Monte Kim Wolverton and L. Kayte Youngblood
Husband Monte Kim Wolverton
Born: 25 Sep 1948 - Vancouver, Clark County, WA Baptized: Died: Buried:
Father: Basil Wolverton {FGID: 45296753} Mother: Honor Bonita Lovette {FGID: 20550511}
Marriage: Cir 1970
Wife L. Kayte Youngblood
Born: 8 Feb 1948 Baptized: Died: 21 Jul 2012 Buried:
Children
1 F Monika Ruth Wolverton
Born: Cir 1971 Baptized: Died: Buried:Spouse: Simon P. Spykerman
General Notes: Husband - Monte Kim Wolverton
http://www.wolvertoon.com/bio.html
"Monte Wolverton has produced his ascerbic visual political commentary for over 20 years. He is syndicated by Caglecartoons to over 850 publications weekly.
Son of legendary illustrator Basil Wolverton, and naitve of the Portland, Oregon area, Wolverton began his career as a graphic designer in the Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle areas. He served as design director and managing editor for Plain Truth magaizine. He studied theology and journalism at Ambassador University, advertisng design at Art Center College of Design and holds an MA in creativity studies and management from Vermont's Goddard College.
In the late 1990s his work was featured regularly in MAD magazine. He has particiated in the 2014 St.-Just-le-Martel Editorial Cartoon Festival in St. Just, France and served as a judge for Xiamen International Animation Festvial in Xiamen, China.
Wolverton has authored three novels: Chasing 120, The Remnant and The Remnant II.
He is a member of the National Cartoonists Society and the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.
Wolverton resides in Washington State with his wife Brenda Kaye."
https://obits.columbian.com/obituaries/columbian/obituary.aspx?n=honor-wolverton&pid=3556305&fhid=2246
https://www.columbian.com/news/2011/jul/02/cartoonist-drawn-to-sharp-views/
"Cartoonist drawn to sharp views
B.G.'s Wolverton also pursues artistic endeavors
By Mary Ann Albright
Published: July 2, 2011, 12:00am
When it comes to political cartoons, there’s a fine line between pushing the envelope enough to interest people and being so edgy that newspapers won’t run your work.
It’s a line Battle Ground cartoonist and artist Monte Wolverton has walked for the past 15 years. His left-leaning cartoons are syndicated to more than 850 newspapers worldwide, including The Columbian. They appear in the Daily News Los Angeles and in 100-200 other papers each week, and have run in the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
Despite the wide circulation, the occasional near-death-threat email from an offended reader lets him know he’s not playing it too safe when tackling controversial topics such as immigration, health care and government spending.
“They’re issues I can get upset about,” said Wolverton, 62. “You have to do something you feel passionately about.”
Cartooning itself is something for which Wolverton feels a great passion.
It’s a discipline he grew up with as the son of the late Basil Wolverton, a prominent illustrator who worked with the likes of Marvel Comics former editor in chief Stan Lee and whose comic magazine features included “Spacehawk” and “Powerhouse Pepper.”
Wolverton began following in his father’s footsteps at a young age.
“My dad built a little drawing board for me when I was 7 years old. I always drew, and I just assumed that something visual was going to be my profession,” he said.
Though Wolverton has been dedicated to cartooning since childhood, the road to becoming a syndicated cartoonist was long and winding.
Wolverton was born and raised in Vancouver. He graduated from Hudson’s Bay High School in 1966, then moved to California to attend the now-defunct Ambassador College in Pasadena.
The college was affiliated with the Worldwide Church of God, now Grace Communion International. Wolverton’s father was active in the controversial church, which was founded as the Radio Church of God in 1934 in Eugene, Ore., by radio- and televangelist Herbert W. Armstrong. It underwent reform after Armstrong’s death in the mid ’80s.
It was at Ambassador College that Wolverton met Kayte, now his wife of 41 years. Upon graduating, he studied at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and worked as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer before moving back to Vancouver in the mid-1970s to start Monte Wolverton Associates, an advertising and design business.
Wolverton ran the firm for eight years, working with such clients as the U.S. Forest Service, First Independent Bank and the Columbia River Economic Development Council.
In 1985, he was recruited by the Worldwide Church of God to move to Pasadena and be its design director. The “Creative Services” sign that once hung on the door to his department at the church’s offices now welcomes visitors to his Battle Ground home studio, where he works on his cartoons and other artistic endeavors today.
He held the design director position until the mid-’90s, when Plain Truth Ministries, a former subsidiary of the Worldwide Church of God, was incorporated.
He served as business manager and later chief financial officer of Plain Truth Ministries and managing editor of Plain Truth, its magazine, until moving to Battle Ground in 2010.
He had wanted to return to the area and to be closer to his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, who live in Camas. He continues to do contract design and editing work for Plain Truth Ministries.
In the ’90s, while working for the Worldwide Church of God, Wolverton began to feel a need to express his more leftist political opinions. Earning his master’s degree through a low-residency program at the liberal Goddard College in Vermont strengthened that desire. After he completed his advanced degree, Wolverton wanted to take a break from academic rigor and flex his creative muscles. So, he started drawing humor cartoons for MAD magazine.
