Thursday, September 3, 2020

Google Doodle Jackie Ormes


Sept 1,2020 Google Doodle celebrated this pioneer artist.

Here are some biographical highlights from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Ormes

"Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) was an American cartoonist. She is known as the first African-American woman cartoonist and creator of the Torchy Brown comic strip and the Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger panel.

Ormes was posthumously inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2014,[25] and was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Eisner Award Hall of Fame as a Judges' Choice in 2018."

The Doodle


Ormes at her drawing desl



The Official Google Doodle page gives more background on the doodle, and guest artist Liz Montague.

https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-jackie-ormes

Photo by Patrick Thompson shows google doodle artist Liz Montague at work on the doodle.





From the Google Doodle page:

"Today’s slideshow Doodle, illustrated by Philadelphia-based guest artist Liz Montague, celebrates American cartoonist and activist Jackie Ormes. Ormes was known for her satirical and stylish cartoons and comic strips that challenged the derogatory portrayals of Black female characters prevalent in the media. She is widely recognized as the first and only Black female newspaper cartoonist of her time in the United States. On this day in 1945, her groundbreaking single panel “Patty-Jo ’n’ Ginger” debuted in the Pittsburgh Courier, introducing the world to the smart and fashionable Ginger and her precocious 6-year-old sister Patty-Jo. Each slide of today’s Doodle provides a glimpse into stages of Ormes’ life, from her beginnings as a self-taught artist to a powerhouse cartoonist and humorist whose work continues to inspire. ......


Ormes furthered positive depictions of Black women and girls while also expressing her talent for fashion design through the development of several dolls related to her characters. In 1949 she made history by designing one of the first high quality American Black dolls “Patty-Jo,” complete with an extensive wardrobe produced by the Terri Lee Doll company. Later, her 1950 debut of a new, full color comic strip featuring her character Torchy, came with an accompanying paper doll topper, “Torchy Togs.” This bonus feature promoted a positive depiction of Black women while advising them on such fashion tenets as fabric, cut, and seasonal trends.
A pioneering professional woman in a male-dominated cartooning industry, Ormes retired in 1956 but continued her commitment to advocacy and community leadership throughout the rest of her life. In recognition of her achievements, Ormes was posthumously inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame in 2014 as well as the Will Eisner Comic Industry Hall of Fame in 2018."

There is a recent biography on Ormes

https://www.jackieormes.com/

"Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist chronicles the life of a multiply talented woman who became a successful cartoonist. Ormes's cartoon characters--Torchy Brown, Candy, Patty-Jo, and Ginger--delighted readers of African American newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier between 1937-56. This biography provides an invaluable glimpse into the history and culture of that era. As a member of Chicago's black elite, Ormes's social circle included leading political figures and entertainers of the day. People who knew her say that she modeled some cartoon characters after herself as beautifully dressed and coiffed females, appearing and speaking out in ways that defied stereotyped images of blacks in the mainstream press. Ormes's politics, which fell decidedly to the left and were apparent to even a casual reader of her cartoons and comics, eventually led to her investigation by the FBI during the McCarthy era. In the late 1940s, Ormes (1911-85) transformed cartoon character Patty-Jo into a doll that is now a collector's item.

The book presents one hundred and thirty one of Jackie Ormes's cartoons and comic strips, some in color, some from original art work, and most digitally photographed from actual newspaper with only a few reproduced and restored from microfilm. Her topics include fashion, modern life, and human foibles, as well as racial injustice, foreign and domestic policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution, among other pressing issues of those times, and indeed, of ours today."


A page from Torchy Brown.



Read about other Google Doodles in this post on the blog. I update this post each time I feature a Google Doodle.
http://stuartngbooks.blogspot.com/2014/05/google-doodle-mystery-artist-with-links.html

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