Community rallies around Bates

Famed local cartoonist still recovering from heart attack

By ANITA ALAN
Special to The Herald
10/24/2008

Nearly every reader who picks up The Herald or the Carmel Pine Cone knows exactly where to look for a Bill Bates cartoon. Many thumb to that page first. Whether you want a biting commentary on local matters or a national political statement sure to please some and infuriate others, Bates seems to always provide it.

As most know, Bates' work is on hold while he heals from a heart attack and subsequent staph infection. For now, fans can only settle for reprints. But to help the renowned artist get back on his feet, a community group has planned a Friends of Bill Bates fundraiser on Sunday to help offset the staggering medical costs he has accrued over the last three months.

The event, co-sponsored by the Carmel Art Association, at Carmel Mission's Crespi Hall (on Lausen Drive off Rio Road) takes place from 2-5 p.m. The day will include light hors d'eouvres (A Moveable Feast), wine (Chateau Julien), music (pianists Bob Phillips and Nick Williams, and flutist Joe Ortmanand) and an auction (local art, Bates' classic cartoons and art, dining certificates etc). Admission is free and donations will be accepted at the door.

A large crowd is expected, given Bates' popularity in a city he's spent a career poking fun at.

“He’s captured the general ambiance of our city like no one else,” said Carmel Mayor Sue McCloud, who as a councilmember in 1998 joined in awarding Bates a tongue-in-cheek certificate to recognize his contributions to the city — instituting a “Bill Bates Humor Overlay District 3 feet in diameter around him.”

“He’s made fun of all of us, to the betterment of the community,“ said McCloud, who will be on hand at Sunday's event.

Bates took a roundabout path to Carmel. After graduating from the University of Texas with a major in advertising, Bates became an illustrator in the Air Force. In the private sector, he became an art director of an advertising agency in Dallas and a technical illustrator for Raytheon Electronics near Boston. Additionally, in the 1950s, Bates hosted a children's television show in his home state of Texas.

Bates in big sur For four years, from 1961 to 1965, the San Francisco Examiner ran the comic strip “Ping.” Bates described the wordless cartoon panel as “a lovable Chinese character drawn in pantomime.” Years later, he wrote and illustrated San Francisco: City-by-the-Bates. In 1969, he illustrated the “the famous or infamous — whatever you want to call it — Zodiac Love Poster” as Bates put it. “It outsold every other poster in history and I made $400 from it!” he said. He recalled in an interview just 10 years later that all the head shops printed the posters on their own. They came out with wristwatches, napkins and a variety of goods. “There was no way of catching them. There were so many injunctions. We had over 50 injunctions just in San Francisco to stop printers — and we just gave up. Copyrights don't mean anything anymore,” he said.

During his time with Royal Viking, Bates produced 24 travel sketchbooks. His life-sized portraits of Fiji's high chiefs are on exhibit at the Fiji National Museum. With his ex-wife, Carol Minou, Bates completed the graphics for the Fijian Cultural Center at Pacific Harbor in the '70s. Although Bates convinced Minou to continue her drawing, Minou later taught Bates to etch. She studied with Virginia Conroy, a fine artist who exhibited at San Francisco's deYoung Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Conroy was the wife of renowned cartoonist Eldon Dedini. Bates met Minou while cartooning in his usual plein aire-style. A number of his comic offerings show Minou in her Carmel meter maid uniform. The two spent three years in Fiji doing etchings during the late '70s, then returned to Carmel where they raised their two sons, Oliver and William.

Bates' life and work have been on display for decades, but few people may know that the Pulitzer Prize-nominated cartoonist had a strong Big Sur connection. Bates provided the Big Sur Gazette and later the Coast Gazette with comic relief and incisive editorial cartoons, to the delight of South Coast residents. For years before and after his days with the Gazette, he devoted time to sketching caricatures of Captain Cooper School Carnival-goers, among other events.

At that time, Bates strongly considered moving to Big Sur, and wanted to create a Big Sur cartoon book. Instead, he took a position with Royal Viking Line, eventually becoming assistant cruise director. One of his most elaborate works is a 2-foot-by-3-foot poster cutaway of life aboard a Royal Viking cruise ship. A masterpiece of sea-going observation, every compartment on every deck shows humorous passenger and crew interactions. His shipboard career led the globe-sailing Bates to meet his wife Lei-Lei. Their daughter Chelsea Mei later accompanied the couple on cruises.

Aside from his generous and continuous donations to charity and his work with The Herald and Pine Cone, Bates is best known locally for his Carmel cartoon books — “Serra’s Place,” “Serra’s Place II,” “Bill Bates in Carmel,” “Carmel-by-the-Bates” and for his illustrations of Carmel's Top Chefs in “A Taste of Carmel.”

When post office officials in Carmel remodeled the interior of the building and removed the Bates cartoons that had decorated the walls for decades, the community protested until the work was replaced. The displays delight locals and visitors alike, but the most helpful Bates artwork of all is the billboard-sized map of Carmel next to Nielsen's Market. He and Carol Minou completed the lengthy project in 1981. In the ensuing years, the much-loved landmark has been repainted and updated.

A seasoned traveler, Bates has experienced life in its fullest measure, always productive, always searching for another perspective from which to view the human condition. He has given us the chance to understand our joys, frustrations, and follies. As former editor-in-chief of the Carmel Pine Cone, Mike Butowitsch said, “His cartoons chronicle the life and times of Carmel, which makes him an historian. His purpose is not solely to entertain, but to make us see ourselves.”