Jan Eliot started cartooning when she was a divorced single mom trying to raise two daughters, work full-time, make ends meet and still have a little fun.
Eliot is a self-taught cartoonist, and her first attempts at cartooning were modest but therapeutic. Drawing from her own experiences, Jan tried to reflect real life and real situations, with empathy for anyone with too little time, money or patience.
Stone Soup is her second comic endeavor. Originally self syndicated, and titled Sister City, it was launched in 1990 in the Eugene Register Guard and ran weekly for 5 years, until it was picked up by Universal Press Syndicate and retitled Stone Soup. Stone Soup launched nationally as a daily comic strip November 20, 1995 and currently runs in 300 newspapers worldwide as well has having a large following online.
There are currently 10 Stone Soup Book Collections in print, the most recent being "It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time".
Eliot’s cartoons have been exhibited in the Charles Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa; The San Francisco Museum of Cartoon Art: in the Library of Congress where 16 of her cartoons are part of the permanent collection, and in Portugal at B.D. Amadora, an International Cartoon Exhibition held annually in Lisbon.
In Fall 2009 Eliot appeared at the 2nd annual international cartoon exhibition, FBIDA Algiers, in Algeria. She has won numerous awards for her cartooning work including "Best Book, B.D Amadora International Cartoon Exhibition in Lisbon, Portugal" and the College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Fellow Award from the University of Oregon.
Jan is also heavily involved in charity work - The Stone Soup characters are licensed by Habitat for Humanity International, and have been used to promote the Women’s Build program, Girls’ Build, Operation Home Delivery, and Habitat’s Katrina rebuild effort. In 2005 Eliot served on the Talbot’s Foundation Scholarship Board. The “Stone Soup Day of Fame”, an auction item that puts the winner’s name in the strip, has raised over $60,000 for Oregon charities.
We welcome Ms. Eliot as a featured speaker at the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning in September of 2015!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.