The New Yorker Cartoonists' Centennial Weekend
THE NECESSITY OF COMMUNITY
Last week was the New Yorker’s 100th birthday, and I (together with cartoonist Ngozi Ukazu) planned a weekend of events just for the New Yorker cartoonists.
Only a handful of the (hundreds of) cartoonists got an invite to the limited-capacity, official New Yorker party:
So on a day in late January we took it upon ourselves to DO WHAT IT TOOK to celebrate all of the cartoonists properly:
and within a couple of days, the event website was up and the RSVPs were coming in.
[props to Kyle Bravo for brainstorming the term “centoonial” as it pertains to this event, even though it turns out Disney already owns the term]
It felt akin to planning a wedding weekend in three weeks. So many cartoonists descended upon New York City on such short notice, and volunteered their time and talents to help make this magical weekend possible. We kept saying how we couldn’t believe how well it was going, but at the same time, it wasn’t surprising at all. We knew that getting as many cartoonists as possible together in the same room could only lead to good things.
THERE WAS:
A museum crawl (where ~50 cartoonists viewed the “Covering The New Yorker” exhibit at L’Alliance, the “Drawn From The New Yorker” exhibit at the Society of Illustrators, and the NYPL’s “A Century of The New Yorker” exhibit);
A Cartoonist Party & Comedy Showcase
featuring, among other things:
A Cartoon Caption Contest -
This thing of beauty -
And a comedy showcase featuring four of our very own talented cartoonists/comedians, and in classic “that’s just New York baby!!!” fashion, a surprise closing set by The Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng.
The next night, there was a Drink & Draw - a more chill follow-up where we all talked more, shared our art supplies, drew cartoons of each other and where I received free martinis in exchange for drawing cartoons of the bartender’s sick cat.
My personal Centoonial weekend also involved running the Central Park Half Marathon the morning after the Cartoonist Party, on two hours of sleep (don’t do this!!! sleep is important!!!). I’m training for a marathon, and my training run that week was going to be half-marathon-length anyway, so I figured why not just sign up for a race and get a medal out of it??
My primary motivation for doing it was so that I could wear this shirt I designed, in celebration of being a cartoonist in New York celebrating the centennial, and also to mark this being my first ever “let’s just have fun!!!!” half marathon. I probably need to devote an entire post to the experience of doing this since it really was just…. very personally monumental, if i actually end up making it to the marathon without injury, but I’M PUTTING A PIN IN THAT for now.
I “hosted” the Cartoonist Party, and i successfully avoided crying but I did say some things about how unbelievable it was for me — a relative newcomer — to be in that room with so many venerated cartoonists, while also realizing that my contemporaries were now the modern icons.
Getting to be a New Yorker cartoonist is an ongoing dream assignment that I feel like I still have not processed. I have so much love and reverence for everyone, and because i LOVE an act of service, this was my way of showing that appreciation in a real way. And while this weekend had a lot of the “old guard” in attendance, I also knew that there would be a LOT of newer cartoonists meeting each other / having this experience for the first time, and I knew it would be transformative for them.
In November 2019, I (then a struggling part-time artist) had just sold my first few cartoons and I visited the New Yorker offices for the first time on a 40 hour layover. I had dinner with the editor, Emma Allen, but met no other cartoonists.
When the pandemic hit, I pitched cartoons remotely from little old Vancouver. In 2022, I was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for those cartoons. Through all of this, I had no tangible community of cartoonists to speak of - just people I followed on Instagram and admired from afar.
In 2023, the cartoonists were invited to the New Yorker’s 98th anniversary party - a relatively low-key affair that DOZENS of us still flew out to attend.
It was my first time visiting New York since 2019, and my first time meeting the other cartoonists. I felt, for the first time, like I had a context for this ridiculous work that had come to define so much of who I was. These were some of the the nicest, funniest and most talented people I’d ever met, with whom I felt immediate kinship.
I’ve been lucky to return to New York a few times since then, and the friendships I’ve formed have become INDISPENSABLE to my ability to draw cartoons and to move through this increasingly fraught world where, if I’m not careful, every second thought I have becomes “how does any of this matter / wouldn’t my time be better spent learning how to subsistence farm???” [note: it does / it wouldn’t be!]
January was one of the worst months in memory for things going rapidly downhill all over the place. So much is horrible, and worsening by the day. Orchestrating this weekend for the cartoonists was my little (big) way of distracting myself from the terribleness, and of fighting against all of the forces that seek to isolate and divide us.
I will often glance at a headline and feel completely bereft, but then I will get this almost immediate and totally opposite feeling of deep, deep gratitude, defiance, and strength in the knowledge that I am not going through this alone, and that even when I do not have confidence in myself, I do have confidence in my brilliant community.
Emily Flake (New Yorker cartoonist and founder of St. Nell’s Humor Residency) shared these words in her newsletter last week, which really hit me in the heart:
IN CONCLUSION. Make art just for the sake of it. Find your community, build your community. Give the love that you hope to receive.
Also CARTOONS ROCK!!!!!!!!! CARTOONS FOREVER!!!!!!!!
xo Zoe
Meeting people doing what you’re doing is so fulfilling for the soul - they ‘get’ you. Congratulations to you and Ngozi for making it happen for so many of your cartooning friends.
I love this energy so. Thank you for sharing! ❤️