In recognition of her work, ComicsAlliance listed Chast as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition.[3] She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010.[4] In May 2017, she received the Alumni Award for Artistic Achievement at the Rhode Island School of Design commencement ceremony.[5]
Chast's subjects often deal with domestic and family life. In a 2006 interview with comedian Steve Martin for the New Yorker Festival, Chast revealed that she enjoys drawing interior scenes, often involving lamps and accentuated wallpaper, to serve as the backdrop for her comics. Her comics reflect a "conspiracy of inanimate objects", an expression she credits to her mother.[8][9]
Her first New Yorker cartoon, Little Things, was sold to the magazine in April 1978. The cartoon, which Chast describes as "peculiar and personal", shows a small collection of "Little Things"—strangely-named, oddly-shaped small objects such as "chent", "spak", and "tiv".[10]
Her New Yorker cartoons began as small black-and-white panels, but increasingly used more color and often appeared over several pages. Her first cover for The New Yorker was the August 4, 1986 issue.[11]
Chast has written or illustrated more than a dozen books, including Unscientific Americans, Parallel Universes, Mondo Boxo, Proof of Life on Earth, The Four Elements and The Party After You Left: Collected Cartoons 1995–2003 (Bloomsbury, 2004). In 2006, Theories of Everything: Selected Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006 was published, collecting most of her cartoons from The New Yorker and other periodicals. One characteristic of her books is that the "author photo" is always a cartoon she draws of, presumably, herself. The title page, including the Library of Congress cataloging information, is also hand-lettered by Chast.[citation needed]
Her book, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a graphic memoir, combining cartoons, text, and photographs to tell the story of an only child helping her elderly parents navigate the end of their lives.[12]
Chast is represented by Carol Corey Fine Art in Kent, Connecticut. [13]
^Fresh Air with Terry Gross, December 30, 2014: Interview with Roz Chast; Interview with Louis C.K. National Public Radio (U.S.) WHYY, Inc. December 30, 2014. OCLC958462415. [at 20:51] My parents were born in 1912. They grew up in the Depression, or graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks where they kept track of every nickel that they spent. And these habits of frugality, from having grown up so poor, to having graduating in the Depression, never left them. They were frugal, they were very careful about money, they used everything up. I remember, my mother would take slivers of soap and put them in a washcloth, and then sew this little soap bag out of the slivers of soap. She made a bathrobe out of towels that she sewed together.Audio (MP3)
^ abcdThe Masters Series: Roz Chast exhibition catalogue (New York: School of Visual Arts, 2018).
^Mankoff, Robert (2015-10-06). How about never--is never good for you? : my life in cartoons (First Picador ed.). New York: Picador. p. 174. ISBN9781250062420. OCLC931942492.
^Werris, Wendy (Apr 18, 2014). "Telling It Like It Is: Roz Chast". PW. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 6 October 2016. A version of this article appeared in the 04/21/2014 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Telling It Like It Is: Roz Chast
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