Andy Singer began drawing free lance cartoons and illustrations in 1992, for The Daily Californian. Since then, he has published well over a thousand pages of comics and cartoons in dozens of newspapers, magazines and books in the United States, Canada and Europe. Some of the publications include: The Funny Times, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Pioneer Press, Z Magazine, Adbusters, Car Busters, The Progressive, and The Amicus Journal.
A long time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, he currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Andy Singer was interviewed by Nicolas Lampert in January, 2003 via email.
I have the impression that you have been drawing non stop since you
were old enough to hold a pencil. Is this true?
Yup, since I was two years old. When I was little I drew mostly trains, an interest I got from my dad (who loved to travel by train).
On average, how many hours of the day do you spend drawing?
It's hard to say. My life has lately been cluttered up with traveling and a lot of family stuff, so I haven't been drawing as much as I'd like. In an average year, I publish about 100 panel cartoons and 50 or so pages of illustrations, comics or other miscellany. In addition, I probably draw twice this number of sketches. All told, I draw maybe 450 images a year? I tend to work in spurts. Sometimes, I will go for several days or a week without drawing, followed by a week of drawing intensively. At this point, so much of my identity and self-esteem is rapped up in images, I get a little depressed and anxious if I go for more than a week or two without drawing something.
Why cartoons?
It's somewhat arbitrary. I was a painting major in college and randomly stumbled onto cartooning after I graduated. "Cartoon" comes from the Italian word "Cartone" which literally means "A preparatory drawing or painting, as for a fresco." If you view the medium broadly, just about any reproducible image can pass for a cartoon. Over the years, I have grown to like the medium as a way to digest the world and my experiences, by transforming them into little sketches or observations. It's like keeping a visual (and written) journal. Also, the fact that I can combine words and images enables me to easily articulate abstract concepts. For this reason, cartoons are great for education and quickly illustrating social and environmental relationships. Also, I like the unpretentiousness and accessibility of the medium. It costs almost nothing to make a cartoon (as opposed to big paintings or films) and, if a particular cartoon is a failure, you've only wasted a couple hours (at most) making it. You can just move on to the next one.
In terms of accessibility, if you choose cartooning, lots of people can potentially see your images, whereas, with gallery art, only a few wealthy individuals will ever see what you make. The larger audience also means you can easily get public feedback to see if you are successfully communicating what it is you wish to say.
Do artists have a social responsibility?
Well, this gets into ethics, which is very personal. I think that
everyone is an "artist," if they choose to see themselves that way.
Certainly, if we wish to survive as a species on this planet, EVERYONE,
including "artists" are going to have to act in a much more socially
responsible manner. It cannot be denied that art impacts life. We decide to go
to war or do all sorts of things based on words and images, as opposed to first
hand experience. People send their children to die in wars they know about only
through the media, in countries they have only read about or seen pictures of. I
think an artist therefore has a moral obligation to at least tell the truth, as
they see it. Beyond that, it's harder to say.
There are many who feel that environmental "Sustainability" and saving the human race are hopeless causes. So they have decided to do whatever they feel like, to do whatever comes naturally and ignore social realities. The mainstream of modern art has gone increasingly in this direction, from the utilitarian to the meaningless. I believe this is a mistake, since, to maintain sanity, you have to serve someone or establish some kind of meaning in your life. There are, however, many ways to do this.
I personally, believe in the interconnectedness of all things (Karma, in Buddhism or the second part of the Great Commandment in the Judeo-Christian tradition). Without the planet and other people, we could not exist. If you truly embrace your own life, you have to accept certain social responsibilities to others and to the planet. Politics is the social practice of personal ethics, so I believe I have a duty to act on a political level. This should (hopefully) manifest itself in my work, in my lifestyle, in my relationships and in my political choices.
A common theme of your work is the negative ramifications of car
culture. When did this idea first take hold?
I first noticed the overabundance of cars during high-school and it began to enter my artwork in college. It was further solidified after college, when I lived next to a freeway for several years. Increasingly, the American landscape is made up of buildings, roadways, concrete and cars. Therefore, if you are a visual artist, I think cars, and the Western fixation on hypermobility, are hard to ignore.
Modern society is in love with the automobile. Do you find yourself
paddling upstream on this issue?
Yes, but there has been growing recognition during the 1980s and
1990s that automobiles are the biggest environmental problem facing our nation
and the planet. 15 years ago, if you chose not to own a car or decided to
commute to work on a bicycle, you were viewed as some kind of weirdo. But that's
changed. I was researching my purchase of a bicycle trailer and I found that
there were literally dozens of companies that now made bike trailers for
hauling, goods, kids, pets, canoes ...everything. The fact that there are
critical mass bike rides, rail-trails and bike paths in most US cities also
testify to changing attitudes and at least some minimal social awareness.
Society's love of the automobile is fed by commercial advertising and
commercially funded pop-culture. It will take a lot of work to counter this, but
it's possible.
You are the new city planner of a large urban metropolis. You have
unlimited funds to re-design the city to your vision. What would you do?
