Tuesday, February 18
Bark Room
2 West 13th St., lobby
7:00pm
Presentation: Mark Alan Stamaty on his life, his work and other metaphysical questions.
Mark Alan Stamaty was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1947. He grew up in a New Jersey beach town, the only child of two professional cartoonists. He attended Cooper Union where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1969.
Mark is the author-illustrator of ten books. His children’s books include Who Needs Donuts? (1973, 2003), Alia’s Mission (2005), Too Many Time Machines (1999), Small in the Saddle (1975), Minnie Maloney & Macaroni (1976), and Where’s My Hippopotamus?(1977).
In 1977–1978, Mark’s panoramic centerfold cartoons of Greenwich Village and Times Square for the Village Voice attracted widespread attention and were sold by the Village Voice as posters. He then created a series of comic strips for that paper, including MacDoodle St., which was later published as a comic strip novel.
In 1981 Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor of the Washington Post, asked Mark to create a comic strip about Washington for her op-ed page. Mark traveled to D.C. to do extensive research, and in November of that year the Post and the Village Voice jointly debuted his new creation, Washingtoon, featuring, among many other characters, Congressman Bob Forehead, chairman of the JFK-Look-Alike Caucus. The comic strip’s popularity with Post and Voice readers led to its being picked up by more than 40 newspapers, including the Boston Globe, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Austin-American Statesman.
From 1994 to 1996, Mark was the political cartoonist for Time Magazine. From 2001 to 2003, he produced the monthly comic strip Boox for the New York Times Book Review. His cartoon reporting has covered a variety of events for GQMagazine and The New Yorker, including men’s fashion shows in Milan, the 2001 Baseball All-Star Game, the Washington Redskins’ training camp, the Madison Square Garden 1992 25th-Anniversary Concert honoring Bob Dylan, the buzz around Washington during President Clinton’s grand jury testimony, a UFO convention, and many more.
Mark has created covers for The New Yorker, the New Republic, the Washington Post Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, and others. His cartoons and illustrations have appeared in many publications, including Slate Magazine, Esquire, New York Magazine, Harper’s, Newsweek, Playboy, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times Magazine.
Mark’ was the recipient of two Gold Medals and a Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators, the Premio “Satira Politica” Forte Dei Marmi 2005 from the Museum of Satire in Forte Dei Marmi, Italy, and a Page One Award from the Newspaper Guild of New York. His illustrations have been selected for the Communication Arts Annual and the American Illustration Annual.
In 2005, Mark produced a series of full-color comic strips and commentary on the Los Angeles mayoral campaign for the Los Angeles Times. In 2007, Mark received the Augustus Saint Gaudens Award for Career Achievement in Art from Cooper Union. Presently, his work includes fulfilling a two-book contract with Knopf Children’s Books and a variety of free-lance assignments.