Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- After I’d posted a review of Sanjay Patel‘s most recent publication, The Big Poster Book of Hindu Deities, he sent me some information about an exhibit opening in San Francisco at the Museum of Asian Art. Included in the email were a number of photos of the exhibition setting up. I’ve chosen some to post which follow below:

1
The banners outside the Museum

2
Setting up the exhibit’s entrance sign

3

4

5
Hindu-Deities wall

6
the Lobby

7
the Mockup

8
Mural corner

9
the Maharaja Parade

10
pedestals

11
the previs

12
another previs

13
Rangoli sketches

14
sketches wall

15
street sketches

16
installing the procession mural

16
Procession mural installed

17
the Vishnu wall

More pictures can be found on Sanjay’s site.

I’ve also found this short video piece about his work and thought I’d share it with you. It’s quite informative.

Mr. Patel also had an exhibition of some of his work which is reviewed here in the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and here in the New York Times.

___________________________

I received this note from Gene Deitch in the past week:

. . . it seems nearly impossible to buy anything that’s not made in China or some other competitive distant land that’s taken over our jobs. I thought we had no other choice but to give gift certificates to local services, to benefit our own workers.

But lo! The brand new December, 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine, published in Washington DC, and totally reliable for the truth, has come out with the news that chopsticks, necessary for all Asiatic food, are actually Made in USA, in Georgia, and exported to China and other far east, forkless regions!

Consider a gift parcel of this traditional American product!

(A subscription of National Geographic itself would also be great, but not without warning of the a trap I myself have fallen into. It’s impossible to give the National Geo for a single year! Once begun you are hooked for a lifetime of renewals! The magazine is so precious, so informative, and so beautifully printed, that it’s not too discardable. We ourselves have had to move four times to progressively larger quarters, just to accom-
modate the ever growing shelf space needed since I started my subscription in 1946!)

___________________________

- If there is any artist I would call my favorite, it would have to be Paul Klee. I must have at least a dozen art books on the man’s work, and I can’t get enough. My dear Heidi gifted me, recently, with a treasure of a book focusing on the artist’s love of theater and his representation of theatrical pieces in his art. We know that he was a theatrical man, having been taught to play the violin from an earlier age than when he’d started to paint. He was a virtuoso who performed on the instrument regularly. He couldn’t get enough of performance art in his life, and that’s well obvious from the drawings and paintings in this book.

One of my favorite periods at the Hubley studio was in the preparation for the CTW series, Letterman. I did a lot of library research for John Hubley on Paul Klee. The TV series grew out of Klee’s comic art, and I went to a lot of private libraries searching for elements that I thought John could use. This book would have been enormously helpful back then.

I intend to pull from Klee – Theater Everywhere a few times to post on this blog some of the great pieces in the book. Here are a few.

The book’s cover – Semitic Beauty
.
1
Comic Actor Acting Out A Riding Accident
.
2
Actor
.
3
Comic Character From A Bavarian Folk-Play
.

Dance of the Red Skirts
.
5
Fool In A Trance
.
6
Figurine – the Fool
.
7
Portrait Sketch of a Costumed Lady
.
8
Don Juan
.
9
Trio With Don Giovanni
.
10
Fire Mask
.
11
Trial for Antigone
.
12
Puppet number 7A
.

Group Portrait of Hand Puppets
.

- Bill Peckmann sent some beautiful artwork by Lyonel Feininger. They’re scans of a show’s catalogue; the featured art was a series of windmills drawn by the artist. They’re beautiful. I love showing off his work while the Whitney Museum features a show of his paintings. I haven’t been up there as yet, but I intend to go soon.

Here are the images:

The poster for the show

Cover

Click to enlarge to read

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

A list of the art for sale

- This past weekend, Heidi and I spent a lovely quiet time in Bridgehampton at the invitation of John Canemaker and his companion, Joe Kennedy. It made for a very restful and enjoyable time despite the grouchy weather.

The garden gives you the illusion that it’s larger than it is.
Even walking in it you feel that you could easily get lost in it..

The first dominant site you take with you as you visit the house is the amazing yard and the enormously colorful and tender care Joe and John have taken to cultivate their garden of a back yard. It’s stunningly beautiful. It feels almost as though these plants grew naturally next to each other and happen to take the shape it’s taken. The amount of weeding and nurturing and debugging is left completely behind as you bask in the warm glow of this garden with its variety of flower and shrub. It’s beautiful and peaceful and inviting. I couldn’t help myself over the course of the weekend; I took many walks in the area and sat and enjoyed it. I loved it.

