Judith Reynolds has graced the pages of The Durango Herald’s Arts & Entertainment and Opinion sections as both a writer and illustrator for decades.
Now, it’s her turn to be the subject.
Reynolds’ cartoons will be featured in an exhibit at Durango Creative District Community Gallery through July 31. The show, “30 Years of Durango Toons: A Retrospective of Political Cartoonist Judith Reynolds,” will kick off with an opening reception Friday and will feature an artist talk by Reynolds on July 23. The exhibit is a collaboration of Durango Creative District, Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College (where her Herald cartoons are archived) and the Herald. The opening coincides not only with July’s First Friday Art Walk, it also is being held the same weekend as the Fourth of July – and what better way to celebrate America’s 250th birthday than by celebrating the First Amendment, which allows us the freedom to create and publish satirical takes.
Reynolds, born in Michigan, came to journalism late, having worked as a teacher, a freelancer for newspapers and as a director of communications at two different colleges. Then, when she was 50, her career course changed.
“I saw an ad in the paper for an art critic, and I was ready to shift – transfer ocean liners that I was on – and I thought I could do it as a freelancer, plus my real job,” she said. “Then they offered me a full-time position at the newspaper, and I really loved it. I just loved it. I wished I had gone into journalism 30 years earlier.”
She began her work with the Herald in 1995, a year after her and her late husband, David, moved to the area. She was tasked by Publisher Morley Ballantine to come up with an editorial cartoon as an “audition” for the job, and, Reynolds said, she returned with nine, including one she thought was too “dark,” but David encouraged her to bring it in – it was the one Ballantine chose to publish.
When it comes to subjects she won’t – or can’t – touch in her cartoons, her instructions have been clear since she started at the paper, she said.
“My assignment has guidelines or guardrails from the very beginning. Morley made it really clear to me. She said, ‘Arthur (Ballantine) and I always wanted to have a political cartoonist who would comment on local issues, and in a small town, at a small paper, that’s difficult, but that’s the assignment,’” she said. “She was really clear about that, and so what I won’t do (is) I don’t comment on national political things. I’ll stretch a little bit for Colorado issues. The other part of the assignment is it has to come out of the Herald; it doesn’t have to be a front page story, but my cartoons are for readers of the Herald.”
Not all of her cartoons have garnered positive reception. One of Reynolds’ more controversial cartoons, about a quarantine of animals at the La Plata County Fairgrounds, resulted in letters to the editor and emails critical of her choice.
“There was some virus passing through the animals, and they had to quarantine. You had to have a special pass to get in and out. No more animals could come in. It was really touchy,” she said. “I did a cartoon of a group of different animals, horses, cows, sheep, etc., who gathered in a downtown bar, and the phone is ringing. The bartender is about to answer the phone, and a cow says to another cow, ‘Don’t answer it, it’s the Fairgrounds.’”
And no Reynolds cartoon would be complete without the addition of Mortie the cat and his opinion captured in a thought bubble over his head.
Mortie is based on the Reynolds’ real pet cat by the same name. The little tuxedo cat came with the Reynoldses when they moved to Colorado from Upstate New York, Reynolds said, adding that the addition of Mortie to her cartoons was one that followed in the footsteps of cartoonists past, including one of her favorites, Pat Oliphant, who had a little penguin mascot, Punk, who made it into his work.
“This little creature in the bottom of the cartoon with a thought balloon or has something to say, usually comments on the action and functions like a Greek chorus,” she said. “I try to include the cat in all my cartoons. He wasn’t in the first cartoons, and I’m really proud of the evolution of his drawing, because I think my image of him staring at you, the reader, with his eyes downcast, sort of frowning a cat frown … some thought goes into what the cat is going to say.”
(After almost meeting a tragic end, courtesy of being snatched by a silver fox in the Reynoldses yard, Mortie lived out the rest of his days as an indoors cat, Reynolds said.)
And for “the oldest living political cartoonist in Colorado,” as the statement for the upcoming show calls her, even after the better part of 30 years of work, drawing political cartoons – and contributing greatly to the Herald’s Arts & Entertainment section every week – is still a blast, Reynolds said.
“I almost hesitate to say it, but both writing for the Arts & Entertainment page and shifting gears enormously to get in the mindset to do a satirical view of what’s happening in the news, at the end of an exhausting day, bending over the drawing board or sitting at the computer and writing is so much fun,” she said. “It’s so energizing, and I get into that flow state and I can’t believe the time has passed. It’s almost my sandbox, you know? Being at the computer, I’m in my sandbox, and I have a drawing board in the basement, and I’m in my sandbox.”
Reynolds said she hopes her takes on local issues get readers thinking, though her aim is not necessarily to change anyone’s mind.
“Maybe they say, ‘I hadn’t thought about it that way.’ This is a new slant on this story, and the best cartoons have a little edge to them,” she said. “What I want people to take away is to just pause and say, ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought about that, that’s an interesting way to look at it.’ Maybe I’m not hoping that they’ll shift their opinion, but I’m offering a particular view.”