Wow! It's been
waaaay too long since my last blog posting. The good news is that silence usually means I'm busy. The downside is that I sometimes miss the opportunity to share timely news.
So, before I let the silence linger any longer...
I recently had a
wonderful time at the second
Kenosha Festival of Cartooning.
Personally, I just love the idea of a festival whose ultimate goal is to celebrate cartooning by bringing artists and audiences together. Add a charity auction to benefit a children's hospital and center for grieving children, and I'm completely hooked.
And so, when the festival's founder & director,
Anne Morse Hambrock, asked me a few months ago if I'd be interested/available in being the official festival photographer, I was honoured to accept her invitation. Heck, I would've been a fool to decline the opportunity to meet and hang-out with some of the top professional cartoonists in newspaper comic strips!
Although I'm a far cry from a professional photographer, being a member of the National Cartoonists Society, I saw this as a great way give back to the cartooning community and help encourage the general public's interest in cartooning.
You can find
240 photos that I took on the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning's
Facebook page.
You can also find several of the same photos in chronological order with captions on the
Festival's Blog (Photo Gallery 2012) .
I hope you enjoy viewing them ... I certainly enjoyed taking them!
Among the many treasured memories I returned to Canada with, I was
very happy to win a
Mutts original comic strip art by Patrick McDonnell at the National Cartoonist Society Foundation's charity auction. The auction raised over $10,000 for
The Children's Hospitals of Wisconsin's Kenosha Clinic and
Margaret Ann's Place!
 |
| Mutts original comic strip art by Patrick McDonnell. |
... I enjoy the work of many cartoonists, but as my studio bookshelves will attest, there is a select group of syndicated comic strip cartoonists that, for various reasons, I consider my heroes. Patrick McDonnell is indeed one of my heroes, and as a friend & fellow cartoonist* learned at the charity auction, there was no way I was leaving without winning this piece of art! Once I have it professionally framed behind museum glass, it will be given a place of honour in my studio.
(*name withheld to protect the innocent!)
A warm thank you to Anne Hambrock for offering me the opportunity to help the festival.
Stay TOONed!
- Mike Cope
