Evergreen alum and graphic artist Lynda Barry earns a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant
Lynda Barry, who graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, is among 26 people who have been chosen as 2019 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Barry, a graphic novelist, cartoonist and educator, was selected for inspiring creative engagement through original graphic works and a teaching practice centered on the role of image-making in communication.
Barry is known for her weekly comic strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” which was first published in the Cooper Point Journal in Olympia. Who was responsible for that? “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, then editor of the Cooper Point Journal.
In 2008, she told The Olympian this about getting started drawing comics: “When I was in college, I was making comic strips for no other reason than to bother the mind of the editor of our college newspaper — that was Matt Groening. I liked to torment him because it made him laugh very hard — so I drew comics and dropped them in the mail slot to the newspaper office at night. Matt had a strict ‘I will print anything that you submit to me’ policy as an editor. I liked testing that.”
More recently she has published graphic novels such as The Good Times Are Killing Me (1988) and One! Hundred! Demons! (2002).
Over the past several years, Barry has turned her focus to education. She is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The MacArthur fellowship honors “extraordinary originality” and comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 that will be distributed over five years. The awards are commonly referred to as “genius” grants.
When asked about how Evergreen helped her in her career, Barry said: “I still talk about my experience there at least once a week. Sometimes more. I’m still in touch with my teacher Marilyn Frasca. I don’t even like to think of what my life would have been like had I not gone to Evergreen.”
Frasca taught visual art and writing at Evergreen. Barry studied the history of the Renaissance and Middle Ages during her first year at Evergreen, and the history of science during her second year. “Then my third and fourth year I worked with Marilyn Frasca in one way or another,” she recalls.
On Barry’s website, The Near-Sighted Monkey, she posted a music video of the 1985 song Caravan of Love, by Isley, Jasper, Isley with a caption reading: “This one goes out to all my teachers and all my students with celebration and love love love.” A fan replied: “This gives me hope for humanity. Congratulations!”
This story was originally published September 28, 2019 at 3:37 PM.