Did someone say a picture is worth a thousand words? Carol Vanek only needs a few to create one with a singularly funny Jewish theme.
Like the beet with little legs and eyes saying to a canine companion: “Of course I love you…Without you, baby, I’m borscht!”
Or a group of religious people gazing out to sea by a “Whaling Wall.”
Or five contemplators, sitting cross-legged in a circle. The caption: “Jewish Meditation, The Cho Zen.”
Or a muzzled dog with a message of congratulations: “Muzzle Tov.”
“I just love play on words and puns and somehow that evolved into cards,” says the 41-year-old Sebastopol resident.
It’s also how she named her company, Tuba Loons (two balloons, get it?), hand-stamped on each card.
Her works will be on display at “Salute to the Arts” from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 1 and 2 in Sonoma’s central plaza.
Vanek, whose themes range from yoga and Zen to sex and secular issues, picks her ideas from just about anywhere.
“I hear someone say something…and my mind immediately thinks of all the other meanings in that word,” she says.
For instance, there’s the card entitled “Car Pool Tunnel Syndrome.” It depicts the daily gridlock on Highway 101 south that bottlenecks at Sausalito’s Waldo Tunnel on its way to San Francisco.
One motorist peevishly says to another: “Weren’t we in this mess yesterday and every day this week?” To which the other replies inside the card: “Yeah. It’s repetitive.”
Not surprisingly, Vanek was an English major at Cal State Northridge, where she wrote poetry. Curiously, she has little artistic training.
“This is all doodles,” she says modestly.
In 1984, she took a job at an advertising agency in Encino, where she passed pun-laden notes with more doodles on them. A colleague encouraged her to develop the pictures.
“I figured I can’t do anything. I’m a writer, not an artist,” she says.
But three years later, Vanek got a whippet. “And I thought they were so hilarious, so whimsical,” she says. “It started with dogs and later evolved into people.”
Like Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, Vanek imbues her whippets with off-beat shapes and human problems. But she also injects Jewish traits, such as fish or whippets wearing yarmulkes, prayer shawls or sidecurls.
At one point, Vanek, who has led family camp art workshops at UAHC camps Swig and Newman, considered taking art classes. But friends discouraged her.
“It would break the naiveté” of the characters, she says.
For instance, there’s the holiday card with two whippets. One wears a yarmulke. He’s looking critically at the other, who is dressed like Santa and removing a menorah and dreidel from a sack with a Star of David.
The card reads “Ain’t you being a bit sack religious?” Open it up and it says, “The holidays are often a mixed bag. Merry Chanukah.”
On another card, a man struggles with a one-legged yoga pose, an instruction book lying on the floor below him. The caption: “Jewish mystics have finally discovered why yoga is such a foreign concept to many Jews.” The inside reads: “Yoga spelled backwards is a goy.”
Vanek uses her synagogue, Santa Rosa’s Congregation Beth Ami, as a test market.
“And if my rabbi breaks into laughter, then I know it’s a winner,” she says. “Then there’s stuff that’s not so kosher, so I back off on it.”
For now, she’s a one-woman company, wearing hats for every task from production to marketing. It’s a task that appears to be wearing thin, and Vanek would love to find someone to market her products.
So far, they’re sold at Afikomen in Berkeley and Quicksilver Mine Co. in Sebastopol.
What keeps her riveted to the fledgling business is her love of humor and Judaism.
“I see that it means a lot to people, watching their laughter and hearing their feedback,” Vanek says. “It’s a really nice connection to work and a way to express myself in my religion. Judaism means a lot to me. It’s part of my life.”