Interview with Artist Amy Kurzweil

Recently we reached out to artist Amy Kurzweil to ask her about art and the library. Kurzweil is a cartoonist and writer living in California, but formerly based in Brooklyn. She has taught at both Parsons School of Design and at the Fashion Institute of Technology here in New York. Her art appears regularly in The New Yorker, as well as other publications. Her memoir, Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir, is available in our collection.

What’s your background? 

I’m a cartoonist. I studied writing in school and got an MFA in fiction writing at The New School in Manhattan. I’ve also spent a lot of my time as a dancer—I performed often in college and used to teach dance in public schools all over NYC. I always thought I’d settle on being a writer, but then I discovered how much I loved to draw. Drawing is something I learned and practiced mostly on my own. 

As for my ethnic/cultural background: I identify mostly with being a more-or-less-secular Jewish American from the East Coast. All four of my grandparents and my mother were born in Eastern Europe, and they all immigrated either during or after WW II. 

Why do you do what you do? 

I draw because I’ve found it’s the best way to express my inner, emotional life, and because it’s often the best way to make something funny. I’m a storyteller at heart, and drawing is a way to communicate viscerally and intimately. Sometimes words get in the way. 

What work do you most enjoying doing? 

I enjoy working on my graphic books because they are my most deeply considered work, about personal themes, and although it takes years to finish a book (my first book, Flying Couch, took eight!) it’s gratifying to be working on something ambitious and wide-reaching. My favorite part of the process is when I’m sketching drafts in pencil. That’s when I can really be writing and drawing at the same time.

What themes do you pursue? 

My graphic memoir work tends to be about family, history, and identity. Flying Couch is about three generations of women in my family, and tells the story of my grandmother’s escape from the Warsaw Ghetto and survival of the Holocaust on her own. Lately I’m writing about technology’s effect on personal identity and our relationship to memory and the past.

My single panel cartoons, like those I publish in The New Yorker, tend to be about erudite silliness. I enjoy poking fun of anything educated people do and civilized society perpetuates that is odd, frustrating, whacky, or hypocritical.

What does your work aim to say? 

This is a big question so I’ll try to give a small answer... Mostly, I want to encourage people to look at everything in their lives and in themselves more closely and with compassion and humor. 

How does your work comment on current social or political issues? 

A cartoon is always an opportunity to showcase a contemporary phenomenon by exaggerating it or placing it in a different context. For example, my latest New Yorker cartoon features a woman at her home studio, with a boss or a client on a Zoom screen telling her: “I’m sorry. Now that everyone’s home reading, watching movies, educating themselves, and reflecting on the meaning of life, there’s just no money for the arts.” Obviously no one in real life would say this, but it articulates the unsaid context of many budget crises right now: we turn toward the arts for dignity and purpose in times of hardship, but we turn away from them when making systemic investments. My cartoons are often engaged with subtle critique, or at least precise observation of, the contemporary social, political, and economic world. (I think a precise observation has to be the basis for any strong critique.)

As for my longer work, my current project, which is a graphic memoir called Artificial (more on this below) explores the possibility of using AI and sophisticated technologies for preserving the past, and the human motivations and ethical dilemmas of this quest. These themes feel especially relevant lately, since so much of our lives are online. 

Who are your biggest influences? 

I’m most influenced by cartoonists who use the form to tell sophisticated personal stories that touch on big ideas but are still funny. Alison Bechdel was probably my biggest influence as a younger cartoonist, along with Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Craig Thompson, Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware. I was also influenced by Matt Groening, for his simple social critiques, and I’m ever in awe of Lynda Barry, for her expressive, intimate humor, and also the way she invites everyone into the drawing process as a public teacher. 

As a gag cartoonist, I’m most influenced by my friends, peers, and idols at The New Yorker, who have taught me so much about how to draw a good joke: Ellis Rosen, Sofia Warren, Hilary Campbell, Jason Adam Katzenstein, Liana Finck, Emily Flake, Roz Chast, Lars Kenseth and Navied Mahdavian to name just a handful of the mountain of cartoonists whose work I love.

Other contemporary writer/cartoonists who’ve inspired me lately with their graphic narrative work include Kristen Radtke, Ebony Flowers, Mira Jacob, Nick Drasno, Emil Ferris, and Anders Nilson, among others. There’s so much incredible graphic narrative in the world today. 

How have you developed your career? 

Submitting cartoons to The New Yorker has most helped me fast-track both my drawing skills and my professional visibility. One summer, a few years ago, I decided I’d would submit a “batch” of cartoons to the editor. I drew sixty cartoons, and chose the best ten. It took about a hundred more before I had one accepted, and I had to endure some stings along the way, but what I realized about this process is that I’d given myself an exciting and ritualized way to get better at drawing. The best way to get better at drawing is, simply, to draw. 

