Cartooning is an odd bird strutting the local fine art barnyard. John Kloss cartooned the capital city as journalist staff editorial cartoonist for over three decades, and his drawings appeared in various local newspapers and magazines. Kloss often included social issues in panels in order to get paid commissions. He engaged himself in the important social movements of his time, including those advocating trade unionism, education, environment, and political reform. For fun, he produced color comic strips featuring illustrated educational puzzles for the Sacramento Bee throughout the 1990s, which enjoyed national distribution under contract to Creators Syndicate of Los Angeles. Kloss is especially pleased to be welcomed to the Los Rios California Federation of Teachers Union Hall to display some of these pieces, since he’s been an instructor of sociology and art at the region’s colleges.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Kloss came out in the mid ’70s to attend university in Sacramento. The artist’s undergraduate work is in art, journalism, and government at CSUS and his graduate work is in philosophy of art at the University of Sussex, England.
Come and enjoy drawings that are both fun and serious as he inked for papers, posters, politics, and penned plenty of playful portraits. Included in the show are whimsical works on canvas and in clay.
