It was a pleasant, unexpected surprise to me, at the Manhattan NCS Chapter holiday party in December. In the middle of dinner, Ed Steckley, the chapter president, took a microphone, called for quiet, and then announced that Adrian Sinnott, an illustrator from Long Island, and I were the first recipients of a new NCS award, for lifetime education contributions to the world of cartooning. This is the NCS announcement about me:
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Tom Gill Education Award presented to New Yorker cartoonist Mort Gerberg.
Last month, longtime NCS member and multi-genre cartoonist Mort Gerberg was given the Tom Gill Education Award by The National Cartoonists Society.
The event was held at the Manhattan chapter’s December holiday party at the Society of Illustrators.
The Tom Gill Award was created in 2015, named in honor of Tom Gill, Lone Ranger cartoonist and one of the founders of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The award is intended to recognize cartoonists who devote much of their non-freelancing time to art education and furthering the world of cartooning.
Mort Gerberg has won two divisional Reuben awards as Best Magazine Cartoonist, for 2007 and 2008, in addition to four other nominations in that category. Besides teaching at Parsons School of Design in NYC for over 15 years and lecturing at other venues, Mort wrote the premier book on cartooning, “Cartooning: the Art and the Business,” a standard site on the bookshelves of cartoonists, illustrators and teachers in all disciplines for over 30 years.
Mort has also written, edited and/or illustrated 43 other books for adults and children, drawn several syndicated comic strips, and written, drawn and appeared on television, online and home video.
