This past weekend, I was at the Ohio State University Festival of Cartoon Art at their newly built facility, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
Whew! It was the eleventh tri-ennial Festival, and it was great. The facility has been years in the making, and while there is a little work to be done to finish the building, and there were lots of guys in hard hats working diligently the whole time of the Festival, that’s cool. Very few buildings have been done on time in the history of mankind.
The only real question is- Is it funnier if the building’s not yet finished inside, or would it be funnier if it was? That’s important to that many cartoonists and researchers.
Yes, there were cartooning history researchers there… from at least five countries. Cool, no? Might even be funny, in the right light.
Anyhow, here are some photos I took. If you click on them, you get to see them larger.
There are even some names you might recognize in there. In the third photo down, that’s Mort Walker- who originated ‘Beetle Bailey’ and ‘Hi and Lois’ and whose family continues to do the strips. In the next photo down you have Dan Thompson, Chris Sparks, Norm Feuti, and Mark Parisi. In the following photo, aside from University dignitaries and Philanthropists to whom we owe much, are Jenny Robb and Lucy Caswell, for whom all cartoonists and cartooning academics everywhere have a warm, soft spot in our hearts and lives. They were about to cut the ribbon on the fine new $13,000,000.00 facility. After that, you get to see Dave Kellett and Brendan Burford. Then, the panel of folks who talked about the really terrific new documentary STRIPPED- That’s Dave Kellett again, Fred Schroeder, Dylan Meconis, Hilary Price, and Patrick McDowell.
If you don’t already know all these people, I urge you to bone up on your cartoonin’ knowledge and google ’em. I deliberately left off the features that most of the cartoonists do and the syndicate that one fella edits in, so you can guess if you have the chops, or you can look ’em up and expand your world. Discovery Educates.
Anyone else want stickers? Yes, you’ll have to email me your address or POBox, but I do promise with all sincerity that I’ll never sell the information to anyone else. Plus, chances are that I’ll lose your address myself, and thus you’re protected from ever even receiving junk mail from me. Probably. Someday I might have something worth mailing around, and then you’re really in for it. Assuming I haven’t lost your address. Which I will. It’s not like I’m an orderly person or anything.
