On a weekend of presidential transition, Jennifer Shinn Cahill was sorting through a box of family keepsakes when a presidential face popped up.
Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. Not George W. Bush.
It was Bill Clinton, whose face got some screen time during coverage of the Jan. 20 inaugural activities. But the version in Cahill’s hands was created more than 20 years ago by her father, former Columbian artist Jim Shinn.
Now that old newspaper illustration of the 42nd president has its own transition in store. It is headed for the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark.
“I’m kind of surprised,” said Shinn, who retired in 1995 after 30 years as The Columbian’s staff artist.
Shinn, 85, had a couple of roles with the paper, including drawing some editorial cartoons. He also was the newsroom illustrator, which led to Shinn creating the artwork to accompany a story about former President Clinton.
“I vaguely remember doing it,” Shinn said Wednesday. “It was for an L.A. Times piece on the health care plan they had going.”
This was before digital imagery became the way to illustrate a story that didn’t have any accompanying photos.
Near the end of his career, “computer graphics were in their infancy,” Shinn said. “They were OK, but I didn’t get any real joy. They were so mechanical: Give me a brush and ink and paper.”
Eventually, Shinn’s works wound up in a family archive, which is to say in boxes in his daughter’s basement. (Her brother, Jeff, also has part of their dad’s artwork.)
“I have five boxes,” Cahill said. “I’ve only gone through a couple of boxes. It’s fascinating. I just get lost in it.”
But she has a goal in mind: “The subject of the illustration is the one who should have it.”
Earlier, she found a couple of drawings featuring people who were part of the local political scene in the 1970s and ’80s, including former Vancouver Mayor Bryce Seidl.
“I Googled him and sent him a scan, and he got in touch with dad. It’s really fun to connect people,” the Olympia resident said.
But Bill Clinton?
“I found the contact information for the Clinton Presidential Library on Bill Clinton’s Facebook page and sent an email on Friday with a quick iPhone photo of the illustration.”
Within a couple of hours, Cahill had a response from the library: “We would love to accept this beautiful watercolor sketch.”
It turns out that these offers don’t come along every day.
“It’s not a common event,” said Dana Simmons, supervisory archivist at the Clinton Presidential Library. “We had a lot of donations when it first opened. It has slowed down for us — not even every month. This is exciting, especially when we get an original illustration.”
There are no immediate plans for the image, Simmons said: “It will be in archive storage, and exhibited when appropriate.”
While most of Shinn’s works are tied to particular news events, some of the cartoons from the 1980s and ’90s are still timely, Cahill said. Some of his work on environmental and traffic issues “could run today.”
