Steig's Woodwork

To New Yorker readers, "Small Fry" is a cherished pictorial department which week after week hits off the doings of tough, disdainful little tots. The artist, William Steig, is in sympathy with his characters in that he hated to grow up, still does. A quiet young man with lazy, stone-blue eyes, a wide grin and upstanding stiff brown hair, Steig at 31 looks about as he did when he went to Public School No. 53, in The Bronx. Little boys, he believes, "are not as quickly socially-conditioned as little girls and obviously not as artificial as adults. They furnish the best clues to the intrinsic nature of man."

This week Manhattan's Downtown Gallery displayed Steig's latest humorous accomplishments: 14 small, irresistible figures carved in mahogany, walnut, orange, pear and apple wood. He began doing them three years ago when he married and moved out to live in the country in Sherman, Conn. He and his brother, Henry Anton Steig, pruned their fruit trees, stacked the dead wood in a shed. One day William picked up a chunk and whittled it. Thereafter all male carvings were known in the family as Jason, female carvings as Tessie.

At the National Academy of Design, where he went for two-and-a-half years when young, purely to stall off a career, Artist Steig got all his fun playing football in the back yard. The dead hand of the academy certainly guided none of his carving. Longest job was the woeful Guitarist--two weeks; shortest was the Sequinned Lady--two days. School Girl is a bit African around the eyes, but Man at a Gathering is straight Steig. In general he wanted to make figures that would not "seem out of place in the cabbage fumes of apartment houses." Last week he was asked if he regarded his woodwork as a hobby. "If it sells, it's not a hobby," said William Steig.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.