End of an era
Drawing from the past, Brian Duffy sketches new horizons
By Michael Swanger
Brian Duffy can draw from memory his first week as editorial cartoonist for the Des Moines Register as if it were yesterday. It was August 1983 at the Iowa State Fair, and he was assigned to sketch caricatures of fairgoers — sort of a trial-by-fire initiation to Iowa culture for the Chicago native who had also lived in New York, Connecticut and Milwaukee.
“It was extremely hot and everybody said, ‘Boy, you have big shoes to fill,’ [referring to his predecessor Frank Miller who had died that February]. It was like 110 degrees, and it felt like I was a turkey in an oven because it was a lot warmer by time I got done. I was struck by how Iowans took their cartoonists to heart,” Duffy says.
Drawing front-page editorial cartoons was serious business for more than a century at “The Newspaper Iowa Depends Upon,” judging by the popularity and acclaim garnered by Duffy (1983-2008), Miller (1953-1983), Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling (1906-1916 and 1919-1949) and Tom Carlisle (who filled in for Darling). Not only were readers loyal to them, they were revered by their peers in the newspaper industry as Darling (also a nationally renown conservationist) and Miller were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 and 1943, and 1963, respectively.
“Ding was more than just a cartoonist, he wrote editorial dissertations within the cartoons,” says Walt Shotwell, former Register reporter and columnist. “His cartoons could be humorous or deadly serious, and his comments were quite profound. He was the dean of editorial cartoonists of that era.”
Steve Peglow, a Des Moines artist who worked as an art director, illustrator and designer for the Register from 1968 to 1993, grew up idolizing Darling’s successor. As a child, he would copy Miller’s cartoons as part of his after-school routine. It eventually paid off, and when the Register hired him during his senior year at North High School, he was seated in the newsroom between Miller and former columnist Donald Kaul.
“Frank was so gifted,” he says. “His cartoons were like movie sets… and unlike Ding, he wanted to sit in the middle of the newsroom and be around the reporters. It was quite an education growing up in that newsroom and working with Frank for 15 years.”
Over time, Duffy says, Iowans accepted him, too, though his drawing style was different from Miller’s [which was a continuation of Darling’s] and his political slant was independent compared to that of Darling’s, which was more conservative, and Miller’s, which was more liberal. The former Register cartoonist says he can’t recall when it happened, but he realized at some point in his career that he had gained the readers’ trust to “fill Frank’s shoes.”
 “Iowans like to study an outsider for a while to see how respectful they are and they like to look at the tone and accept a person when they feel comfortable with them,” he says. “Once you’re accepted, you’re really accepted.”
Peglow says Duffy’s talents were undeniable, and he was clearly the best choice to carry on the Register’s job of editorial cartoonist.
“They had six qualified people that applied and Brian, who was just a kid, blew them out of the water with his cartoons,” he says. “He had an incredible pen and ink ability. But he would have a hell of a mountain to climb over the years; from when he first got there, and the editor wanting to move him off the front page (though he didn’t), to adding color, to technology changes, to shrinking the size of the paper so that in the end his cartoon looked like an index item.”
Duffy credits Milwaukee editorial cartoonists Tom Curtis (Milwaukee Sentinel) and Bill Sanders (Milwaukee Journal) for showing him the tools of the trade, adding, “There is no Cartoon 101 in college.”
“I learned a long time ago that you have to be able to draw something actually the way it is before you can make it into a cartoon,” he says. “A cartoon is taking reality and stretching it out with a rubber mask. But you have to know how far you can go, because when you satirize to the point of crossing the line, you run into problems.”
After taking the job at the Register, the former Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design student quickly learned how much satire Iowans would tolerate. He also busied himself studying Iowans and the news en route to carving out a place for himself in the Register’s lineage of editorial cartoonists.
“I always had an interest in politics and economics, so that helped when it came to staying on top of the news,” Duffy says. “I think cartoonists have this inferiority complex, because they’re looked upon as funny people and not as serious journalists. We just use different vehicles than columnists and writers to get our points across, though we’re just as knowledgeable of the news as they are.
“We’re the type of people who come down the hill after a battle and shoot the wounded. That’s generally what our job is.”
In addition to his thirst for news, Duffy credits the “proverbial light bulb” for the ideas for his thousands of cartoons over the years.
“The light bulb illuminates everything I want to see in the scene in my head first,” he says. “Then I’ll put it down on a piece of rough scratch paper and change it two or three times. That’s the heavy lifting. After that, it’s the mechanics, which is the boring part because I’ve done it for so many years.”
Like a writer, Duffy says cartoonists must get their point across to the reader quickly and succinctly.
