For roughly a quarter of a century, Peter Dunlap-Shohl's political cartoons were a regular feature in the Anchorage Daily News. The illustrated commentaries presented a chronicle of ongoing events -- not just a witty, often wicked, depiction of what was happening, but an expression about how at least some Alaskans felt about the news of the day.
Dunlap-Shohl drew his last cartoon for the paper in October of 2008. He still creates them online (see links below) and is increasingly involved with animation. One of his pieces was featured in last month's Anchorage International Film Festival, where he also conducted a workshop on animation.
But the fate of his original ink drawings, stored at the paper, began to gnaw on his mind.
"I was concerned that they'd get put in a box somewhere in the back, and after a while someone would discover them and say, 'Well we don't need these any more.'"
The collection -- a unique combination of both art and history -- wound up at the Anchorage Museum. On Friday, some of the cartoons will go on display along with other of the museum's recent acquisitions.
The Anchorage Daily News Peter Dunlap-Shohl Political Cartoon Collection, consisting of "boxes upon boxes" of his hard copy newspaper cartoons and personal art work, are still being organized. Digital files (he switched to computer-generated images around 2005) will follow.
The collection eventually will be available for public research at the museum's Atwood Resource Center. There's some irony in the fact that the repository for the art is a facility named in honor of Bob Atwood, longtime publisher of the Anchorage Times, which was in fierce competition with the Daily News when Dunlap-Shohl started his work.
There's even more irony in how the art itself, initially intended as an on-the-spot commentary of transient events, printed and consumed in the cheapest, most ephemeral medium -- newsprint -- is now preserved as a permanent visual record of history.
Raised in Anchorage, Dunlap-Shohl said he knew early that he wanted to be a cartoonist. But it wasn't until the Watergate scandal broke that he realized political cartooning afforded him a somewhat more respectable career.
"I was quickly caught up in what the drawings were talking about," he wrote in an essay prepared for the museum. "High crimes, war, bigotry, the environment and economics."
At Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., he studied political science and history and did cartoons for the school paper. When he came back to Alaska, he freelanced cartoons for the Daily News and, after about six months, got a full time position with the paper.
Initially, he says, he chafed at having to concentrate on state and local issues, preferring to address national politics. But that attitude evolved, he said. "National topics seem grander, and there's a thrill to saying to yourself, 'I guess I showed the president THIS time!' But unless you are Herblock, chances are the president didn't notice. ... The local and state level are a different story."
In his essay, he lays out what he calls "my agenda as a cartoonist" in four parts. "First, I saw cartooning as an extension of citizenship. ... Cartooning seemed to me to be a great way to stick your oar in and get paid for it.
"Second, as one who was reared in Anchorage I wanted to help shape my young state and community in a way that meant dignity and quality of life for the individuals who lived here as part of that community.
"Third, as one who had a bully pulpit, I wanted to use that pulpit for those who were somehow excluded or disenfranchised by the larger culture.
"Fourth, I wanted to have fun. This is the only area where I met with unqualified success."
The satirical skewering of public figures also provided some fun for Daily News readers. The subjects were familiar topics of office conversation and barroom arguments across the state and addressed nowhere outside Alaska. "I had the local bozos almost entirely to myself," he writes. "Alaska is richly endowed with oil, fish and buffoons. And when, God forbid, we run out of the first two, the annual buffoon runs will still be strong."
Did it make any difference? Dunlap-Shohl cites one example of a "barrage" of cartoons targeting the $1-per-pack tobacco tax that some have credited with getting the bill out of a legislative committee where it was held in a "death grip" by the Speaker of the House.
But, he reflects, the real impact may be impossible to measure. "There's a wonderful Jewish saying that to save one life is to save a universe," he writes. "By that logic, if I afflicted one bigot or comforted one victim of injustice then I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams."
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
Peter's page with the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com