It started on the couch, where so many domestic disputes, Netflix binges and cat cuddling begin.
A spectacle-wearing character named Howard puts down his magazine and grabs a tissue so he can blow his nose. Janine, also wearing glasses, sits next to him, reading a book. When she sees him subtly change his position, she frantically shouts: "ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?" Moments later, she falls asleep and Howard screams the same question at her.
In cartoonist Roz Chast's world, it's a peek into a cringey, funny, loving conversation between an older married couple. It is just one of the 21 New Yorker cartoonist's works on view in "Upper West Side Meets Upper Midwest" at ArtReach St. Croix. Chast's 2014 graphic memoir "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?" about caring for her parents in their final years, is the featured book in this year's NEA's Big Read, which is happening now in the St. Croix Valley, so organizers also put together an exhibition. Her new book, "I Must Be Dreaming," comes out in October.
Most of the cartoons in this show ran in the New Yorker between 1993 and 2021, but for this exhibition Chast made a special one about her first visit to Minneapolis. Her husband, Bill, is from Golden Valley. The first time she visited, she went to Byerly's (now Lunds & Byerlys) and back then, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's didn't yet exist.
"I remember the first visit so well," she said. "It was sort of awe-inspiring. It was so different from the grocery stores that I was used to from either growing up or living in New York at the time — it was like opposite land. It was just gigantic. I was used to these cramped little aisles. ... Byerly's was modern and it had carpet and it was well-lit and there weren't crazy people in line, urinating on the floor in front of you."
Another cartoon in the show nods to the deliciousness of Wisconsin cheese, while another pokes fun at two people getting lost while on a road trip.
Not surprisingly, Chast prefers the couch to the outdoors for a variety of reasons.
"It's indoors for one thing, and I don't like going outside," she said. "My motto is, 'Why ask for trouble?' But also you can have more than one person on the couch — unless that person is immense, I suppose. So it's a good setting for a cartoon."
