Time Moves On

I’m going to be honest with you: I had a bad day creatively. No reason for it, the sun is shining, life is good, I am a lucky person. I just could not think of any ideas today. Having returned from Norway on Friday, perhaps I’m still jet-lagged—I can blame that, I suppose.

But on Saturday, I went to a memorial gathering for Lee Lorenz, the Art Editor at The New Yorker who first bought my work. As I write this, I am now realizing this is why I had a tough day creatively. I’m sad.

I wrote about Lee when he died last December at age 90, and I thought I had processed his death. And in some ways I have, he had a good and long life from what I can tell. I think my sadness is about the end of a generation of wonderful cartoon art. There are only a handful of people left whom Lee brought into the magazine, and that makes me wistful. Lee was a sensitive editor with a keen eye for unique work. He brought in Nurit Karlin, Roz Chast, Jack Ziegler, Michael Maslin, Huguette Martel, Victoria Roberts, among others.

Every week, we are given the opportunity to send in a group of drawings. The editors (primarily the Cartoon Editor and the head editor David Remnick) select which ones are bought each week. So it is entirely up to us that if we want to be in it, we have to submit drawings. This is involves a lot of rejection, but it also fosters creativity, I believe.

The first drawing Lee and William Shawn (the head editor at the time) bought from me was this one below. When Lee invited me into the inner sanctum to tell me they wanted to buy it, I was terrified. He put me at ease. After that day, I did sketch after sketch in my studio apartment, trying to figure out how I wanted it to look, how to draw it. Finally, I called him on the phone and asked trepiditiously,

“What style do you want me to do this in?”

“Your style.”

I had a style??? His simple two words instilled so much confidence in me. That’s what he was good at, editing without being overbearing.

It’s a twist on Cezanne’s theory that all artists need to know three shapes in nature in order to draw anything: the cone, sphere and cylinder. I added a tv set. Hysterical, right?

But they didn’t run it in the magazine for months, and in the meantime, they bought and ran this one.

The sketch I had submitted had the dog tied to a post in the ground. Lee wrote me this note to ask for me to change that.

Dear Liza, Please tie this dog (who looks a little sheep-like) to a parking meter rather than to this mysterious post. Thanks, Lee

Yes, I am sad that Lee’s gone. I was lucky to benefit from his guidance and thoughtfulness. Time moves on, change is hard. But it’s what we do with the change that makes the difference. Right?

Tomorrow will be a better day.