Dow Walling and the Comic World Of Skeets

The Whatcom Museum recently uploaded new virtual galleries, which can be viewed HERE. Visit the virtual galleries to learn more about an exhibit featuring the comics of local talent Dow Walling.     

Dow Walling and the Comic World Of Skeets

Dow Walling (1902-1987) was a self-taught comic creator and illustrator. His full-page color strip “Skeets” ran on Sundays in the New York Herald Tribune and in national syndication from 1932-1951. Walling was born and raised on a farm outside of Bellingham. In a 1934 interview with the Literary Digest, he describes his comic’s spunky young protagonist as “growing up in Bellingham — my home town … an average-size town in America [that] typifies the home town of the average boy.”

In the comic strip, Skeets rambles through fields with his pals while avoiding his nemesis Cue-ball Benson. Walling drew from events and places of his childhood and features locales such as Whatcom Creek swimming holes in his illustrations.

Early Years

Walling was the youngest of four siblings. He describes his youth as always including a desire to draw. With the financial help of his sister, he completed the London School of Cartooning correspondence course at age 13. His first professional experience in illustration came when he was brought on as cub reporter by the Bellingham Herald. While there, he also created and submitted cartoons and illustrations for the paper.

In 1919, Walling enrolled at the University of Washington and quickly became an accomplished student and athlete while also working as staff artist for the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Working on a degree in economics, Walling created comic strips for the UW comics magazine, the Sun Dodger, and acted as their art editor. His work was well-received, and he was invited to become a member of national comic publication fraternity Hammer and Coffin.

Growth of a career

After college, Walling moved to New York to pursue his dream of becoming a professional cartoonist in the footsteps of his childhood idols George Herriman (“Krazy Kats”), Bud Fisher (“Mutt and Jeff”) and Billy DeBeck (“Barney Google”).

Walling’s first break was when he landed a position with Johnson Features, a comics syndication company. There, he created “Campus Cowboys,” an original series. For this strip, Walling borrowed heavily from his experiences as a college graduate and athlete. The strip was lauded for its youthful perspective. It was at this time that Walling acted as assistant to both Milt (“Gross Exaggerations”) Gross and H.T. (“The Timid Soul”) Webster.

After Johnson Features was sold, Walling moved to Hollywood in 1928 to try his hand at script writing. One year later he was back in New York starting to sell cartoons to Life, Judge and College Humor. In 1931, Walling signed up with King Features Syndicate to work on a variety of existing strips including “Nutty News” and “Room and Board.” Within the year, he was approached by the New York Herald Tribune about creating a new strip and “Skeets” was born.

Skeets comic strip

In 1937, Walling married Helen Pickrell, a teacher at Bellingham High School, and she joined him in New York. Though the couple never had children, Walling often referred to Skeets with paternalistic affection.

“Skeets” enjoyed a 20-year run, becoming one of the most beloved comic strips of the 1930s and 40s.

In 1946, Walling received the Freedom Foundation Prize for the “Jimmy’s Jobs” strip. He created the strip to help ease tensions in labor relations. That same year, Walling was offered his own variety television show on CBS called Here’s Dow. The run was short lived.

After retiring, Walling created drawings for businesses including the Union Carbide Corporation and the International Business Machines Corporation. Walling passed away in Pelham, New York, in 1987.

Walling’s work is now in numerous archives and museums including the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection, Northwestern University Library Special Collections and the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The Museum holds the original artwork for about 60 complete “Skeets” and “Room and Board” strips, as well as some of Walling’s personal items.

Sources

http://www.reuben.org/members/in-memoriam/ (then select Dow Walling from directory)

https://www.lambiek.net/artists/w/walling_d.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/28/obituaries/dow-o-walling.html

The Pelham Sun, Thursday, May 6, 1948, “Comic Strip Character Growing Up….”

Drawing Practice: Bellingham National Juried Art Exhibition and Awards

Kelly Bjork; Tiger Overhead, 2016; Gouache and pencil on paper, 19 x 15 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Bellingham National article reposted from June 20, 2017, Seattle Art Museum Blog

Bellingham National

Catharina Manchanda, the Seattle Art Museum’s (SAM) Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, juried this year’s Bellingham National Juried Art Exhibition and Awards, on view in the Lightcatcher building. Barbara Matilsky, Curator of Art at the Whatcom Museum, describes the biennial art exhibition and award as relatively new. “The Whatcom Museum’s first biennial was inaugurated in 2015.

