Until a couple months ago, my knowledge of social/political cartooning was limited to Garry Trudeau, Ted Rall, Tom Tomorrow and the like. Then I got turned on to Joe Sacco and, as of this weekend, am an official convert to the medium. Will Dinski and Tom Kaczynski were among the handful of Twin Cities cartoonists with tables at the 6th annual Minnesota Center for Book Arts book arts festival. I bought so much of their work Saturday — not to mention my impluse buy of an MCBA membership — that I barely had enough cash to carry to the card room Sunday.
Dinksi is the kind of artist I revere in any medium — dark, witty, irreverent, unafraid, creatively ambitious and wired to what we think but don’t often express (probably a good thing, considering some of his subjects carry guns – notice the hologram in the image at left). Kaczynski, a regular contributor to the comics quarterly MOME, produces such a variety of work that it would be impossible to know it all comes from the same artist. He used the weekend festival to showcase his more abstract, disjointed narratives and series.
Both artists self-produce work in a range of formats — cards, booklets (Dinski makes his own hardcover books), limited- edition prints, pop-out displays and posters. They also planned to be in the audience for Sacco’s talk Tuesday at the Walker. As a primer, check out our Allison Herrera’s interview with Sacco.
“Oh yeah, I’m going,” Kaczynski said, as if the mere question of his attendance was absurd. “Most of us (cartoonists) probably are.”
IMAGE FROM WILLDINSKI.COM
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