“When I draw a cartoon I want the message to stand out and I want to be sure the image itself doesn’t turn off the reader before they get to that message. That’s the most important part. There are cartoonists out there whose images are so off-putting that their message is lost prior to getting to the reader,” he says. “If a reader can’t get past that, they won’t get into your cartoon. Bill Sanders told me, ‘you have about two to three seconds to get your idea across. After that, you might as well write an editorial.’”
 Duffy says one of the advantages of drawing an editorial for the Register’s front page was that “nobody knew if it was an editorial or news.” But when the Register fired the 25-year veteran cartoonist in a round of staff cuts on Dec. 4, 2008, it became the last big newspaper in the United States to eliminate its front-page editorial cartoon, a Register tradition that began in 1906 with Darling.
“They destroyed a tradition,” Duffy says. “That’s probably the biggest thing. Iowans like tradition and they completely and utterly destroyed a tradition that had been there for over 100 years. Irrespective of if I was drawing them or not, they removed something that made it unique… Add to that the fact that in our world where everything is increasingly becoming visual and it makes no sense that quite a few cartoonists have been let go.”
After being fired from the Register, Duffy says he received more than 1,000 emails, letters and calls from loyal readers, offering their support to him. The West Des Moines resident says he plans to stay in central Iowa where he and his wife have raised their daughters. His editorial cartoons are syndicated in more than 450 newspapers across the country and he is considering a similar deal with smaller weekly and daily newspapers throughout Iowa that are members of the Iowa Newspaper Association.
“It’s almost like going back to another era of newspapers,” Duffy says. “All the doom and gloom focus is on the major corporations that own big newspapers. The smaller newspapers that are locally owned and know their bases are doing well. They are to the newspaper industry what microbreweries are to the beer industry — they know what their niche is.”
Networking for clients is one of the rigors Duffy is enduring in his new role as a freelance artist.
“It’s a little more nerve-wrecking, because I have to take care of the business and artistic ends of things,” Duffy says. “But nothing in today’s world is set in stone. The technology alone keeps things moving. It’s not like it was in the old days at newspapers where they did the same thing year after year. It’s a different animal.”
 Duffy is also locked in a battle with his former employer over the rights to his cartoons. As of press time, The Register informed Duffy that his originals were to be donated to and archived at the University of Iowa. The Register claims that they can do this as they “hold the copyright for the work our staff produces,” while Duffy says it was always a joint copyright — “Copyright Brian Duffy and the Des Moines Register.” He has now hired an attorney to help him get his works back.
“I’m still playing games with the Register,” Duffy says. “It’s interesting — both of my predecessors still have their originals, but I’m fighting with the Register to get mine back. We share copyrights in them and I’ve never signed anything saying I don’t have rights over my cartoons. The only real value they have is sentimental value. They have no value to them because if that were the case, I would still be there. But I’ve moved on. You have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and keep moving.”
After the Flood: UIMA’s Artworks get ‘temporary housing’
Davenport’s Figge to host exhibition of UI’s artistic legacy
By Emily Grosvenor
First, the University of Iowa Museum of Art’s (UIMA) director resigned last April, and then the flood in June left the UIMA without a home. Then, Iowa politicians began floating the idea of selling the museum’s most prized painting, Jackson Pollock’s 1943 painting Mural, igniting a national backlash that distracted the museum’s staff from the hard work of moving on from the flood.
“These have been a very difficult eight months,” says Kathleen Edwards, curator of European and American art at the UIMA. “But we’ve got a very committed core staff that has never given up, and we’re pushing forward.”
The UIMA takes one giant leap forward in April, when it opens an exhibition of 24 of its most important works at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport. The exhibition, set to run through August 2, will likely spark a larger, national discussion about the role art plays in the university setting at a time when U.S. universities have considered selling art to bolster dwindling endowments.
“The art museum is not an academic unit of the university,” Edwards says. She and her colleagues have been working out of temporary cubicles in a former Menard’s building south of Iowa City since the flood. “But it does very much have an academic purpose,” she adds, mentioning the hundreds of classes that have used the museum’s collection as a jumping off point for coursework and reflection.
Coinciding with the exhibition, the museum plans a talk mid-April featuring Lee Rosenbaum, an arts and culture blogger for the site artsjournal.com who calls herself “culture grrl” and who has been a major voice in the trend towards de-accessioning art.
“We really want to start a conversation with the community on how great art can be used for great teaching,” Edwards says.
