline column. and a drawing of Alexander Woollcott by Art Young.
Their A-Zs:
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Johan Bull (photograph dated 1934, courtesy of the Bull family) Born c. 1894, Oslo. Died Stowe, Vermont, Sept. 1945. New Yorker work (cartoons): July 4, 1925 – Oct. 22, 1927 *his NYTs obit says he contributed to The New Yorker until 1930, perhaps the last three years he contributed spot drawings(?)
Art Young Born January 14, 1866, Illinois. Died December 29, New York City at The Hotel Irving. An online biography. 1943. NYer work: 1925 -1933. The Art Young Gallery