BRATTLEBORO — The talk by cartoonist Edward Koren — the Vermonter who draws fuzzy-beaked creatures for The New Yorker magazine — was proceeding oh-so-decorously when peer and fellow panelist Jeff Danziger, listening to inquiry upon inquiry about line and form, interjected.
“I hate these questions,” the part-time Dummerston resident said. “We have this wonderful country, and Trump and his people are bastards. They are the worst people on earth. They make life better for themselves and …”
By the time Danziger punctuated his point with a polysyllabic curse word that shamed all its four-letter cousins, the moderator sought refuge by calling on the one person raising a hand amid the otherwise applauding crowd.
“Can we find out from Mr. Danziger,” the attendee asked, “how he really feels?”
And so it went at “Seriously Funny,” an exhibit of Koren work curated by Danziger now on display at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. At first glance, the two New York City natives turned New England-based national cartoonists have much in common. But pair them in front of an audience of 100 locals Thursday night, and plenty of differences emerged.
“The hardest thing to do in cartooning is to be so unique people say there’s nothing else like that,” Danziger said upon introducing Koren. “Ed’s style is so distinctive and his sense of humor is so sly and subtle.”
Koren demonstrated that through both his art — he gladly took a spectator’s sketchpad and scribbled — and his gentle, smiling demeanor.
“I’m kind of a Luddite — I need the touch of a pen or pencil on paper,” the Brookfield resident said. “When I moved here, I would take my drawings to the railroad station in Montpelier to go out overnight. Now Capitol Copy scans them in a second. But waiting for the train with its horn and watching the man put them on the baggage car … there’s no press of the button that can reward one in the same way.”
Danziger, for his part, opened with a joke understood by many in signal-starved Vermont: If someone’s cellphone interrupts the talk, he said, could that person share the well-wired carrier’s name?
The political cartoonist then spoke of trading his pencil eraser for Photoshop.
“I do two cartoons a day,” he said, “what with the Trump administration …”
While Danziger was happy to graphically elaborate, Koren let his grin do the talking. When one person asked if the current political climate “invaded your psyche so sometimes you can’t work,” for example, Koren simply nodded yes.
“As our recent election has shown, there’s a rural and urban disconnection, and a lot of us have tried to bridge that,” said Koren, who holds a Master of Fine Arts degree yet also is a quarter-century member of his town’s volunteer fire department.
Someone else asked if the cartoonist ever had a drawing not quite work.
“Always,” Koren said.
What do you do?
“I erase,” he said.
“Seriously Funny” is set to run until June 18, with more information available at the Brattleboro museum’s website, www.brattleboromuseum.org.
Visitors not only can see Koren’s past art but also possibly find themselves in a future drawing. As he concluded about inspiration: “It’s noticing, it’s thinking, it’s watching, it’s hearing. I’ve heard lots of things in my earshot that have turned into wonderful comment on how we all live.”
