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BEHIND JEFF SMITH'S 'BONE' EXHIBIT
The curators behind the showcase of the acclaimed cartoonist's art dive into what a young Smith was like, the amazing cartooning treasures on display and how you can get your hands on the original 'Thorn' strips
By Kiel Phegley
Posted 5/8/2008
This weekend, Columbus, Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts in conjunction with The Ohio State University's Cartoon Research Library will open "Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond" a celebratory exhibit highlight the cartooning work of the award-winning Columbus cartoonist and many of his influences. The show kicks off Friday night at 6:00 with an opening celebration and continues Saturday at 2:00 pm with a
On display through August will be 80 original pages of Smith artwork from Bone, Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil and RASL as well as original art from some of Smith's biggest influences including Walt Kelly, Carl Barks and George Herriman. Plus, the celebration extends into events later this summer including a special comics talk with creators Terry Moore and Paul Pope (May 15th and 20th respectively) and a Smith-hosted showcase of Looney Tunes cartoon shorts on June 5. Oh, and don't forget that the fans who stop in at any time during the summer can check out Smith's early draft of Bone in the form of his college comic strip Thorn which will be showing in the Cartoon Research Library or see his current stylings in an original Bone mural the artist has created for the show (all of which you can read about by going to the official exhibit webpage).
With all that Bone-inspired material coming out, it's easy to overlook the contributions of the folks behind the scenes such as Lucy Caswell & David Filipi, the exhibit's curators. Caswell has been the head of OSU's Cartoon Library since it opened three decades ago and had the pleasure of being one of Smith's teachers in his college years. Filipi is a film curator at the Wexner Center and longtime comics reader. Together, the pair have worked hand in hand with the artist to bring the show together, and Wizard Universe caught them on the phone just before the final pieces of the show fell into place for a behind the scenes look at what viewers can expect starting this weekend.
WIZARD: So I hear you guys were just downstairs helping Jeff with some final touches to the big mural. I think a lot of people assume curating a gallery exhibit is all real delicate and high class, but is part of it running around putting things together like teenagers handing crepe paper for thier senior prom?
FILIPI: Somewhere in between, probably. There's lot of crepe paper, but...is that what it's called? Crepe paper?
CASWELL: Yes. [Laughs] One of the problems is, you think that you know in your head how it's going to look, and sometimes it turns out that way, but sometimes it doesn't. And I'm very happy to say that this one did, and it's gorgeous. So we're pretty excited.
Before we get to Jeff and his work, what can you tell me about this show as a collaboration between the Wexner Center and the Cartoon Library? Is this the first time the two organizations have collaborated on something like this?
CASWELL: We've cooperated on quite a number of projects. For instance, when we did our Peanuts 50th Anniversary show in 2000, Wexner was a co-sponsor. And the day our show opened they had a family day, and we had Snoopy, and we had a performance of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown." It was a really big deal. So we've worked together on various projects, but we've never done an exhibit together before. That's a new step, and we really had a good time, Dave and I. We're good collaborators.
FILIPI: And just to be clear, thee Wexner Center's on the campus of Ohio State as well. We actually share almost the same footprint.
CASWELL: We're sort of in the same campus buildings. Our library is, what, 250 yards from here?
FILIPI: Not even that far.
CASWELL: It's in the neighborhood.
David, I wanted to ask you when the first time you remember reading Bone was and how that interest translated into bringing some of this work into the Wexner.
FILIPI: I couldn't tell you the first time. I was a big comic book reader as a kid, and when I went to college for the most part I stopped. But maybe a couple of times throughout the year I would just poke my head into a comic book store to see what's new, but even then we're talking late '80s/early '90s. I moved to Columbus in 1994, and I'd definitely heard about Jeff Smith, and when I'd go into the main comic book store in Columbus, I'd pick up an issue, but that was the extent of it. I knew who Jeff was, and I knew what Bone was, but it's not like I was reading every single issue. I really didn't read the whole thing until Lucy and I started working on this project together. We'd been talking about a lot of other projects, and I was down in her space, and we started talking about how the cartoon library doesn't have a lot of gallery space. So I asked if there was ever a show that she wanted to do but couldn't do because of the lack of gallery space, and the first thing she said was "Jeff Smith," and it just took off from there.
And Lucy, you've known Jeff for quite a long time. Since his undergrad days at OSU. Did you have him as a student or did you connect with him in the library?
CASWELL: Jeff transferred to Ohio State from Columbus College of Art and Design because of our student newspaper, The Lantern. At the time Jeff was here in the early '80s, The Lantern was the fifth largest paper in the state of Ohio. It was publishing about 30,000 issues a day so the chance to do a comic strip in that kind of venue was really the kind of opportunity that Jeff understood what a great chance it would be. So he transferred from CCAD to Ohio State for the express purpose of doing a comic strip in the newspaper. At that time, our library was in the back hallway of the journalism building, and The Lantern was up on the second floor, so it was pretty easy for him to hear about the library and come down, and we got acquainted. I, the year before Jeff came, had offered a course on the history of newspaper comic and cartoons and decided to offer it again, and Jeff was in the class that took it the second time. So I had known him both as a Lantern cartoonist and as a student when he was here.
