Cartoonist Maira Kalman: ‘I’m doing a few things that are pretty wonderful’

The first major museum survey of the 30-year career of New Yorker cartoonist Maira Kalman opened last week at the Skirball Cultural Center. “Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (Of a Crazy World),” which runs through Feb. 13, includes images she created for children’s books, newspapers and magazines as well as examples of her lesser-known embroidery, performance, textiles photography and design. The mother of two lives in Greenwich Village.

Your most famous work is the New Yorkistan cover you created for the New Yorker with Rick Meyerowitz, which was a map of New York divided into regions like Hiphopabad in Queens, Botoxia in Manhattan and Fattushis in Brooklyn. How did that come about?

Of course, after 9/11 when everybody was devastated and dealing with all the repercussions, Rick and I were on our way to visit friends in Westchester. We were driving through the Bronx and we were talking about tribalism and I said, “We’re in Bronxistan.” And Rich said, “No, we’re in Ferrerastan,” which was somebody running for office. And I think it’s Rick who said, “Oh, my God, I think we should try to see if we have a map idea and give it to the New Yorker.”

And we took the train back to New York and had I think 100 names by the time we got back into the city, so we gave it to them and created this piece. We just thought this was a funny strange thing to be doing. And understanding there’s always room for humor.

Leo Cullum just died — he was one of the New Yorker cartoonists — and he had a cartoon right after 9/11 which was a woman sitting at a bar and a man next to her, and she says, “I thought I’d never laugh again and then I saw your jacket.” Wonderful. But that was the way we felt, boom, that all of a sudden you can laugh at what’s going on because otherwise you’re lost.

My favorite is Kvetchnya. You’ve said, “I want everything to be connected in a funny, absurd way.” How does your work accomplish that?

The narrative of everything I do is about things being funny and things being sad at the same time. So I go through my day, and the work I’m doing is really a journal of my day, and it graphs a human being walking around feeling euphoric or feeling despondent or feeling curious and that’s my way of cataloging everything I see. And I’m able to use writing and painting. I have the privilege of being able to use different ways of expressing the story, but I’m always telling you a story.

What inspired you to illustrate Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style,” which isn’t a story?

When I picked it up at a yard sale and started reading it, every sentence was so funny and cinematic and eccentric and not connected. I love things that are unconnected in that way. I like to digress. And it was a way of relating to language and humor at the same time.

It sounds like you’re able to see things other people don’t see. For example, I thought your painting of Le Corbusier’s rather conventional kitchen sink was interesting because you described seeing the original as “a heart-stopping moment.” Why was that?

I thought it was a fantastic sink, and sometimes you see when you can look at an artifact and see the essential nature of things in that object. And the way they connect to your life — what happens around that sink and what are the dishes that you wash and what’s the architecture around it and what are you looking at outside the window when you’re at that sink. There are so many narratives that come out of the daily objects of our lives. They’re really important. So if you don’t notice them, if you’re oblivious to it, you’re missing really important grounding connections to your life.

But people sometimes need somebody else to point that out to them.

Yeah, and everybody’s looking at something else. It’s not as if you all have to be looking at the same thing, of course. It’s freedom of observation. But it’s good to observe. It keeps you in the moment. It’s why people like to travel so much because you’re much more observant when you’re traveling and attuned to all the things you haven’t seen before. That doesn’t have to leave when you’re in your own environment.

So tell me about the installation you created for the show.

The show is created by Ingrid Schaffner [senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia] with 100 of my drawings and sewings and other things. I put in the center of the room pieces from my life and my home — daily objects like ladders and buckets and suitcases and vitrines full of the objects that inspire me. And I paint these objects, they appear in my work. I didn’t go out and buy the things. They’re things from my world. I’m displaying for you all the objects that live around me that I love.

What do you like to do when you’re not creating?

I’m doing a few things that are pretty wonderful. I’m volunteering to sweep in Central Park, sweep the paths. The Central Park Conservancy needs people to volunteer to keep the park clean. It’s mostly cigarette butts. I did a piece about the sanitation of New York, and I said I want to contribute to keeping New York clean.

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