This was a lot of work, sure, but all it took was one cartoon published to level-up my career. (Thus is the power of long-standing institutions in the publishing world.) Today’s cartoon editor, Emma Allen, is actively seeking new voices, especially from younger cartoonists, women, and people of color, so I encourage anyone reading this with an inkling of interest in cartooning to start submitting! (Just message me or any New Yorker cartoonist on Instagram, and they’ll be happy to direct you to submit your work through the proper channels.) 

How do you seek out opportunities? 

Lately, I apply for a lot of fellowships, grants, and residencies which give me time, space, and sometimes money to work on my graphic books. It would be difficult for me to finish a long project without these kinds of boosts, because otherwise I supplement my living through teaching, which takes a lot of time and energy away from artistic work. It took me years of applying before I started having luck in this domain. Last year, I was a Shearing Fellow for The Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and this year I’m a Berlin Prize fellow at The American Academy in Berlin (which means I would be in Berlin right now, if not for COVID travel bans!). Check out Res Artis or Alliance of Artists Communities if you’re interested in learning more about residencies and fellowships. 

How do you navigate the art and publishing worlds? 

If I'm ever feeling disappointed, left out, or unsure about my success in these worlds, I remember that sales track one kind of contribution—one which usually intersects with timeliness and trends—and there are other ways to measure the worth of one’s work. So I guess I navigate the publishing world by trying to downplay it. I see it like a game or a practical necessity, not an authentic value metric. I try to seek out other value metrics. I am most proud, for example, if my book is taught in a classroom. Of course, downplaying the publishing world as a means of professional success means I need other sources of income, which is why I’m also a teacher, and why I always have my hands and feet in many different ventures at once. 

What do you dislike about the art or publishing worlds? 

I most dislike the way identity politics seized by marketplace forces often turn creators into products. When you make personal work, it’s hard not to feel like a token of your own experience. I think art/book making and art/book selling are diametrically opposed, and it can be disorienting to do the latter when you’ve spent years in isolation doing the former.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? 

Sleep. 

Are libraries a part of your world?

YES. Sometimes when I’m feeling down about society, I remember that libraries exist and I feel better. I can imagine nothing more democratic. Libraries are a huge part of my world and my history. I like spending time in libraries. I like quiet. I consider them sacred spaces, and when I’m in one I feel something like what a devout person might feel in a temple or church. I actually drew the first page of the first draft of my first book in my hometown library (shout out to Newton Free Library). I’ve done events in libraries around the country. Flying Couch was a Junior Library Guild pick in 2016, which means I often see it in libraries, and am thrilled when I think about how many countless readers that means it has and will reach. I recently discovered the SimplyE app for my BPL membership, and although I don’t like reading on my phone, for the ease of access lately, it’s worth it. 

What have you been working on recently? 

My current project is called Artificial: a love story, which tells the story of my inventor father’s quest to “resurrect” his father through a marriage of Artificial Intelligence and the documents saved in a storage unit. My grandfather was a Viennese musician who fled the Nazis in 1938 and made a career as a music professor and conductor in Queens. I never met my grandfather—he’s something of a mythical figure to me—and my book chronicles my getting to “know” him through interaction with his artifacts and with the chatbot my father has built from his writings. I relate, in some ways, to my grandfather’s struggle to make a career as an artist in New York, but the conditions of my life have been so different, and so privileged, in comparison to his. I’m curious about the connection between my father’s impulse to preserve, rebuild, and reconnect to the past through technology, and mine, through drawing and storytelling.

Have the recent events had an impact on your art practice? 

Practically, not much has changed other than where I am in space. (I recently left New York to be with my partner in California, where he got a teaching job). Other than that move, the pandemic has forced me to stay put, whereas my normal life features more moving around, for residencies, to visit friends and family, etc. You’d think this stasis would facilitate getting more work done, but it hasn’t. It’s been challenging to focus on my longer term projects, to see my personal stories as meaningful, when so much of the world feels like it’s falling apart. So I’ve spent more time doing drawing fundraisers, and teaching private students and classes, than working on my book. A big, ambitious personal project, while it will connect you to the wider world when published, isolates you quite a lot in the making of it. Right now it feels important to stay connected to others. I think a lot of artists and writers are feeling this: theoretically we have more time to work, but we don’t have mental space, and that’s the more important key to creation.

See more of Amy Kurzweil's work on her website or follow her on Instagram. 

Thank you to YA Librarian Joe Pascullo for help putting this blog post together.