With the presidential election just over three months away, the time is ripe for dialogue about the key issues at stake, especially if you are among those who believe the outcome will determine the future course of our nation.
The Westport Library’s new Riverwalk Level exhibit, scheduled for an Aug. 1 reveal, will provide locals both an opportunity to engage with the issues and interesting food for thought.
“Cartoonist Matt Davies Draws ELECTION 2012” will feature the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Matt Davies, a Staples High School graduate and Wilton resident. The exhibit will be on view through Nov. 8.
“Election years are both a blessing and a curse for the political cartoonist,” Davies said in a library release. “While it’s a time of great popular interest in the subject, it’s also a vacuous time, when politicians make buffoons of themselves. How does one make a cartoon out of someone who already appears cartoonish?”
Davies’ coverage of the upcoming election—with original cartoons and current pieces syndicated nationally each week by Tribune Media Services and The Hearst Newspaper Group in Conn—will be featured in the exhibit. But it will not be a one-voice display. Also included will be the work of three of Davies’ conservative cartoonist colleagues: Lisa Benson of Apple Valley, CA (syndicated by Washington Post Writers Group); Mike Lester of Rome, GA, (syndicated by Washington Post News Media Service); and Scott Stantis, of The Chicago Tribune.
The dialogue continues on Sunday, October 21 at 2:00 pm in the Library’s McManus Room. Davies and Stantis, who will attend via Skype, will discuss the art of political cartooning and the challenges of covering the 2012 election.
Davies’ cartoons have appeared frequently in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. His work has also been featured in Newsweek, Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, CNN, and Mad Magazine. In spring 2013, his first children’s book, Ben Rides On, which he both wrote and illustrated, will be published by MacMillan.
In 2001, Davies was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a collection of his work highlighting such subjects as police brutality, racism, and school overcrowding. In 2004, he received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons and was also awarded the inaugural Herblock Prize that same year. He is a five-time winner of the Society of Professional Journalists (New York Chapter) Deadline Club Award—including the 2001 prize for his work confronting a post-9/11 New York—and has been honored for his local cartoons with five 1st-place awards in the New York Associated Press Editorial Cartooning Competition. In 2011, he was again a Pulitzer Prize finalist.