Poli-Sci-Fi Guy

CAVE MAN: Self-portrait of the artist.

Sociopolitical illustrator John Overmyer delves into "cave painting."

by A.D. Amorosi

John Overmyer just got a call from The Washington Post. As is his routine, the political illustrator has been called on to pencil something, fast, on a crucial issue of the day. "There’s always one, then always another one," giggles Overmyer of today’s rush: the controversial nuclear waste dumps along the outskirts of Las Vegas. Having been there months ago, Overmyer will use memories of Vegas’ mountains against its downtown’s sparkle, and draw barrels lined with skulls replacing slot machines for a sinister conclusion.

Overmyer, 61, likes late editorial hires. The haste of necessity figures into his fast and furious style, one that cuts to the essence of an idea. "It eliminates the bullshit. I bore easily and hate being a slave to the drawing board. So I found a style that’s quick."

While the most recent issue of Columbia Journalism Review proclaimed the death of provocative editorial illustration, Overmyer, along with fellow poli-illustrator Barrie Maguire, have made a business of just that -- selling their smart drawings (and those of several fellow professional artists nationwide) on their Philly-born website, www.newsart.com. His simplistic style of bold brushstrokes and penciled lines finds its way daily into the Post, The Christian Science Monitor and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Along with newspapers that download him, Ritz Filmbill has been using Overmyer's illustrations for 12 years. His sets graced several Brat Productions shows. His murals and logos made the inside of Tin Angel a boho dungeon and the outside wall of the old Quarry Street Café a caffeinated cave. Hovels and hidey-holes figure prominently, too, in his first exhibit for a cavern-centric "Cave Painting" installation at Bar Noir. Though he admits cribbing from his news illustrations and painter pals like Timothy Bowen, Overmyer's a bit secretive as to what this installation will entail. But with his natural curiosity and cheerful disposition running as deeply as his sense of improvisational immediacy, expect Overmyer's "Cave" to be as weird and wise as it is wide.

Though he's been painting and illustrating since college in Ohio, much of Overmyer's political work is new to him, after a long stint in the greeting-card industry as an art director at Hallmark. "I never fit in there. Not in design, not their corporate mold. Yet they kept promoting me," he laughs of rising through the ranks from cartooning to layout -- even to creative photo director, a milieu he knew nothing about. "I had mentors who believed in me and gave me opportunities to take risks and have fun."

At age 45, tired of corporate life, he moved to Philadelphia to freelance. Overmyer's pal at Hallmark -- New York Times' op-ed legend Brad Holland -- was making the conceptual art Overmyer longed to do. "Newspapers are about immediacy. I craved that," he says. In 1989, he and another Hallmark expat, Maguire, bugged Inquirer staffers Rick Nichols and Jane Eisner to give the greeting-card guys a chance to spread their wings. From there, he and Maguire quickly began their rise through the editorial cartooning ranks between coasts, blossoming eventually into Maguire's initial creation, the NewsArt site, with its motto, "OP-ED ART delivered NOW!"

"I had cartoons whose rights I owned as soon as the paper used them. But they were just sitting around collecting dust," he says. After sending papers around the country his used, hard-copy assignments and untried illustrations -- on everything from racism to political fiends -- and wondering about the future of newsprint, their downloadable site was up and running in 2000, first with just their own work and later including a few other illustrators, whose work forms a competitive pool of daily drawn dramas. "If you want a picture of Howard Dean -- pick what you like."

Overmyer, a gadabout who loves the cavernous environs of Bar Noir for people-watching, picked the club for his first exhibit -- one with no rhyme, theme or reason. "Putting things in frames simply isn't me. I asked if I could paint on the walls, whatever it is I wanted." What he wanted was "Cave Painting," something as relative to Bar Noir's ambience as it is to current events.

"Caves are big right now -- Hussein in the hole, the day of the groundhog. Along with the daily interactions and chatter of my friends -- all of which will be included -- the cave is the thing."

John Overmyer, "Cave Painting," opening party Mon., Feb. 2, 8 p.m., exhibit runs through March 1, Bar Noir, 112 S. 18th St., 215-569-9333.