Faces take on exaggerated forms

Caricatures exhibit to debut at Arts Factory during First Friday

From Jay Leno's jutting chin to Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's martini glass, caricatures of the famous and not-so-famous have been commonplace for decades. From billboards to the editorial page, from kiosks in shopping malls to the covers of alternative newspapers, one can hardly avoid drawings or paintings of men and women with wildly exaggerated hairdos, eyebrows, you name it.

Many people may take the drawings for granted without appreciating the effort and skill of the artists who produce them.

That may change Friday when the Arts Factory, 101 E. Charleston Blvd., presents "Stretching the Truth: The Caricature Show" at the First Friday event downtown.

Focusing on works by nearly a dozen artists, the exhibit will run through the month. A free reception is set for 6 to 10 p.m.

"In addition to their art, caricature artists will be drawing live at the show, plying their trade for a reasonable fee," said organizer and caricaturist F. Andrew Taylor. "There's a huge pool of caricaturing talent in town that slips under the radar of the Las Vegas art scene for the most part. This show will afford them the opportunity to share their finest work with the city they love."

Among those taking part in the exhibit will be Buddy Rose, originally from Texas and creator of the National Caricature Network; Steve Thomason, an ordained minister who incorporates his talent into his faith; and Wolf Adler, a Romanian artist whose work, said Taylor, literally helped him survive a Nazi concentration camp.

Thomason said he is working on a DVD project.

"I'm teaching the life of Jesus through cartoons," he explained. "People learn best when there's a little humor involved."

He added that his use of what many would call cartoons does not mean he is aiming it toward children.

"This is in a very serious and adult context," he said.

Being taken seriously is an uphill battle for some caricaturists.

Celestia Ward, who spent several years developing her skill in Baltimore, Md., before coming home to Las Vegas, said some well-intentioned observers don't seem to understand that caricaturing people is her career. Sitting at the kiosk she shares with several other caricaturists in The Shops in Desert Passage at the Aladdin she said, "I've had people say, 'You're really good, you ought to get a serious position.' A lot of the artists in (the Arts Factory) show want to educate the public."

Taylor said many caricaturists have dedicated their lives to the medium and a lot of them have learned their craft at kiosks on the Strip.

"I think it's a way a lot of them do it," Taylor said. "A lot of the artists in town worked with Fasen Arts."

The Florida-based company, for which Ward works, spots numerous caricaturing kiosks around the country.

Ward admits that one problem professional caricaturists face is competition from the less skilled.

"The field is very polluted," she said. "I've seen so many bad caricaturists."

The poor artists often put off patrons, who decide caricaturists are a motley crew and spoil things for the good artists.

"I've been to places where I've had bad hamburgers," Ward said, laughing, "but there are good hamburgers out there."

Ward did not plan on being a caricaturist. In fact, she went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and, for a while, pursued a pre-med curriculum. She also took a course under an artist named Tom Chalk, an actual professor of cartooning.

"I took the course as a goof-off thing," Ward said.

But her skill in caricaturing her classmates attracted Chalk's attention, and the teacher offered the student a job. Ward graduated with a major in writing and a minor in psychology.

"My minor has proven pretty useful in this job," she said.

And for that matter, studying writing also has helped. In deciding how to caricature someone, she explained, "You sort of have to think of a plot and make it readable."

Taylor, on the other hand, was learning to draw when he was barely out of diapers, and eventually entered a painting curriculum at the Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Mass. But then he entered the retail world. Cartooning was no easy career to pursue, he said, but caricaturing, it turned out, offered him the chance to make a living with his art.

"Caricaturing is one of the few ways a cartoonist can actually make money on a daily basis," he said.

He's been making a living with his drawing for 15 years, the last 10 as a caricaturist.

Both artists cite similar inspirations: the cartoonists at Mad magazine like Mort Drucker and Don Martin, New York theatrical caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, the famous Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block, known as Herblock, and Pogo creator Walt Kelly.

"Mad magazine is the No. 1 influence for most of these people," said Ward.

Aside from entertaining tourists with her pen and airbrush techniques, Ward has other skills.

"I do a lot of sculpture in the studio," she said. "I did a sculpture for Penn and Teller for Christmas. They're sawing Santa Claus in half. They are giving out 30 of them, and they let me keep one."

Her work is in excellent company. "They're giving out Hirschfeld prints and Celestia sculptures," she said. "My God."

Taylor also is a diverse artist, producing caricatures for magazine covers, working as a graphic designer for a toy company, editing films and writing.

"I'm all over the place," he said with a laugh. "I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up."

Like Ward, he suspects that many viewers don't appreciate his work with caricatures. "It's complex art," he said, "it's not surface. There is a lot of talent and skill in it. It's more difficult than doing a portrait, where you just show what is there. In caricature, you make decisions and you move things around."

Some of his favorite subjects are President Bush -- Taylor displayed an acrylic of him as a vulture with a clutch of missiles in his talons -- actress Angelina Jolie and, of course, Mayor Goodman.

The kiosk where Ward works is decorated with a variety of large colored drawings of popular figures from the entertainment world, and she said she tends to steer away from drawings that might be offensive to the subjects.

"I'm too much 'Care Bear,' " she said. "I'm influenced by the public."

The public seems fascinated. As Ward worked on caricatures of some visitors from Brazil, many passersby stopped to watch her first sketch the subjects with quick, abrupt strokes and then add definition and depth with her airbrush.

With the Arts Factory show, she, Taylor and the others hope more people will watch and learn and come away with a greater understanding and appreciation of their art.