Hilary Price, hostess extraordinaire
Every year, Hilary Price, who draws the hilarious, insightful strip "Rhymes with Orange," has an open house at her studio in Florence, Mass., which is really Northampton except for lines on a map. And every year, I promise myself to go down there.
This year, I finally did, and picked up this interview among the hubbub of the open studio. Better yet, I tossed the eldest granddaughter into the car. She got a great picture-and-autograph from Hilary, while I had the pleasure of seeing the interview through the eyes of an unspoiled observer.
Well worth the trip, even if the miserable weather kept us from strolling through the Smith campus. One inspiration at a time, I guess.
No federal law on asking for the rest of the story on this: so, what did she ask you right at the end?
ReplyDeletePost-interview chat. We'd just talked about her for 12 minutes so now we talked about me for a few, but then Liz and I let her get back to the open house. I did ask her about a local restaurant that I used to patronize back when Northampton was on my regular route -- still there, still good, she said but when we got there, we found it was also still popular and still crowded, so we'll save that for our next trip.
ReplyDeleteTook me aback to realize that it's been 17 years since Northampton was on my regular route. Sheesh.
...when you're having fun...
ReplyDeleteRWO has been one of my favorite strips since I first became aware of it. Northampton has been one of my favorite places since my first son was born there.
ReplyDeleteNow, Hilary Price is one of my favorite people.
Thanks, Mike, for bringing those odd threads together into a palpable braid.
Very good interview - that would be hard to do with, basically, a party going on around it. I've always liked RwO and today's was particularly wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this, Mike. I've always liked her work but never met her, and this was the next best thing.
ReplyDeleteThe "pencil card" cartoon (seen at about 10:17 in the video) is in newspapers today -- it was fun to recognize it from here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.seattlepi.com/fun/rhymes.asp?date=20091119
=v= I have exactly the same reaction to Reed Brennan's colorizers, of course.
ReplyDeleteBTW I think there were some younger female cartoonists with strips syndicated to alternative newsweeklies, but that was a "news service" rather than a real syndicate.