When was the first time you realized that this young man who had drawn for the school paper was creating a work in Bone that was going to have such widespread reach and impact on people?
CASWELL: Well, it didn't happen all at once, certainly. It evolved. And I think that when the first Bone book came out nobody could have predicted the pronominal success that it has had. I think it's the merits of the work, but it's also partly right time, right place. It's a combination of things that have contributed to Jeff's success.
What was Jeff like as a student and how much of the younger Jeff do you see in him as a professional cartoonist while you work on this show?
CASWELL: Jeff is very articulate about his profession. That was one of the things that set him apart as an undergraduate because he came as a student cartoonist with a consciousness of Walt Kelly's work in particular but of other cartoonists who he wanted to learn from. It's unusual to encounter young people of that age who get it that they can learn things from people who went before them. A lot of young people want to do it their way, and they don't want to hear how someone has done it before. Jeff was very intentional in studying the work of other great cartoonists, and he would visit the library to look at original artwork by people whose work we had or read reprint books. I think this gave him a different visual vocabulary than most student cartoonists because he had seen how other people did it, how other people paced their work, how they created character, how Charles Schultz used a slight gesture—all of this, and he was very conscious of applying this in his own work. So I think that when you talk to Jeff about his art – Bone or RASL or whatever—it's because of this intentionality that he has always had that he is so articulate.
David, what's Jeff been like for you as a collaborator in putting together a showcase of his work?
FILIPI: I guess what strikes me about Jeff is the same thing that Lucy's already said – just how enthusiastic he is. One of the things I've really appreciated about working with him is how he's just as excited to be exhibiting some of the Pogo work and Peanuts and Carl Barks as he is his own work, and I think that's really refreshing. He's just so enthusiastic, and like Lucy said he's so articulate. Not being a comic book artist, it's been fun to sit with Jeff and talk about not only his own work but other people's work. Just a few minutes ago we were down in the gallery and looking at a Carl Barks page, and I was asking if he could describe the differences between—like if you look at a Walt Kelly page, there's all kinds of blue pencil on it. You can see the process. Then we were looking at a Carl Barks page, and I was asking Jeff, "It's so clean. What's the difference?" Just listening to Jeff describe—because he does it himself, you know "Here's what he's doing here and what he's doing there"—it's just so interesting. He has such respect for what came before him.
And I also appreciate that Jeff takes his work so seriously—and I don't mean this in a bad way. He's businesslike in the very best possible sense of the word. But he doesn't take himself very seriously. At the Wexner Center we work with so many different artists and so many different disciplines, and it's always great when you sit down and start working on a project with someone and just click with them. You don't have to worry about them being a prima donna or having a massive ego or whatever. Jeff has just been wonderful to work with, and that just makes the project even more meaningful to me. If I'd had to sit through this going, "Oh my God. What a jerk" it would not have...
CASWELL: Well, that's the reason it's been so much fun.
FILIPI: Exactly. If he was that way, you probably would have never suggested the show in the first place. [Laughs] But it's been great. And not only Jeff. Working with Vijaya and everyone at Cartoon Books every step of the way has been great.
CASWELL: I don't know how much you know about the exhibit, but we are showing all of issue #16 [of Bone], which is a really special issue and I think has been fun to talk to Jeff about. And we have a cell phone tour where Jeff talks about creating that issue. I think Dave and I believe that it is a really beautiful example of what we're talking about and how very conscious Jeff is of creating the story to use the visual and verbal tools he has to their fullest advantage. And I don't know how familiar you are with Bone, but issue #16 is the issue where Jeff on purpose did a story that would take about the same length of time that it would take somebody to read it. So the story is a thunderstorm in the woods with the Bone cousins and Grandma Ben and Thorn trying to escape from the Rat Creatures, and it takes about 15 for them to run through the woods in the lightening and thunder and all, and it would take you about 15 minutes to read it. Jeff was having fun, but he was also accomplishing something really sophisticated with that. It's beautiful.
FILIPI: It's told almost entirely visually, and he's really not just taking full advantage of his visual talents but using light and dark so effectively.
CASWELL: To pace it.
FILIPI: Having them in the middle of darkness in one panel and then in the next panel having them completely illuminated by the lightening flash, and then it goes back to dark. It's just – it seems like I say this a lot about his work, but if you wanted to show someone what's possible in comic books, you could just show them that issue. It's like a little primer for...
CASWELL: How to do it right.
FILIPI: Exactly.
Obviously in a sense, any exhibit is a showcase of an artist's work, but as curators, there are bigger goals you must be working towards in terms of what you're expressing and what new ways you're trying to present this work. What were your goals in putting together the particulars of this show?