The first artwork visitors will see when they arrive at the exhibition will be Pollock’s much-discussed painting — a gift to the UIMA from famed arts patron Peggy Guggenheim, valued at an estimated $150 million. The exhibition also introduces some of the museum’s less-heralded but similarly important works, including Max Beckman’s expressionist triptych masterpiece Karneval, Marc Chagall’s charming The Blue Horse, and Adolph Gottlieb’s 1972 mindblower Edge.
 The artworks will move from Chicago, where they’ve been since June, to the Figge which generously offered the collaboration with the UIMA. Located in a jaw-dropping architectural marvel just three and a half years old, the Figge boasts state-of-the-art gallery spaces on a gorgeous riverfront setting – one that isn’t threatened by the waters that run by it. The museum has also offered storage space suitable for housing much of the university museum’s collection and additional space for its staff.
“The Figge Art Museum is honored to partner with the UIMA,” Figge Director Sean O’Harrow said in a statement. “Having the UIMA at the Figge will allow Iowa residents and tourists to visit the banks of the Mississippi and appreciate two great collections from two great institutions.”
Plans are also afoot to bring the collection to the Des Moines Art Center next fall, with a roster of traveling exhibitions planned for the coming months as the university continues an ongoing discussion about the UIMA’s future.
The UIMA has already made nearly 250 prints, photographs, and drawings from its collection available by appointment on campus at the UI Libraries Special Collections, and has been working with its fine arts insurance company, Lloyds of London, to identify suitable on-campus venues for other parts of its collection.
“We are still telling the story of the legacies of this art,” Edwards says. If anything, Edwards emphasizes, this flood has given the museum an opportunity to talk about what Iowa’s artistic legacy means.
Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956)
Mural, 1943
Oil on canvas
8' 1 1/4" x 19' 10" (2.47 x 6.05 m)
Gift of Peggy Guggenheim 1959.6
Handmade Haven
Iowa Artisans Gallery going strong after 25 years
By Katie Mills Giorgio
The winter wind may still be blowing outside the doors of 207 East Washington Street in downtown Iowa City. But inside Iowa Artisans Gallery is a different flurry of activity.
Art is being moved and remerchandised for display. Some spots are better than others, and “we want to be fair to all our artists,” says Astrid Bennett, Iowa Artisans Gallery’s Marketing Director.
That can be quite a feat when you consider the gallery currently represents more than 200 artists. Visitors (often hailing from all over the country and world thanks for busy University of Iowa programs) will find a variety of gift items, from clay, glass, and metal to wood, fiber, jewelry and select 2D work.
Plus, on this particular wintry day, space is being prepped for the next gallery exhibition. “Family Portrait” — on display through March 22nd — is an invitational exhibition that celebrates family in all of its incarnations. It will feature the work of Beppie Weiss, Valerie Miller, Marcia Wegman, Nan Briggs, Anna Marie Pavlik, Larry Welo, and several other artists. Then comes a mixed-media painting exhibition by artist Norma Wolff, which opens March 26th and runs through April 26th.
And in October, the gallery will celebrate its 25th anniversary. “That’s a big thing in the gallery world,” Bennett says. Iowa Artisans Gallery was founded by twelve craft artists (five of whom are still owners) in 1984 — with a focus on contemporary American craft, especially by Midwestern artist — and has been owned and operated by artists since.
Bennett says that original concept still drive the galleries operations. “There are very few stores in this country today where almost everything you can buy is 100 percent American made,” she says. “The whole handmade movement is gaining a lot of ground, which is cool.”
But like any business, the gallery is feeling the effects of the economic slump, especially because people are spending more conservatively. “Any business is affected,” says Bennett, “but we’ve weathered these things before. We band together with the artists, our customers, and fellow business people to get through. In the end it is something that makes us stronger.”
 At Iowa Artisans Gallery they not only display creativity but also try to think creatively. They added a web sales site last year, just started a blog and are in the process of setting up a Facebook page. “I am really exited about that and marketing in the digital age,” Bennett says. The shift to more e-marketing it is cost effective, she says, and allows them to share enhanced images of their impressive inventory.
The gallery’s current location in the historic, light-filled Paul-Helen Building is their third in downtown Iowa City. “There’s no other place in my mind,” says Bennett. The arts scene is certainly alive and well there. Iowa Artisans Gallery is one of 18 participating organizations in the Downtown Iowa City Gallery Walk scheduled for March, June and October each year.
Bennett herself started with Iowa Artisans Gallery in 1991 in a public relations position. She has come full circle as she now handles the marketing and special events for the gallery, after stepping down as manager last year. Iowa Artisans Gallery currently has three full time and eight half time employees, led by sales floor manager Denise Manard. “We are a very collaborative crew,” says Bennett. “It’s everyone’s efforts that make this place go.”