The mind boggles... but here are a few basic ideas:
I would enact urban (and suburban) growth boundaries, and
encourage housing development along a model of pre 1900's cities-- densely
packed, 3-4 story walk-up apartments and townhouses, built in blocks, around
green-space courtyards, similar to older sections of Brooklyn, Queens, Boston,
or Philadelphia. Then I would greatly increase public transit and ban private
cars from downtown areas during certain hours (or entirely). I'd institute
traffic calming street design and increase pedestrian and bike-only pathways,
eliminate parking-only structures (or lots) from downtown areas and make sure
some portion (or all) of the property was used for housing or office space.
I'd get rid of highways that go THROUGH the city, reducing them to boulevards or
eliminating them entirely and force through travelers to go around city limits.
I'd increase public green space, community gardens and farmer's markets and ease
zoning restrictions on small businesses. I'd interlace residential and
commercial districts and try to encourage a uniform distribution of jobs and
services (grocery, hardware, banks, schools, etc.), to minimize the need for
people to travel. In general, I would design a pedestrian-centric city.
I'd also create height ordinances and incentives for building
owners to install large quantities of photovoltaic and passive solar collectors
and try and incorporate other energy saving and waste-reducing technologies and
designs.
Y
our sitting in a room with the big wigs at “The Big Three”-GM,
Ford and
Chrysler. What would you say?
This touches on an issue that a lot of people don't want to acknowledge. CEOs
and individual board members of companies have only limited leeway to impact the
running of their companies. The current system makes them slaves to the
shareholders (at whose discretion they serve). If they fail to make enough
profits, increase dividends and elevate the share price, they are fired. William
Clay Ford Jr. is a case in point. I think he had some minimal desire to
positively impact Ford Motor Company environmentally, and some dim awareness
that SUVs were bad for the environment. Ultimately, however, SUVs made up so
much of Ford's declining profits, he couldn't consider giving them up.
So I'd start out by saying that we have to change
shareholders (and ourselves) as well as CEOs. If we demand 6% interest on our
investments or savings accounts, then business will continue as usual. Greed is
collective and we are all complicit.
That said, I would tell the Big Three that they are headed for a repeat of
the 1970s. Honda, Toyota, VW and other foreign automakers have developed
extremely high-mileage hybrid vehicles, while American carmakers are clinging to
big SUV dinosaurs. If the price of oil goes up, which it could do drastically at
any moment, they will be screwed.
I would tell them that Global Warming is now occurring at a
quickening pace-- that the Arctic ice packs and glaciers around the world are
melting at an alarming rate. I would point out that every major scientific body
including our own National Academy of Sciences agree that human CO2
production is responsible for global warming and that cars produce close to half
the CO2 in America. I would point to recent studies indicating that
Global Warming could happen quite suddenly (over a couple of years or a decade)
and not gradually, as many people assume. Resulting sea-level rises could flood
both coasts and cites around the world and push the world into an economic,
social and environmental crisis like no one has ever seen. I would urge them to
think of their own children and grandchildren and ask them if this is the kind
of world they wish to leave for future generations.
I would urge them to stop lobbying congress to block
increased CAFE standards and other mileage and emissions regulations, and stop
suing the state of California. I would tell them that Federal regulation is the
best thing that could happen to them, since, if ALL automakers have to observe
the same rules, then regulation won't effect their competitiveness within the
industry. In general, I'd do my best Jimmy Stewart ("Mr. Smith")
impersonation and pray it had an impact.
Any epic tales to relay about “Critical Mass” bike rides?
Nah. I've experienced the usual bad encounters with cops and motorists,
counterbalanced by triumphs over those same cops and motorists (in courts or
city councils). The main moments I remember are fun rides, on beautiful days
with lots of other cyclists, imagining what downtowns would be like without
cars.
Cartoonists that are overtly political are rarely given space in
mainstream corporate newspapers. Are you surprised by the success of
“Boondocks”?
Not really. I don't think the strip started off as being that political. A lot of it just commented on African-American pop-culture, which is safe territory. I think this enabled McGruder to get syndicated and to be in a position where he could politically react to the 2000 "election", 9/11 and the bombing Afghanistan on a national stage. The same was true of Doonsbury. It started out as just a comic strip about college and college students (at Yale), which enabled it to get syndicated, and then it grew more political with time. Once you get syndicated (or become a pop-star), then you can become political ...but it's rare that people who start off political get syndicated.
Are cartoons a form of propaganda?
They can be, but it depends on how you define
"propaganda." All speech (visual, written or verbal) is potentially a
form of propaganda. I think it depends on the intent of the person drawing the
cartoon. If the artist is merely drawing or illustrating a political idea that
someone else wants them to draw, then it's propaganda. If the artist genuinely
believes in what they are drawing then it's not. The CIA commissioned cartoon
books for the Contras in Nicaragua or the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, for
example. That's propaganda. But, an editorial cartoonist that drew a cartoon
endorsing these groups, if he or she genuinely believed in them, would not be
propaganda.
Also, how the image is displayed or reproduced plays a role
(which may be out of the artist's control). A story told once might be
"News." The same story repeated hundreds of times by a media network
in collusion with government (in order to persuade the public of something)
would be "Propaganda." The Lisa Beamer 9/11 hijacking story is a good
example. Her original intention in telling it might have been innocent enough...
but it was definitely morphed into propaganda by endless repetition in mass
media.
A good political cartoon will make the viewer…
...see a political, social or environmental relationship in a
new or clearer way. If it makes them laugh as well, then that's great, but it's
not absolutely necessary.