The first appeared in the magazine in 1994, and there have been about a dozen more since then. His father also had work published in MAD from 1954 to 1970.
Wolverton drew his first political cartoon in 1996, poking fun at Newt Gingrich. He found the cartoons to be a good outlet for his political views.
“I kept getting ideas every week, and I felt like I needed to keep posting them on my website so people would know what I was thinking. Originally, it was a matter of pure personal expression,” he said.
Soon, a few small weekly newspapers began running the political cartoons. In the late ’90s, his friend, Daryl Cagle, started distributing them to news outlets and then invited Wolverton to join his new syndicate, Cagle Cartoons.
Wolverton draws two cartoons a week. The one for the Daily News Los Angeles tackles Los Angeles and California politics, as well as issues of interest to those readers, such as the closure of a major highway or Dodger Stadium being filled with dirt for a monster truck race. The other cartoon typically deals with Washington, D.C., politics.
“I’m told some consider me a ‘Beltway cartoonist,’” Wolverton said.
Wolverton keeps tabs on current events to get fodder for his cartoons, but sometimes the ideas come from an old friend, Vancouver songwriter and Union High School English teacher Randy Cate.
Cate and Wolverton were Hudson’s Bay classmates and played in a band together. Cate went on to write songs recorded by musicians such as Ted Nugent and Dionne Warwick. On cartoons that Cate has assisted with, Wolverton writes “Thanx to Randy Cate.”
Many cartoonists today work exclusively on a digital graphics tablet, but Wolverton likes to mix a more old-fashioned approach with new technology. “I like the feel of actual ink on paper,” he said.
Wolverton starts the process of creating a cartoon by sketching on paper. He’ll scan that sketch into his computer, manipulate it using photo- and text-editing software, then print it out.
He’ll take the printout and trace it in ink on tissue paper. Then he’ll scan that in, make final adjustments and upload it in color and black and white to Cagle Cartoons’ website.
It used to be that many newspapers had staff editorial cartoonists, but that’s rare now. Most newspapers rely on syndicates, making it increasingly difficult to make a living as a full-time cartoonist, Wolverton said.
In the past four or five years, Wolverton has branched out into fine art. He works primarily with acrylic paint on canvas. His pieces are very colorful, and feature metaphysical creatures in a style he describes as “neo-psychedelic” or “neo-surrealist.”
“I try to create works that are at once fun, entertaining and mind-expanding — works that draw the viewer into a vortex of shape, color and texture. I like to imagine I’ve opened a visual portal into an alternative universe populated by forms, structures, devices, manifestations and luminescent beings far beyond our temporal experience,” Wolverton said.
His art currently is on display at CoproGallery in Santa Monica, Calif., and he’s about to have his first solo show.
Wolverton’s art will be showcased at The Peculiarium in Northwest Portland throughout September. There will be an opening reception on the evening of Sept. 1 as part of First Thursday.
The Peculiarium specializes in, as the name suggests, peculiarities. The space’s permanent collection includes an interactive alien autopsy exhibit, a glow-in-the-dark room, Al Capone’s vault and a vampire-killing kit. There’s also a cafe, where the more adventurous diners can try ice cream toppings such as freeze-dried mealworms and edible scorpions.
“I’m very comfortable having my first solo show in a place that specializes in the unique, bizarre and eclectic,” Wolverton said.
Mary Ann Albright: maryann.albright@columbian.com, 360-735-4507."
https://www.columbian.com/news/2017/aug/04/boomerang-gallery-exhibits-works-by-children-and-one-famous-parent/
"Boomerang gallery exhibits works by children — and one famous parent
By Scott Hewitt, Columbian Arts & Features Reporter
Published: August 4, 2017, 6:00am
Monte Wolverton’s father, Basil — the mastermind behind early comic-book creations including “The Strange Adventures of Meteor Martin” and “Professor Ploop’s Parade of Peculiar People” — didn’t teach him to draw. But he did provide his son the tools and the sensibility, building Monte his first tilted drawing table and allowing him the thrill, one time, of inking one bold line of the MAD Magazine he was working on.
Likewise, Monte Wolverton didn’t teach his daughter, Monika Spykerman, to draw, just provided the tools and attitude — including his own living example of art as a real pastime, not frivolous self-amusement.
“Dad was always drawing and there were always drawing materials everywhere,” she said. “I engaged with it naturally. I felt connected to my dad and my family history.”
Spykerman hasn’t taught her daughter to draw either, but 14-year-old Annika is busy filling sketchbooks with Anime-style characters. She has her own artistic inspiration, but there’s no doubt that generations of family artists have been “generally influential. It’s hard not to do art” when you grow up in this family, she said.
“I knew I did a good job as a parent when Annika said to me one morning, ‘I just need a really good inking pen,’ ” Spykerman said.
One of the joys of raising a young artist, she said, is “getting to know her as her own person” through her art.
