» Barackatoon
Time, Newsweek, Oprah, Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker, LIFE, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. You name it and chances are, he has already done it. In this high political season, caricaturistJohn Kascht is at it again. His latest subject: Barack Obama. And for good measure. The Illinois senator is flying high in the polls, poised to become the Democratic nominee for the ’08 presidential derby. In a YouTube video, John explains how he came up with the image in the likeness of the Hawaiian-born political rock star. The work is part of a series on presidential candidates. One observer has only high praises for John, for “simply using his caricaturist’s eye to get to the heart of their true nature”, without necessarily advocating one candidate over another. Unlike editorial cartoonists, there’s also that none-threatening feel about his pieces. No wonder John’s subjects have become fans, from Katharine Hepburn to Stephen King, Sean Connery to Ray Romano. Still, he packs hefty intellectual punch. If not, The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery would not have acquired at least two-dozen “Kaschts”. “My sketches are very sketchy,” John would humbly mumble. And that’s not a put-on. For a man who lives on a tiny farm in Pennsylvania with his wife, a beekeeper of 500,000 honeybees, he embodies it. Sweet!
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