Patricia Leach, the Museum’s director, envisioned Bellingham National as a way to bring the rich variety of art created around the country to our region. Although the Museum is committed to supporting Pacific Northwest art, it has increasingly embraced a wider, cultural scope,” says Matilsky. “Bellingham National has attracted the attention of Washington artists, which means that their work is well represented here.

Community reaction has been as varied as the works of art on display. One thing that I have noticed: The exhibition challenges people to think about art in new ways, which is ultimately a good thing. It also offers the invited curator a unique opportunity to explore ideas related to a particular theme or medium of her/his choice.”

A focus on drawing

This year’s call for submissions focused on drawing, an activity and mode of expression that seems overdue in light of our ever-increasing attachment to electronic devices. Catharina Manchanda’s interest in exploring how contemporary artists are approaching the medium is at once a reaction to new media art forms and an acceptance of drawing that utilizes new media.

“As we are clicking and tapping away, drawing and writing are becoming increasingly rare. Drawing has an immediacy and material quality that registers differently under these digital conditions. Its very ‘slowness’ becomes significant at a time when a flood of imagery and information keeps shortening our attention spans. From a more linguistic and conceptual vantage point, drawing connections, drawing on memory and history, and drawing understood as notation and trace, opens distinct possibilities for artists,” Manchanda states. “Not surprisingly, artists submitted work in a variety of mediums—from pencil drawings to annotated collages, videos, and sound recordings.”

Matilsky embraced what visitors may find a somewhat unorthodox perspective on drawing. “I share Catharina’s expansive view of drawing and was delighted that she was able to identify artworks that further pushed the boundaries of the medium. The sound and video pieces that she selected surprised me and added to the complexity of the exhibition.”

Featuring more than 60 works from 29 artists around the country, below Catharina Manchanda offers a glimpse into a selection of the works on view. Get yourself to the Museum and see this spectrum of artistic positions with, and about, drawing.

Margie Livingston, Seattle, WA; Dragged Blue Drawing, 2016; Watercolor and mixed media on paper, string. Courtesy of the artist.

Margie Livingston, Seattle, WA

The artist arrives at these lyrical compositions with controlled chance operations. Heavy sheets of paper are tinged with color and then dragged on the studio floor or the street where the movement creates a chance image. Embedded in the surfaces are dust and dirt, portions are rubbed and worn and yet the overall drawings have a quiet lyricism.

 

Kelly Bjork, Seattle, WA; Splayed Produce, 2016; Gouache and pencil. Courtesy of the artist.

Kelly Bjork, Seattle, WA

Kelly Bjork’s quiet interiors are beautifully rendered with an eye for crisp color and form. Embedded in her compositions and titles is a sparkling sense of humor—Tiger Overhead and Splayed Produce project an element of danger and adventure that’s there for you to discover.

 

Lou Watson, Portland, OR

The artist takes the most ordinary traffic patterns and movements as occasion for artistic intervention. For Bellingham National, she chose a spot along I-5 and ascribed a musical note to each of the lanes. Every time a car went past a traffic sign, it triggered a tone—a little car a short note, a long truck a longer one. With this, she composed a minimalist score from the monotonous back and forth of highway traffic. The movement of the cars along the road is linear like a drawing and her paper prints give insights into her process.

 

Masha Sha, Boulder, CO; New Now, 2017; Colored pencil on tracing paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Masha Sha, Boulder, CO

Sha’s vivid, large-scale pencil or crayon drawings spell out phrases that invite free association. Whether you see her bright red  “New Now” today, tomorrow, or in ten years, it will always be the now of the moment. Drawn with intensity, we may interpret that now in personal, communal, social, or political terms and it will mean different things to each of us.

 

Kirk Yamahira, Seattle, WA; Untitled (stretched); 2017. Acrylic, pencil, unweaved, deconstructed on canvas, 67 x 67 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Kirk Yamahira, Seattle, WA

Kirk Yamahira deconstructs the fabric of a canvas—he carefully lifts individual threads—to arrive at abstract lines and patterns that read like three-dimensional drawings. In some instances an additional tilt of the stretcher results in objects that are utterly transformed.