The Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs welcomes Yellow Springs’ own caricature artist Tom Bachtell as their third guest in the special Homecoming series.
Tom Bachtell’s distinctive drawings and caricatures appear each week in “The Talk of the Town” and other sections of The New Yorker, where he has been a regular contributor for 20-plus years. Tom’s work is seen in many other national and international publications, from Entertainment Weekly to Newsweek, Forbes to Bon Appetit, Town and Country to Mother Jones, as well as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, The New York Observer, London’s Evening Standard, and Poetry magazine. His ad campaigns range from the late Marshall Field’s department store to Lands’ End mail order to the chamber music series at The University of Chicago.
Trained as a pianist at the Cleveland Institute of Music and with a liberal arts degree from Case Western Reserve University, Tom is self-taught as an artist. Working primarily in brush and ink, Tom’s drawing style pays homage to many of the classic American illustrators and cartoonists of the 1920s and 1930s. He has drawn countless celebrities, artists, and politicians. Tom is the illustrator of When I Knew (HarperCollins), edited by Robert Trachtenberg, and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He illustrated the cover of “Trump and Me,” by Mark Singer (Penguin Random House). He frequently portrays musicians, doing regular work with the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival and Awards (Kalamazoo, Michigan), the Risør International Chamber Music Festival in Norway, and Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley. He recently created the official poster for “The Girl, The Grouch, & The Goat,” a new musical comedy by Jack Helbig and Mark Hollmann; a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg for “Notorious RBG: A Portrait in Song,” a new release from Cedille Records; and a new Mahjong set.
Tom’s work has been exhibited in New York at the offices of The New Yorker; the invitational exhibitions Drawing the Candidates at The New York Times; Politics ’08 at the Society of Illustrators; Good Work at Nazareth College; and the Bedford Arts Center in Bedford, Virginia. In Chicago, he has exhibited at the historic Water Tower Gallery and The Cliff Dwellers. His illustrated talk, How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Start Drawing Mariah Carey: My Life As a Cartoonist, was commissioned as a Marquis Lecture at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and has also been given at The Arts Club of Chicago. He has spoken about his work and education at the Kelvin Smith Library at Case Western Reserve University, and was recently inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.
Tom is also a pianist and swing dancer. He graduated from Yellow Springs High School in 1975.
Homecoming Series Friday, April 13
7:00: Reception hosted by Wheat Penny Oven and Bar
7:45: Welcome and Introduction
8:00: Presentation with Q & A
Hors d’oeuvres and cash bar.
