Around the Island

Award-winning Reporter cartoonist at Friday Night Dialogues

 

PETER WALDNER ILLUSTRATION | One of Peter Waldner's Paw Print cartoons that originally appeared in the Reporter.
PETER WALDNER ILLUSTRATION | One of Peter Waldner’s Paw Print cartoons that originally appeared in the Reporter.

 

The Reporter’s cartoonist, Peter Waldner, will tell why “I’m Not Doing This for the Money!” at Friday Night Dialogues on April 17 at 7 p.m. at the Shelter Island Library.

Mr. Waldner began drawing as soon as he was old enough to be trusted with a pencil. By the time he was 10, he was drawing cartoons for College High, a local high school newspaper in Montclair, New Jersey. After serving as a cartoonist for his own school paper, Glen Ridge High School, he moved on to Elmira College where he focused on studio art and filmmaking. Mr. Waldner earned his B.A from Elmira and went on to post-graduate studies at Parsons School of Design and Southampton College.

In 1993, Mr. Waldner began drawing his cartoon, “Paw Print,” for the Shelter Island Reporter and later, the Suffolk Times, Riverhead New Review and Sag Harbor Express. Since 1998, he has won 15 awards from the New York Press Association in the editorial cartoon division. Three of his eight first-place awards have been in the past three years.

From 1999 to 2011, he also created the nationally syndicated cartoon, “Flight Deck,” distributed by Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. During its 12-year run, “Flight Deck” appeared in several newspapers, from South Carolina to San Francisco; it also appeared daily in the New York Daily News for 10 years.

Mr. Waldner said he has enjoyed working as a set artist for many local school productions over the years, including “Annie Warbucks,” “Young Frankenstein,” “The Sound of Music” and “Oliver.” He was also an assistant painter on several Bay Street Theater’s plays, most recently, “To Kill a Mockingbird” last fall.

His fine art work, oils, acrylics, pastel and colored pencil paintings and drawings have been exhibited in many East End galleries and shows and are in several private collections. He and his wife, Sandra, owned Wish Rock Studio, a gallery and custom frame shop in the Heights from 2006 to 2011. Sandra continues her framing business out of their home studio. Mr. Waldner’s artwork is available at wishrockstudio.com. Mr. Waldner’s art is on exhibit this month in the library’s Community Room on the lower level.

The Friday Night Dialogues series is free but donations are appreciated.

Coming Up: The Favorite Poem Project, curated by Bliss Morehead, on April 24.