FILIPI: I think for me it almost kind of goes beyond celebrating Jeff's work and into some things I've been working on outside of this project. I'm not saying anything new here, but for the lack of a better term, graphic novels have really crossed over into this other world of acceptance both critical and popular. It just really seems like an opportune time to celebrate the medium. And Jeff is obviously a great person to do that through – between Ohio State and Columbus and the Wexner Center and the Cartoon Library. And we're not the first ones, certainly. There was The Masters of American Comics [exhibit] and other shows on Chris Ware and what not, but there haven't been that many, and I think it's going to get more and more common to recognize the leaders in the field. Along with all of the other things, making sure we're present Jeff's work in the best possible light and making these connections between the people that influenced him – to me it's even beyond that. What I do at the Wexner Center is I'm the film curator, so I'm interested in all forms of popular visual culture, and within the past year and a half have become more interested in why graphic novels have started to hit this level of mainstream critical recognition with Persepolis and the Chris Ware stuff and a long time ago Maus, obviously. But it's just kind of an opportune time, I think.
Jeff's also a local who's lived and worked in the Columbus area for years. What's the local response been to the idea of the show? Are lots of people in the community already primed for this, or is there folks who are unawares of Jeff's local status?
FILIPI: I think both. I'll run into some person who you would think knows quite a bit about Columbus culture, and they have no idea who he is, and then we'll be in the cafe eating lunch at the Wexner Center, and Jeff is there, and somebody'll come up and go, "Hey, Jeff!" So it's both. There was a big article in the daily newspaper on Sunday. There was a big article on Jeff in this month's issue of Columbus Monthly, which is a big general interest magazine in town. So I think that there's both. Some people have no idea who is and that he lives here, and there are other people that totally get all of the local connections. It's a mixture.
As the three of you have been selecting works from other famous cartoonists to include, what's the process been like? Have there been troubles at all in figuring out exactly what to include that isn't Jeff's stuff?
CASWELL: No. We all have been on the same wavelength the whole time. It's sort of amazing because we are three very different people, but Jeff has been articulate for a very long time about who his influences were. That was no mystery. It was really a matter of finding examples of these people that would work to illustrate the specific things about the work that were important to Jeff. I feel like we were pretty successful in that.
FILIPI: Most of the work came from – I think there were 12 non-Jeff works in the show, and 10 are from the Cartoon Library. The hardest one was getting a Carl Barks page, and maybe even as recently as a month and a half ago, we thought we weren't going to be able to find one. Finally, the Geppi Entertainment Museum in Baltimore loaned us one. To me, it would not have been the same show without that Barks page because when I sat down to read the whole One Volume [Edition of Bone] it reminded me of Carl Barks on like the second page. That's what came to mind instantly. There would have really been a hole in the show if we had not been able to get that.
In kind of a secondary influence that Jeff talks about in the catalogue is Joe Kubert's Tarzan books were a big influence on Jeff, and that was my absolute favorite comic growing up. It would have been nice to have one of those pages, but we weren't able to get one of those.
David, you may have just answered my next question, but I was wondering for each of you, what was the element of piece of the show that really had you going "Wow"? The thing that made you feel everything was coming together.
FILIPI: Well, I think for me once Lucy and i said "Let's do this" I had to come over and convince a contemporary arts center that's never done anything like this before to do this. And so all I could show them were the comic books or the Bone One Volume, and if you've seen the One Volume, it's not the same as looking at an original page. The people I had to – well, convince is maybe too strong of a word.
CASWELL: But they were just not familiar with Jeff's work.
FILIPI: Yeah. Exactly. But seeing Jeff's original pages for the first time and seeing how beautiful they were as art objects and the level of craft that goes into each page just convinced me that there'd be no issues hanging these on a wall and that people would completely be able to appreciate how this art – yes, they're pages from a continuing story, but each page stands on its own as a work of art. That was a moment for me where not only was I trying to convince the people I had to at the Wexner Center, but it was a very reassuring moment for me when Lucy started getting original pages for us to look at, and we could be absolutely convinced that they'd work in a gallery setting. That's not to say that seeing an original George Herriman was not incredible. And the color Thimble Theater Lucy got for the show is amazing.
CASWELL: I think for me – the Library is doing an exhibit of The Lantern, Jeff's student cartoons called "Before Bone," and obviously I hadn't read through that stuff since it was published in the paper in the '80s. He donated the originals to the Library when he left Ohio State, and when I went back through all of the ones he had given us, I was astonished at how well the work held up. He was so sophisticated as a student cartoonist, and we see all of the Bone cast of characters in the Thorn comic strip that he did as a student and all the proto-Bone story is there. The interesting thing is that there's also a Ronny Doody satire of Ronald Regan. There's a Jerry Falwell satire. There's all this other stuff going on too, so it's not just a linear story. By the time we get to Bone it's a very linear story, so it's so much fun for me to look back at the early work. Our show will be up all summer too, and we're hoping that people will visit both places. It really is fun to see how Jeff matured.
FILIPI: They're a great compliment for each other.
Beyond the show, the mural and the announced special events, are there any parts of this that you think folks in the public should be aware of when they come down to Columbus?
CASWELL: We are publishing a signed, limited edition catalogue of the Thorn show that reprints all of the comic strips in the exhibit, and the proceeds from the sale of that will benefit the library. It's $25 dollars a copy. If anybody is interested in that, they can contact the library, and we will give them information about how to buy one.
Keep your eyes on Wizard Universe next week for reports from the shows opening and events including interviews, photos and a review of "Jeff Smith: Bone & Beyond."
