Hunting for Great Comic Relief During Deer Season and Beyond

SHEBOYGAN, Wis., Nov. 24, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- If Norman Pettingill were alive today, he might be among the hunters now stalking the legendary bucks of Wisconsin and Minnesota. "I guess I was born with hunting in my blood," he once explained.

Pettingill, a native of Iron River, Wis., claimed to have caught his first wolf by chasing it from the woods into a frigid river where he wrestled it into submission in chest-deep water.

Pettingill was a great outdoorsman, but he was an even better storyteller. He told his tales most vividly with pen and paper, bringing the Northwoods and its sundry characters to life in amazingly detailed drawings that were alternately beautiful and bawdy.

His first published drawing appeared in a local newspaper in 1906 when Pettingill was just ten years old. This debut cartoon, called "The Nite B/4," showed a hunter lying in bed dreaming of opening day.

In his early life, Pettingill never dreamed his ink drawings would end up in a museum collection and become the subject of a coffee table book produced by an art comics publisher.

Part of a generation who weathered World War I and the Great Depression, Pettingill lived off the land, hunting, fishing and trapping in addition to taking odd jobs to support his wife and children. He worked in the baggage department for the railroad, swept up at his brother's theatre, and even did a stint with the Works Progress Administration.

Finally, the man who never finished high school or took an art class found the best way to support his family was by lettering signs for local businesses and through his drawings-something he loved to do! From tranquil moonlit scenes of wildlife to sidesplitting caricatures of "backwoods" characters behaving badly, Pettingill captured many facets of his beloved northern Wisconsin. Just one large intricate scene might take Pettingill all winter to execute, but it paid off when printed copies were sold to tourists as oversized postcards.

Forty Pettingill drawings, now part of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center collection in Sheboygan, Wis., are on display or the first time in 15 years and will remain so until Jan. 16. More than 100 drawings from this renowned collection are featured in Norman Pettingill: Backwoods Humorist, a new hardcover book published by Fantagraphics. More information about Pettingill's life, art and the book are available at www.jmkac.org.

SOURCE John Michael Kohler Arts Center