And with a mindset like that, it seems likely Iowa Artisans Gallery will go on offering a place to celebrate and even take home a bit of handmade America for at least 25 years more.
For more information about Iowa Artisans Gallery visit www.iowa-artisans-gallery.com/ or check out their blog at iowa-artisans.blogspot.com/.
On being a non-profit in difficult economic times
ICON’s Bill Teeple gives one perspective
By Cathy Wilkie
The arts community recently breathed a collective sigh of relief when the $50 million earmarked for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) survived a Senate/House showdown. But down in the trenches, just how have these difficult economic times affected the arts sector?
Some for-profit arts businesses are seeing dwindling sales or traffic, and some are cutting staff or programming to save money. Nonprofits, however, don’t have that luxury. If they cut programming, they run the risk of not being as palatable to grant-givers once the storm is over. If they cut an already bare-bones staff, they can’t operate.
We spoke with Fairfield’s ICON Gallery director Bill Teeple to get a feel for how the economy is affecting his nonprofit organization, along with his thoughts on President Obama’s vision for the arts.
AS: How are you doing during these hard economic times?
Teeple: We’re waiting to see how it’s going to fall out. It’s going to affect us worse from here on out, I think. The general effect that we’ve noticed in 2008 is that we’re getting a lot less [of the] larger donations, but we have a lot more people at the $50 membership level — and that’s been keeping us going. But with the really dramatic downturn that’s hitting people hard right now, we’re waiting to see. We’re lucky enough that with some of our publicity and promotions — we’ve gotten twice as many people at that lower level.
AS: Do you rely on grant money?
Teeple: We get grant money for projects, but the Iowa Arts Council doesn’t give grant money for general operating expenses. We have to dig up the money for that through membership and various fundraising events. We had someone organize a sale of imported items she brought back from Nepal and all over the world to raise money for ICON.
AS: Do you get money from the NEA?
Teeple: No. We need to do more research to see what we can get on a national level for corporate and public funding — that is what we’re going to delve into deeply. [Up until now] we’ve relied on local support. It’s quite inspiring that a town of 10,000 people has supported an organization like ours through memberships — that’s a good thing!
AS: What has your attendance been like at the gallery and the various gallery-sponsored events (such as ICON Video Night and “Odd Thursday” events)?
Teeple: Well, that’s been pretty consistent, but most of it’s free for our members, and if anybody’s not a member we just ask them to pay a couple bucks donation. The Art Walk evenings are always free — and we’re seeing 350-500 people through our doors for those. We’re not making it difficult for people to take part in the things that we offer. The economy hasn’t kept people from coming out and having fun. We’ve had more people than ever enjoying what we offer.
 AS: Have you heard about the petition that was born out of an interview last fall on WNYC’s “Soundcheck” in which the music impresario Quincy Jones said that when he next spoke to Obama he would “beg for a secretary of arts?”
Teeple: I signed it. The idea sounds good to me, and I think we have a better chance than ever before with Obama to have an administration department that deals with the arts.
AS: Have you heard of Obama’s “Artist’s Corp” idea, which would send trained artists to work in low-income schools and their communities?
Teeple: I didn’t know that — that’s good. I knew he wanted more people out serving [their communities] and volunteering.
AS: That was in his platform. That, and the fact that he wanted to give artists a tax break when they donate their works for charitable causes.
Teeple: That’s been a problem for some time. It would help me — then artists would be more inclined to donate artwork for fundraising purposes.
COMING UP AT ICON:
“Icon is like a little museum,” says Teeple, “it’s a purely aesthetic experience.” From March 6-April 18, ICON features the work of two Iowa artists, Suanna Breed and Mary Snyder Behrens.
Breed, a Fairfield local, is an abstract painter and has a style that is “uniquely her own,” says Teeple. “There are subtle references in the work to landscape, cartoons, elemental spirits — but nothing overt, so flavors of these things hover in your mind.”
Mary Snyder Behrens of Dysart is a mixed-media artist. Her work has been shown at art galleries and museums throughout the U.S., England, Canada and Japan.
“Many of my visual elements are metaphors for memories, both the wonderful and the terrible, which are inextricably tangled up with the experiences of my waking life,” says Behrens.
The Price of Art
By Michael Betancourt
Because most artists will keep making things even when they aren’t getting paid, have an audience or even can afford to make art, it may seem that the “laws of supply and demand” should apply to how we value art. That they don’t thus seems very strange because it is fairly obvious that there will always be a lot of artists around making art, and that the supply should always be relatively high.
