SEARSPORT — Carver Memorial Library, 12 Union St., hosts local cartoonist and Maine native Douglas Coffin for an artist talk Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 6:30 p.m. The talk accompanies an exhibit of his cartoons, which are on display in the downstairs hall gallery through February.
Coffin will talk about cartooning in general, explain what goes into making an editorial cartoon, and some of the constraints and pitfalls. He will also talk about comic strips (“the funnies”), and single-panel cartoons, such as those seen in The New Yorker.
Coffin, who now lives in Stockton Springs, was nationally syndicated by United Feature Syndicate for his comic strip “Fletcher’s Landing,” daily and Sundays, for three years back in the early ’80s. Then, while working his day work as a graphic designer and later as a hand lettercutter in stone, he took on the job of editorial cartoonist for The Waldo Independent, a weekly published in Belfast. Coffin’s single-panel, black-and-white cartoons were a popular feature of the upstart paper from 1985 to 2008 — offering an alternative perspective on local news and issues. If you produce a thing once a week for 23 years, you’ve got around 1,000 of whatever it is you did. Carver Memorial Library is exhibiting almost 200 of his editorial cartoons!
The hall gallery is open during regular library hours. For more information, call the library at 548-2303 or email staff@carverlibrary.org.
