Tuesday, January 20, 2015

15 Glorious Year: A Six Chix Anniversary Celebration

15 Glorious Years
15 Glorious Years
years of peace
years of war
each year greater
than the year before!
15 Glorious, Glorious,
Glorious years!
Those are lines from the play "Marat/Sade" and could easily describe the fabulous team of women cartoonists, "Six Chix" , as we celebrate our 15th Anniversary month (we were launched on January 3, my birthday!) and the fact that we have had our contract renewed to 2020!!!!
We have just been featured on the wonderful Women You Should Know site:
Meet the Six Chix  They did a fantastic profile on us, so please check it out!
As you may know already, "Six Chix" was the brain-child of Jay Kennedy, the late, great cartoon Editor in Chief of King Features. It was a daring move to put a team of six talented women, who each had a unique voice and original art style, together  in a weekly strip where each cartoonist had a day of the week and then alternated Sundays.

Jay Kennedy and the original Six Chix

  Jay also had the concept of  syndicating it as a strip AND a panel, so it could basically fit into any format a comics page required. It shook up the comics pages like a breath of fresh air.
We met, some of us for the first time, and all hit it off and had a great time! We were launched in NY at the hotel adjacent to the World Trade Towers and some of our events took place at Windows on the World. hard to believe that's all gone, now! Our launch was filmed by Lifetime for Women and we sat for publicity photos.

The Chix get ready to attend the Reubens Award Night











The original team consisted of Isabella Bannerman as the Monday Chick, Margaret Shulock was Tuesday, Rina  Piccolo on Wednesday, Ann Telnaes was Thursday, Kathryn Lemieux was Friday and I am the Saturday Chick!
Ann is an incredible, Pulitzer winning Editorial cartoonist, so she left after a few years to concentrate on that. The amazing Kathryn Lemiuex is also a brilliant painter, so she left to work in that field. We briefly had Carla Ventresca as the Thursday chick. She left to work on a strip she developed with her husband.
We were thrilled when Anne Gibbons came on board with her strong political views and beautiful art style. And what really made us a power team was when the widely respected Benita Epstein joined us as the new Friday Chick. She was once in the science field and brings that unique viewpoint to her cartoons on many occasions!

Anne Gibbons, me, Isabella Bannerman and Rina Piccolo at our
10th Anniversay presentation at the New Jersey Reubens Award weekend.

me and Benita Epstein at the Las Vegas Reubens weekend
 We all love being part of "Six Chix" and hope that this Anniversary year will bring us to the attention of many more readers around the world! If your local paper doesn't carry us, please request that they do and help spread the word!