Father, daughter and granddaughter are all showing their work this month in a couple of overlapping exhibits at downtown Vancouver’s Boomerang Fine Arts charity and art shop.
“System Meet Chaos: Art in the Family” focuses on the funny, fantastical fine art of Monte Wolverton and the realistic, patterned designs of Monika Spykerman; the other is a wide-open 18-and-younger show that was generated by a public call for young artists. Annika is one of many who responded.
“We hope to bring an ever-more-creative spirit to the first Friday downtown art walk,” said Boomerang curator Tom Relth. “Hosting young people’s artwork is a perfect fit” with Boomerang’s community-boosting mission, he said. And this show is so diverse, colorful, unpredictable and fun, he quipped, “I like to think of it as brain science versus rocket surgery.”
The show opens today, and you can meet all the artists — three generations of this family plus lots more young talent — during a First Friday Art Walk reception from 5 to 9 p.m. There will be live music and light refreshments.
Wolvertoons
Wolverton is famous for his syndicated “Wolvertoons,” which occasionally appear in this newspaper — although, he said, he tends to lean a little left for your typical Clark County political sensibility. He’s less famous for whimsical, fantastical artwork that seems to inhabit a different planet in the same system; instead of satirizing pompous politicians, Wolverton’s silly machines, cartoony creatures and tuberlike abstractions seem to satirize reality itself.
Wolverton was doing graphic design and illustration — and contributing to MAD Magazine, like his dad — long before the absurdity of politics prompted him to start sketching its perpetrators. That was during the 1990s, he said; by then he was also hanging out with abstract artists, trying their techniques and striving for his own fine-art shows.
Abstract art tends to irritate or even threaten people, Wolverton noted, but he’s always been “ambiguity tolerant.”
Eye and hand
” ‘Make friends with ambiguity,’ ” is some of the best advice Spykerman ever heard from her dad, she said. That hasn’t been easy for the writer and editor, whose profession requires accuracy and clarity. (She’s the editor of “North Bank Now,” a local culture website.)
Her artwork has always been different from her dad’s, she said: she never indulges in flights of fancy, but studies real objects that she portrays from a variety of angles in repeating patterns — like wallpaper. “My approach is the complete opposite of his,” she laughed. “It’s a single idea. It’s an actual thing. What it is, is excessively clear.” (She’s the “system” in this show, she said; her dad is the “chaos.”)
Spykerman started doing art early in life; she said she remembers lots of philosophical conversations with her dad: “Why art? Why does it matter?” But then she got busy with other things, and didn’t get back to it until she became the stay-at-home mom of then 4-year-old Annika.
“The days were cold and long and rainy and I needed to fill them up with something,” she said. Mother and daughter started drawing together, she said.
Spykerman filled up a whole notebook with detailed designs, she said, before she ever considered trying for a gallery show. She didn’t show her pieces to her famous father. “What would dad think of this?” she wondered. “Am I really ready?”
Relth thought she was. He wanted to pull both artists together in a father-daughter show; the previously scheduled kids’ exhibit was sheer serendipity, he said.
Spykerman’s designs may foreground focus and control, but her father spies the wild Wolverton imagination underlying it. Bedtime reading for little Monika used to be Basil Wolverton’s comic-book horror adventure, “The Eye of Doom”; when her dad looks at Monika’s repeating patterns of figs or eggs or sea anemones, he said, he sees sci-fi eyes staring out at him.
He sees his father’s technique in his daughter’s work, he said, pointing out the backdrop of tiny sky-blue lines behind one profusion of clementines.
“Look at this,” he said. “The crosshatching makes me itchy. It’s very Wolverton.”
General Notes: Wife - L. Kayte Youngblood
https://www.columbian.com/news/2011/jul/02/cartoonist-drawn-to-sharp-views/
https://obits.columbian.com/obituaries/columbian/obituary.aspx?n=honor-wolverton&pid=3556305&fhid=2246
https://www.legacy.com/amp/obituaries/tributes/178855551
"L. Kayte Wolverton 1948 - 2012
L. Kayte was born on February 8, 1948 and passed away on Saturday, July 21, 2012. L. Kayte was a resident of Battle Ground, Washington."
https://update.gci.org/2012/07/death-of-kayte-wolverton/
"Death of Kayte Wolverton
We are saddened to learn that Kayte (Youngblood) Wolverton died on July 21 following a long and courageous battle with ovarian cancer. She died in a hospice facility near Vancouver, Washington. She and her husband Monte had moved to the area a few years ago to be near their daughter Monika, their son-in-law Simon and granddaughter Annika.
Kayte, like her husband Monte, graduated from Ambassador College and then worked in publishing The Plain Truth magazine, first for Grace Communion International, then for Plain Truth Ministries.
Kayte is survived by Monte, her mother Esther, her stepfather John Livingston, her daughter Monika Spykerman, her son-in-law Simon, her granddaughter Annika, her foster daughter Gadiela Gallant with her husband Daniel and their children Kate and Matthew."
Notes: Marriage
https://www.columbian.com/news/2011/jul/02/cartoonist-drawn-to-sharp-views/
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