News + Events

05/19/2017

On Saturday, June 3, the RISD Alumni Council will present cartoonist Roz Chast 77 PT shown in this self-portrait in her Connecticut studio) with its 2017 Alumni Award for Artistic Achievement at RISD’s Commencement ceremony. The award recognizes her extraordinary body of work produced over the course of four decades.

Since landing her first cartoon in The New Yorker in 1978—just a year after graduation—Chast has been playing with the material of human behavior, poking at our everyday neuroses and preoccupations with the precision of a neurosurgeon. Her idiosyncratic genius stems from the ability to use seemingly simple, quavery line drawings and a few choice words to nail the absurdities of everyday life—repeatedly.

So far The New Yorker has published more than 1,200 of her cartoons (a fraction of her overall output) and she has also written and/or illustrated a dozen books, with her most recent, Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York, due out in October.

In 2014 Chast’s memoir about the challenges of caring for her elderly parents hit a chord with readers across the country. Conveyed through cartoons, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? quickly rose to the top of The New York Times and Amazon bestseller lists for graphic novels, was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award in the nonfiction category and made it to the Times’ coveted list of The 10 Best Books of 2014.

—Liisa Silander