By KC Ifeanyi
For most people, sketches are simply mindless doodles born of boredom, crowding the corners of notebooks, never meant to be taken seriously. For Cathy Karol, however, her simplistic depictions of local performers on the L.A. jazz scene have made her a short-film darling.
Aided by her friend, former student and fellow artist Ruth Beckmann, Karol brilliantly layers her rustic sketches with the toe-tapping Jimmy Rowles Sextet number "Cheeta's for Two" to create her aptly titled film A Jazz Sketchbook, which Karol admits was never meant to become a short.
Sketchy Beginnings
In a phone interview with the artist behind the short, Karol explains A Jazz Sketchbook was initially created just for fun. "I wasn't planning on making them a film. I was just sketching as much as I could."
A regular on the West Coast jazz scene, with sketchpad in tote of course, Karol began drawing performers on stage. Over the span of three years, she accumulated a box full of sketches and decided to turn them into a jazz-infused slideshow for her own gratification. "I scanned them all into the computer - I'm not very good on the computer but I managed to do that - and I went to see my girlfriend Ruth Beckmann, who's a wonderful artist herself. We tried a couple songs. I just wanted music in the background."
Coming across The Jimmy Rowles Sextet record "Let's Get Acquainted with Jazz (For People Who Hate Jazz)" at a jazz festival, Karol says she fell in love with the track "Cheeta's for Two" and opted for a little synchronization. "Ruth put the music in the background and I just stood there and went, ‘Gee, it'd be nice if, when the guitar played, we saw the drawing of the guitarist,' so she said, ‘I can do that.'"
After a year of Beckmann matching sketches to instruments, Karol says she couldn't believe the results. "When she showed it to me, I was just floored. I said, ‘Hey, let's put it out there in a festival.'"
Festivals, Fame and Future Films
Karol's jazzy sketches have gone from a side project made for fun to a major contender in film festivals, garnering awards and accolades from the likes of Sedona, Newport Beach, Kansas City, Woods Hole and even Prague's Music on Film, Film on Music Festival (MOFFOM).
So how could something so simple become so popular?
Beckmann is convinced it's her former teacher's grasp of the classic method of actually putting pencil to paper and drawing as opposed to relying on the ever-present digital solution. "A lot of the kids today don't necessarily want to learn how to draw. They figure, ‘Oh, I'm gonna do this on the computer.' It doesn't work that way. [Cathy] gets them fired up about the process of animation. 2-D is here to stay, I'm absolutely convinced of it."
It's Karol's ability to capture performers in their natural element, however, that Beckmann feels resonates most with audiences. "You get the gestures, the intensity and the expressions of the players. You really get a face of the moment they're in, and I think people really connect with that."
Old-school methods and artistic aptitude aside, Karol believes her short has been well received because her subject matter is something to which people can relate. "People love to go hear jazz, and I'm drawing what people go out and do, so it's entertaining, and that music is so outrageously terrific."
With the success of A Jazz Sketchbook, Karol says she's given thought to creating another short, perhaps featuring a different jazz giant, but fans shouldn't hold their breath. "It's nice to create something from a raw state and not say, ‘Oh I'll do another one just because they liked it.'"
Whether or not a sequel is in store, one thing is certain: A Jazz Sketchbook is a testament to the philosophy of music inspiring art. Karol's melodic muse of choice: What else but jazz. "I'm a part of the scene. It's in my soul." Click here to see the review of the short film.
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