I had the good luck to meet Liza Donnelly, cartoonist and Vassar professor, at the Omega Institute a few weeks ago and she had the generosity to send me a couple of her books: Funny Ladies: The New Yorker's Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons and Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love...in 200 Cartoons.
Funny Ladies is literally an illustrated history. If you're a New Yorker fan, you'll love it. If you think the New Yorker is elitist and stodgy, you might prefer Donnelly's Sex and Sensibility. In any case, I loved what she wrote about women and humor in the introduction:
Some theorists believe that women humorists are more often storytellers than joke tellers, more interested in communication than in presenting cleverness. This has perhaps been true because of the marginal position of women's humor. However, as humor from women has become more acceptable in society, as it is today, such statements of difference no loner ring true. Huguette Martel believes all cartoonists are "moralists," and Alice Harvey sought "to be true."
Nothing says it better than the medium itself. Check out these goodies:
"Just a warning: I'll leave you if you ever take up wearing suspenders."
"I hope my meteoric rise in the company isn't just because I am a man."
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One of the things I've always liked about cartoons is that you usually can't tell from that little scribbled signature whether the artist is a man or a woman. It makes some of the ones about gender, sex, dating, etc., a lot more interesting. Especially so since the format has its unique little place under the umbrella of comedy and there's such a hangup in the comedy world over "male" vs. "female" humor.
So thanks for this post. At least one of those is definitely going on my Christmas list.
i definitely love her work. It will definitely make you laugh and think. I have read alot.
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There is a need for more cross-connections between planners and historians, developers and sociologists, and surveyors and health professionals. A useful technique is to consider ‘outcome swaps’ in implementing a city vision. Here a planner might be charged with gearing plans to the goals of health professionals, thereby considering, say, obesity issues in thinking through urban design. The same notion might work with transport planners taking on the mantle of the person concerned with social inclusion or the head of environment taking on the mantle of transport planning.
Each profession has its value, but none fosters key elements of the combined qualities of thinking required for city-making: holistic, interdisciplinary, lateral; innovative, original, experimental; critical, challenging, questioning; people-centred, humanistic, nondeterministic; ‘cultured’, knowledgeable, critically aware of the past; and strategic.
If your figure is to be sold, you will need to present it in such a way that the potential collector can see it easily as part of his environment. You want him to say, "This figure could hang in my entry, this doll could sit on my bed, or this doll would make a great feature on a pedestal in my living room." You don't want the potential buyer to say, "I love this doll, but I can't think where 1 could put it."
The figure should be well attached to things that go with it. It doesn't take long for an important object to get separated from the figure. Make sure hats are sewn or glued on (I have had to make three hats for a doll that kept losing hers). Loose items can be sewn or glued to the hands or bases or even attached by using an "invisible" nylon filament or a fishing line or thread. Dolls can be sewn, tied, or wired onto their chairs or their pillow props. Send your pieces out with photos or instructions about pose and accessories. I carefully packed the teacup that went with one of my dolls by placing it under her. The museum staff looked high and low for it, but never found it. She sat on that teacup for the whole three months of the exhibit.