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February 26, 2008
Herblock award to Sherffius
Congratulations to John Sherffius, this year's winner of the Herblock Prize.
Sherffius' cartoons appear regularly in the Boulder Camera and are syndicated nationally by the Copley News Service.
The Herblock Prize, created in 2003 by the Herb Block Foundation, is awarded annually for distinguished examples of original editorial cartooning that exemplify the courageous independent standard set by the late Washington Post cartoonist. The winner receives a $10,000 tax-free award.
Sherffius will be awarded the prize at a March 18 ceremony at the Library of Congress where Tim Russert of NBC News will deliver the 2008 Herblock Lecture.
"I'm honored and thrilled," Sherffius told Editor & Publisher. "Any time you're associated with someone like Herblock, it's a great thing."
Sherffius won this year's prize for a package of cartoons that chronicled the Bush Administration over the past year, a package of searing cartoons dealing with subjects ranging from torture and wiretapping to the escalation of the war in Iraq and the administration's approach to global warning.
Harry Katz, Foundation curator and a judge in this year's contest, said "John Sherffius' cartoons reveal a Herblockian sense of outrage and independence. He draws beautifully, skillfully enhancing hand-drawn renderings with digital coloring and effects. His cartoons communicate clearly with power and conviction."
"Sherffius' work has had an almost-illustrative feel for years, but looks different than before," wrote Dave Astor on E&P online. "With color and computer-aided art becoming a big part of editorial cartooning, Sherffius a couple years ago scrapped the cross-hatching that used to be a prominent part of his drawing. But while a computer can save time in certain ways, Sherffius is so careful with his digital effects that his cartoons often take as long to create as when they were done completely by hand."
Sherffius began drawing editorial cartoons for the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at UCLA. After two years of working as a freelance artist, after graduation, he was hired by the Ventura County Star in Southern California as a graphic artist and gradually worked his way into editorial cartooning for the paper.
In 1998, he was hired by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as the newspaper's editorial cartoonist, a job he held until 2003 when he quit the paper over editorial differences. He joined the Boulder Camera as a regular contributor in 2006.
On the Net:
http://www.herbblockfoundation.org/herbblockfoundation/home.aspx?Page=Main
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003713881