by Mike Rhode
The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston. Kate Grumbacher. Washington, DC: Embassy of Canada Art Gallery, September 13, 2019-January 31, 2020.
The Comic Art of Lynn Johnston. Kate Grumbacher. Washington, DC: Embassy of Canada Art Gallery, September 13, 2019-January 31, 2020.
The Canadian Embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, between the
White House and Congress is a striking setting for this small exhibit on For Better or For Worse, the
long-running and popular comic strip. From 1979- 2008, the strip followed the
lives of the Patterson family, a wife and husband (a dentist) and their three
kids and dogs as they grew up in Canada. The strip is still running in
reprints. The exhibit was originally shown in a gallery in Canada and modified
by Grumbacher for exhibit in Washington. Johnston was in town for the exhibit
opening, and also spoke at the Library of Congress the following day. She noted
that she can no longer draw the strip due to tremors, but she’s being creative
in other ways. On the back of the introductory plinth is fabric that she’s designed
and goofy paintings of dogs and cats, but the exhibit largely concentrates on
the comic strip.
As you walk into the exhibit, a large panel depicts a
collage of her characters over the life of the strip, and has the title of the
exhibit in French and English. The exhibit is bilingual throughout. In French, for
the record the title is L’Art de la Bande
Dessineé selon Lynn Johnston.
Turning left from the title plinth, Johnston’s desk is featured along with some
early drawings framed above it. The desk looks barely used compared to some other
cartoonists’. The ‘office area’ is bounded by a small wall, and on the other
side of that is a small interactive section where a visitor could color a sheet
with characters from the strip, or create their own four-panel strip in a blank
sheet of squares. A large set of labels explains the process of creating a
comic strip. Next to that is a small enclosed exhibit case with family photos, toy
cars and other materials she used as references to draw the strip. Next to the
exhibit case is a group of several original Sunday strips matched with color
prints to show how they
actually appeared in the newspaper.
The main characters of the strip are introduced, and then
large panels with purple headers explains the high points of the strip over the
years. These included “Michael & Deanna” (the oldest son and his wife), “April’s
Birth” (the third child), “Infidelity,” “Lawrence Comes Out” (when the
character was revealed to be gay, it was a major controversy), “Mtigwaki” (the
eldest daughter Elizabeth goes to work in a First Nations community), “Shannon
Lake” (an autistic character introduced in a school setting), “Elizabeth’s
Sexual Assault,” “Elizabeth’s Wedding,” “Death & Illness,” and “Farley’s
Death” (also controversial when the family dog died saving April from a
stream).
The exhibit concludes with a short film, a quilt of the
characters (hanging up very high), and in a nod to our locality, reproductions
from the Washington Post of a page of
comic strips, and Michael Cavna’s article about the end of the strip.
This is a celebratory exhibit. There is no deep analysis of
the social or historical implications of the strip, beyond the purple panels’
basic claims, and that is fine. The exhibit is both a celebration of a Canadian
artist and an enjoyable hour-long stop for Washington’s tourists, in a venue
they would not normally see. More photographs of the exhibit are at https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGVy4FY and
Johnston’s Library of Congress talk at https://flic.kr/s/aHsmGVvahH
(This review was
written for the International Journal of Comic Art 22:1, but this version
appears on both the IJOCA and ComicsDC websites on January 8 2020, while the
exhibit is still open for viewing.)
