John Jonik

John Jonik (born April 30, 1942) is an American artist, cartoonist, writer, and activist known for his fine art, gag cartoons, commercial art, and political cartoons from the late 1960s to the 2020s. Notable works include a community mural, paintings, snow globe designs, and cartoons for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and F&SF. Jonik is also active with the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers, a found object art collective dedicated to creative reuse. His lifelong interest in games and puzzles led him to create the schizonym, a new kind of visual pun.

Early life and education Jonik was born on April 30, 1942, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Edward L. and Mary Jonik , active members of their local rowing community. His father was part of the Fairmount Rowing Association and a professor of accounting at Villanova University. Jonik's mother was a founding member of the Philadelphia Girls' Rowing Club, the first rowing club for women in that region. Jonik grew up with three other brothers and two twin sisters in Havertown. His sisters, Marie and Ann, competed for the United States women's national rowing team in the 1970s and later went to the 1976 Summer Olympics as alternates. Jonik excelled at crew and at the age of 16 won numerous events for his school. After graduation, he studied at Villanova for a year. During his time there, he was a general staff member of The Villanovan student newspaper, with a gag cartoon panel series called The River Styx appearing regularly in the early 1960s. He transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he received multiple travel scholarships, allowing him to visit Europe, Australia, and the South Sea Islands.

Career Jonik told fellow cartoonist Mark Heath in 1999 that he viewed himself as a painter who sold cartoons.

In 1968, Jonik was working at Delaware Valley Institute, where he taught art, English, and mechanical drawing. Around October of that year, he came up with the idea for a mural. He recalled, "When I see big empty spaces, I get the urge to paint on them." What initially began as a homage to his pet duck, led to others joining him and turning it into a community mural.

The mural features Jonik's early experiments with visual puns. Examples include a duck with its head bent down—"ducking"; a rake with ears on its handle—an "earache"; a pack of cigarettes with Wolves as its brand—"a pack of wolves"; A team of Transportation Authority workers set out to remove graffiti from the nearby and similarly named Ardmore Station. By mistake, they sandblasted and whitewashed the Ardmore Junction mural. The removal evoked public condemnation and was said to encourage more graffiti by leaving a blank wall in its place for others to deface.

Commercial art

Gag cartoons Typical, but widely celebrated gag cartoons during Jonik's early to middle period include 37 single-panel gag cartoons for The New Yorker from 1975 to 2006. One captionless and untitled winter cartoon is known as the "Snow Shoveler" (1977). It shows an unhappy man holding a snow shovel at his side while looking up at the snowfall; the man is standing inside a snow globe. This cartoon was chosen as one of a set of favorites by 60 Minutes. One gag cartoon in F&SF depicts competing Bronze Age craftsmen building different types of vessels, presumably to survive a future flood in the literary tradition of the Genesis flood narrative. In the left foreground, a carpenter is seen building a ship out of wood like the kind depicted in the story of Noah's Ark. Except, he has stopped building for the moment to stare into the distance, where in the right background of the panel, he sees another builder like himself constructing a futuristic submarine, also out of wood.

Political cartoons

From his middle to late period, Jonik started to focus more on politics in his cartooning as a response to the Gulf War air campaign in 1991. The Anderson Valley Advertiser (TVA) began publishing Jonik's political cartoons in their broadsheet in the 1990s. One notable example, "The American People Have Spoken" (c. 1996), depicts two people, seemingly politicians, with dollar sign armbands at a lectern in front of a large crowd in good spirits. The people are holding signs while free-floating, uncontained dialogue appears above their heads. The signs read, "Yes to costly health care", "Please tap our computer messages!", "Limit our internet freedom!", "Pave our farm lands!", "No laws for industry", Don't tell us what's in our food!", "More celeb news", and "Give us e-coli burgers".

"Demoncracy" (c. 2012), a panel that is part of Jonik's election series of political cartoons, was published by TVA in August 2015.

Jonik began working with the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers found object art collective in the 1990s, with Metropolitan Home making mention of his collaboration with the group in 1995. In the article, Jonik speaks to the ethos of sharing pieces within the collective. If they acquire an object that they do not personally like for their own work, they will often pass it on to other members of the group who might use it in their work instead.

The group hands out annual awards each year, but one year Jonik made a joke about the Lighthouse Keeper Award, an award made from trash, so the group began giving him the award exclusively, but in large amounts, leaving him with piles of lighthouse junk as an annual gag. According to custom, the awards may be re-awarded to others. Jonik spoke to The Philadelphia Inquirer about how he incorporates recycled materials such as wood and glass into his work during an environmentally friendly-themed exhibition for the Dumpster Divers at Philadelphia City Hall in 2008.

Schizonyms Jonik's background growing up with parents in academia and his lifelong interest in word games and crossword puzzles led him to invent the schizonym, a visual pun based on two words derived from a single word with the removal of the first letter, giving it multiple meanings.

Franklin also remembers a humorous incident in the late 1980s during a Relâche ensemble performance of "Ryoanji", a quiet piece by John Cage, so quiet that the audience could hear a woman nursing her child in the back of the hall, with the suckling sounds clearly audible. Jonik, who was sitting in the audience with his partner, leaned over to her and whispered, "From now on this is going to be our song", which led to the audience barely able to contain their laughter during the piece. turning it into one of his most "haunting" Halloween covers for the magazine (Self-carve Pumpkin, 1989).

Jonik's own cartoons are featured widely by other authors in a diverse number of different fields, from academic textbooks to nonfiction. Cartoons like "But, seriously..." (1996) have been used by psychologists to discuss the psychology of humor, and by drama scholars to discuss the phenomenon of laughter within the modern cultural history of comedy. Literary critics have also used Jonik's cartoons to discuss the role of contemporary political art and political activism in American culture.

A short 15-minute, biographical film about his life, John Jonik: A Miniography, was made in 1978 and released in 1979. The film is described as a "documentary portrait of an off-beat cartoonist and artist whose lifestyle and philosophy stress the importance of using everything, wasting nothing." Jonik's cartoons and manuscripts are held by the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, at the University of Pennsylvania. Perched Creature (2021) PAFA Fellowship 2021 Exhibition (Gross McCleaf Gallery, 2021) Orbs, 2021. Oil on canvas, 36 × 21 inches (91 × 53 cm). Re-Crafted (Dupree Gallery, 2018) Dumpster Diversions (2017) From Trashstream to Mainstream (2017) If Walls Could Talk (Dupree Gallery, 2016) Upcycling, The Art of the Dumpster Divers (GoggleWorks, 2015) The Green Exhibit (Philadelphia City Hall, 2008) Cartoon and Humor Show (Salon de Amis Gallery, 2000) John Jonik (Cabrini College, 1988) Peter Schnore and John Jonik (Vendo Nubes Gallery, 1974) John Jonik (Vendo Nubes Gallery, 1968)

Selected work Descriptions for The New Yorker cartoons originate from The Cartoon Bank.