ARTIST PITS HEALING LAUGHTER AGAINST LOCKDOWN LONELINESS
Couches Get Lonely Too Sima Elizabeth Shefrin | Gabriola Island $32 | 150pp
Laughter, they say, is the best medicine. And B.c.-based cartoonist and social justice activist Sima Elizabeth Shefrin serves up a healing dose of laughter in her Couches Get Lonely Too.
Begun as a pandemic project and a modest fundraiser for the local food bank on Gabriola Island, the book is made up of spare, witty four-panel comic strips that record island life under lockdown and the dark shadow of the pandemic.
The visual style is reminiscent of James Thurber's classic New Yorker cartoons, although Shefrin's tone is more tender and gentle than Thurber's. Shefrin shares Thurber's affection for dogs and features Cona, the dog she owns with husband folk singer Bob Bossin.
One of the first jokes the reader encounters in this eccentric and charming book is a dispute between Shefrin and her dog about whether Cona created most of the comic strips. Cona breaks the fourth wall to apologize to readers for “…a domestic dispute so early in the book.”
This example suggests that Shefrin is not out for big laughs. Instead, the comics call for tender, wry amusement, and successfully create occasions for many quiet smiles. But this is not to suggest that the artist's approach is anodyne, or that she is afraid to tackle difficult material. In 2016, for example, Shefrin created a fabric artwork, Embroidered Cancer Comic that addressed her husband's prostate cancer and its impact on their relationship. This bold work was reviewed positively in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet that year.
And in Couches Get Lonely Too, Shefrin takes on tough issues like the mortal dread associated with the climate change, the grinding loneliness of lockdown, the excruciating awkwardness of social distancing and the many other sorrows and discontents of COVID life. And yet, as Leonard Cohen notes introducing one of his later songs at a London concert, “…cheerfulness kept breaking through.”
And with the cheerfulness come wry observations about the mixed joys of computer-mediated human contact, the quirky new art Shefrin creates by recycling old T-shirts into underwear — yoga underwear! Fishermen's Union underwear! — and the inevitable moments of domestic discord under conditions of imposed solitude together. All the while, the subscription payments from supporters went to support community food banks during composition. This lovely book is available now from the author's website.