Interviewed

by Jeff Petersen

La Grande artist Jon Hanley has won numerous national awards for his political and editorial cartooning, and one year had the best comic strip in the nation among college cartoonists.

He had editorial cartoons in the Tigard Times, The Oregonian, The Observer and the Eastern Oregon Review, which published him at age 12.

Now 43, Hanley is a 1979 graduate of La Grande High School. He is currently working on backdrop for the musical "Into the Woods" to be staged March 6-8. He has such a passion for art; he even does it in his spare time, as a hobby.

Here are his thoughts in his own words.

I’ve been involved in 20 of the 27 J. Michael Frasier musicals at La Grande High School. I was on stage a couple times in high school and again in "West Side Story" a couple years ago. The other times were as a set painter. Mike Frasier has a tradition of great musicals, and there is a lot of pressure to create just the right backdrop, but that pressure is good. It brings out the best in a person.

It would be neat if La Grande became one of those mural cities, like Toppenish, Wash. The murals should be by a whole bunch of different artists, and the area has plenty who could do the job. La Grande could then become more of a tourist destination.

My business name is Hanley’s Ad and Design, and I have lots of clients in the Portland area. While attending Portland Community College, Reid Ilford and I started Media Master, a Beaverton advertising agency that got some notoriety. Ilford is a brilliant guy who could do anything for anybody. He was the writer, and I was the artist. I left the business when he got married and moved back to Northeast Oregon. I married another artist, Angela, the daughter of Wavel and Judy Hunt of Summerville, and we have four children, Candace, 20, Jessica, 14, Christina, 11 and Mark, 9, and one grandchild, Ezra John, 1 1/2.

Once I got some great advice when I was a sophomore at LHS and one of just three or four sophomores on the varsity. I went up to football coach Doc Savage and said, "Coach, can I get in the JV game?" I got a lot more playing time in JV games than in varsity games. The coach replied, "You’re a varsity player now. You need to get excited about playing varsity games now. Start thinking varsity, not JV." I’ve taken that thought with me ever since think varsity.

The day I graduated from high school I had an interview with the Oregonian to do cartoon work. They just said I have good, raw talent but needed more experience.

Why stay here when I could work anywhere? I asked that same question of Michael Frasier, LHS music teacher, as I know he’s had offers from colleges and universities. I just like it here. It’s the same with me. Wherever you are, competition is what you make it, and you can reach your full potential here. The world is not as big as a person thinks it is. It is up to your desire; you have to hunker down and say, This is what I want to do.

When I was a bachelor I worked in Portland and loved it. When I was married and had a family, I hated it. I came over here just praying La Grande would keep me busy enough. I still do a lot of work in Portland, mainly faxing and mailing illustrations to different companies. I’m still interested in being syndicated in cartoon work. You have to face the reality of having a family, making ends meet, living in an area you like with safe, good schools. Sure, you could make a lot of money in a big city, but you’d also have to put up with a lot of crap.

It’s a feast or famine business. You feast and eat good, and then you get to where you’re hungry. Usually, it’s seasonal in spring, summer and into fall it’s budy. Figuring that in makes the winter months bearable. You need to be diversified not to be a starving artist. You’ve got to be a salesman, and it’s important to have overlapping jobs. My main bread and butter is probably sign work and screen printing.

One of my big jobs now is doing two dozen water conservation cartoons for a national education program based in Virginia.

I’m working on several children’s stories with author Tim Barker who works in Portland and lives in La Grande. The stories revolve around a cricket with a cat nemisis.

In anything you do, 80 percent is thinking about what you want before you pick up a brush. You have a blank canvas, but you already see the finished product. Sometimes I do sketches, but most of it is in my head.

It’s harder to do small illustrations than it is to do murals. For example, I was working on a small technical illustyration for Nash Trailers. That’s taxing. Working at a computer for a long period is physically taxing. With murals it’s big brush strokes. The challenge is making something look good from a distance. The bigger it is, the easier it is to do. The smaller it is, the more detail you have, the more difficult, the more time.

In my spare time, I like to pick up a brush and just do paintings. I’ve done portraits of my kids and wife, and I’d like to do more of that.