However, we don’t value art like this: the value of art is thought to be separate from economics, even though during the past decade-long art boom the prices for art by the most prominent artists, trained at the most prestigious schools and selling through the highest-priced galleries continued to increase seemingly without end — until the bust finally arrived at the end of last year. Certainly during the boom years there was a lot of art that was sold for too much money, just as during the bust years there will be art sold for too little money. The value of the work nevertheless remains somehow a different matter than money.
Why and where did this other valuation system come from? What purpose does it serve and who benefits from it? These questions are worth considering as the bust years get started once again. They are questions that only seem important to the general audience when the money goes out of art and, dreamers awakening from some weird dream, they look around their collections and wonder what they did with all their money.
The idea that art transcends monetary value is a recent invention. Just a few centuries ago, artists were mere craftsmen, paid for their labor and the costs of their materials — paintings and sculpture naturally became the most precious commodities simply because their materials were the most expensive, consequently, the art objects reflected this cost of materials: the intrinsic value of art objects.
As artists began to claim more significance for themselves, the idea of art was born and with the nineteenth century cult of the genius, the separation between artists and everyone else began. This transformation happened as industrialization began moving rapidly and the landed aristocracy — the traditional patrons, along with the Church, of art — began to find their political and economic power quickly eroding. Yet, their cultural position remained, and the newly wealthy middle classes (the bourgeoisie) started copying the aristocrats. Artists seeking to make themselves rich as well encouraged the myths of art as inherently valuable, as existing somehow beyond the simply arithmetic of money: and it was true, artists were selling social standing, not decorations.
Art serves as the marker of social position in our society; it differentiates between the poor, the poorly educated, and their wealthy peers. The function of museums, galleries, exhibition spaces and the charitable donations (or sales) which support them is to reaffirm these social distinctions and the relationships between the aspirants, the established, and the general masses of people for whom visiting the museum is “good for them”: among other things it teaches them to recognize social distinctions. The idea that art entails uplift (which is one function it can provide, as can music, television, reading, or almost any other activity) does not mean that there are not other, perhaps more visible functions — especially for the social groups excluded from the wealth that is always on display in the gallery.
BLIND CRITIC
Olson-Larsen Galleries
Four Solo Exhibitions
Artists: David Ottenstein, John Beckelman, Karen Chesterman, Stuart Klipper
Opening Reception February 6, 2009
Olson-Larsen Galleries – 203 Fifth St. – West Des Moines, IA 50265
Gallery Statement:
Olson-Larsen Galleries represent the finest of original artwork by Iowa and regional artists. The gallery maintains a diverse inventory that includes work in virtually all art mediums. The gallery also offers a variety of services including consulting, presentations and proposals for both corporate and individual clients, museum-quality framing and commissioned works of art.
The Show:
Four artists came together to fill the four galleries under the Olson-Larsen roof. David Ottenstein and Stuart Klipper both work in photographic mediums, but gather their works of art from very different subjects. Ottenstein focused his black and white exhibit on Iowa landscapes, while Klipper brought in a host of color photos from Antarctica as well as images from the Midwest. John Beckelman’s exhibit, titled “Ceramics: New York,” explored vessels of all sizes fired in a residual salt atmosphere. Karen Chesterman contributed a worldly feel to the exhibit with her “Paintings: Eastern Influences.” Her oil on canvas works were inspired by a bicycle trip through Vietnam.
The Welcome:
Guests were greeted as friends at the door and handed information on a brunch and gallery talk to be given by Stuart Klipper later in February. A space to hang coats made guests feel comfortable walking through the exhibit without cold weather gear.
The Accessibility:
The four rooms of the gallery offered plenty of space for the guests to spread out and, as a result, examine the works of art closely.
The Ambience:
Olson-Larsen Galleries are quiet places with only a steady din of polite conversation. Many of the people in attendance appeared to be old friends. The exhibits were thoughtfully arranged in the gallery to add a natural flow through the works, even when visitors had to travel down back hallways to get to more exhibit spaces.
The Nosh:
Tasty bits from meatballs to a cheese tray, vegetables and wine were laid out for guests.
The Sale:
David Ottenstein’s works were priced from $825 up to the large “Barn and Windmill” at $2,650. Stuart Klipper’s photographs were priced from $1,800-$7,100. The vessels of John Beckelman ran from the very reasonable $125 to just $900. Karen Chesterman’s large canvases started at $3,000 and peaked at $6,000.
The Final Thought:
The exhibits left a feeling of ordinary in our minds. They were skilled, beautiful artworks, but they were exactly what you would expect from a host of contemporary art. This was the kind of art you purchase, place in your living room and collect polite compliments on its beauty, but never give a second thought to the nature or content of the art.
Ranking: Middlebrow
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