Dorothy Gambrell
{{short description|American cartoonist}}
{{Notability|1=Biographies|date=August 2023}}
Dorothy Gambrell is a cartoonist who writes and draws the online comic strip Cat and Girl in addition to the blog very small array. Her work has appeared in the literary journal Backwards City Review and the Anton Chekhov anthology The Other Chekhov, and had appeared regularly in the literary journal Grasslimb.{{Cite web |title=Grasslimb Journal of Art and Literature |url=http://www.grasslimb.com/ |access-date=2023-07-05 |website=www.grasslimb.com}} As of 2023, she is a contributing graphics editor for Bloomberg Businessweek.{{Cite web |date=2023-06-30 |title=Dorothy Gambrell - Bloomberg |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ARErEOlbjOk/dorothy-gambrell |access-date=2023-07-05 |website=Bloomberg.com |language=en}}
Additionally, Dorothy played guitar in the self-styled "last uncool band in Brooklyn," The Vandervoorts. Following her move to Tucson, Gambrell became part of The Basement Apartments. She has also played in the band Jenny and the Holzers.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}
She grew up on Long Island, New York, and attended Williams College. She has lived Tucson, Arizona and in Brooklyn, New York.{{cite web|url=http://www.verysmallarray.com/so-thats-what-happens/|title=So that's what happens|date=16 August 2011|publisher=|accessdate=1 January 2019}}
''Cat and Girl''
In the second quarter of 1999, Gambrell started the webcomic Cat and Girl. The title characters are Cat, a giant anthropomorphic cat given to zany schemes and indulgences (particularly eating lead-based paint), and Girl, a cynical girl with a philosophical bent and a penchant for postmodernism. Gambrell insists Girl is not modeled after herself, an assertion she backs up by occasionally inserting a character based on herself into the comic. Cat and Girl mixes usually dry humor with literary allusions.{{cite news |title=Web search: What the cat dragged in |work=Star Tribune |first=Randy A. |last=Salas |page=2E |date=September 29, 2006}}
Gambrell described the subject of her webcomic as "a cat, a girl, and an experimental meta-narrative."{{Cite web |title=Monsters of Webcomics Exhibition |url=https://www.awn.com/event/monsters-webcomics-exhibition |access-date=2023-07-05 |website=Animation World Network |language=en}} In Cat and Girl, Gambrell frequently jokes about obscure subject matter, sometimes based on "cultural references that maybe twelve people will get." Gambrell alternates between more and less obscure jokes, not wanting to censor herself nor talking down to her readers. A recurring theme in Cat and Girl is nostalgia, as Gambrell emphasizes the powerful ways in which people deceive themselves when reminiscing on the past.{{cite book|title=Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists|publisher=Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing|last=Rall|first=Ted|author-link=Ted Rall|date=June 2006|isbn=1-56163-465-4}}
Gambrell also created the webcomic The New Adventures of Death,{{Cite web |title=Dorothy Gambrell |url=https://www.lambiek.net/artists/g/gambrell_dorothy.htm |access-date=2023-07-05 |website=lambiek.net |language=en}} which she published through Modern Tales under a subscription fee.
In 2005, Cat and Girl and The New Adventures of Death were together named among the best webcomics of the year by Joe Zabel.{{cite web |url=http://webcomicsreview.com/?p=22|title=The Best Webcomics of 2005|publisher=The Webcomics Examiner|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060315154453/http://webcomicsreview.com/?p=22|archive-date=2006-03-15}} In 2019, Cat and Girl won a National Cartoonists Society Division Award in the "On-Line Comics – Short Form" category.{{cite web |title=CONGRATULATIONS TO 2018 DIVISIONAL AWARD-WINNERS |url=https://www.nationalcartoonists.com/2019/05/congratulations-to-2018-divisional-award-winners/ |website=National Cartoonists Society |date=May 21, 2019}}
References
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External links
- [http://www.catandgirl.com/ Cat and Girl]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20041208025908/http://www.moderntales.com/series.php?name=death&view=current The New Adventures of Death]
- [http://verysmallarray.com/ Very Small Array]
- [https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ARErEOlbjOk/dorothy-gambrell Dorothy Gambrell] at Bloomberg Businessweek
- {{ISFDB name|name=Dorothy Gambrell}}
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Category:American women bloggers
Category:American webcomic creators
Category:People from Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:Williams College alumni
Category:Artists from Tucson, Arizona
Category:American female comics artists
Category:American female comics writers