The second thing that captivated me during the visit was a painting John had done. It sat on the wall of the guest room we stayed in. In the first few hours in the house I kept coming back to the painting. I liked it enough that I took out my camera and photographed it. As I did, I realized that there were other smaller paintings in the room, and I found them almost as lovely. There’s no doubt John has been taken with the amazing garden out back, and this has helped to color these fine watercolors.

This painting obviously is not from the garden (given the road sign).
However, one can’t help but feel that the life in that garden spills over
into this painting – as it does in all the others..

At some point in the weekend, I asked John if he minded my photographing some of the paintings in the house and posting them on the blog. John, as always, was quite open to anything I wanted to do, so I went about quickly taking some photos. I also intended to mix in pictures from the garden. After all, I see these paintings and the flora as intermingling and working together in a lovely way.

There were some problems. The paintings lost some of their verve when photographed. The delicate colors were lost, and the shape of the pictures altered. (The lens of the camera seems to have slightly distorted the frames of the images.) I saw the pictures in some way influenced by Mary Blair’s work, but John took her colors and softened them. (The brashness of Blair’s work has always bothered me.) In the end, I found myself adjusting the pictures slightly to try to give them a bit of the feel of the originals, but I’m not sure I’ve succeeded. However, better you should get to see these images than none. My apologies to John.

So, I hope you enjoy the quick tour.

Two other smaller pictures that were in the guest room.
.

One of the larger paintings John had in his office, downstairs.

A beautiful flower that opened the day we arrived.

Spider web in the grass

Heidi sitting on the porch just to the front of the garden.

John has done many small quickly sketched watercolors.
Here, you can really feel the distortion of the camera’s lens.
Again, my apologies to John.

The wall in John’s office.

A post in the garden.

I had a hard time photographing this one.
The reflections in the picture frame’s glass was difficult to avoid.

Another painting that just totally caught my attention.

Finally, a lovely little statue sitting just off the porch.
It’s a stone rabbit that once belonged to Bill Tytla.
Adrienne Tytla, Bill’s widow gave it to John as a gift.

Many thanks to John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy for a lovely weekend and all the wonderful inspiration, not only in the paintings but in the garden, as well. It was more than a small retreat.

- In 1980 Portfolio Magazine gave us this article about Edward Hopper. Bill Peckmann sent it to me, and I thought it interesting to post here, especially in that today is Memorial Day, and what better day to celebrate America.

So, I hope you enjoy it.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

The magazine’s cover

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

On posting some of Grant Wood‘s illustrations last weeik, Eddie Fitzgerald commented that:”‘Death on the Ridge Road’ might have been the inspiration for one of my favotite Bill Peet illustrations in (I think) ‘Chester the Worldly Pig.’” Bill Peckmann pointed out that the book is probably not “Chester the Worldly Pig” but “Jennifer and Josephine.”

Bill’s scanned a good half of the book’s illustrations leading up to the point where the Wood painting and the Peet illustrations come close to matching. It’s good to see what was so obviously Peet’s influences.

Grant Wood’s DEATH ON RIDGE ROW.

Cover of the book.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Thanks go to Eddie Fitzgerald for the reference in the comments.
A bigger thanks goes out to Bill Peckmann for the search and the scans.

- I was recently thinking about Grant Wood. This came out of my reading the biography of Maurice Noble by Robert McKinnon. And from Maurice Noble I thought about Paul Julian‘s great background work. Julian, and for that matter Noble, both look as though they were greatly influenced by Grant Wood..

So it was a surprise to receive a number of scans of work by Grant Wood from Bill Peckmann. We seem to be on the same wavelength. So I’m devoting today’s blog to this book of images from Wood. I think he influenced quite a few of the animation designers of the 40s and 50s.

The cover of the catalogue.

1
Spring Turning 1936

2
New Road 1939

3
Haying 1939

4
Stone City, Iowa 1930

5
Death on the Ridge Road 1935

6
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere 1931

7
Fall Plowing 1931

8
Autumn Oaks 1932

9
The birthplace of Herbert Hoover 1931

10
Iowa Landscape 1941

11
Plowing 1936

12
American Gothic 1936

13
Self Portrait 1932

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing these works with us.

- I’ve known Jeff Scher for quite some time. In the NY animation front, he’s come to represent what I think of as the truly Independent animator. His work touches abstration, live action filmaking and an absolute love for film animation. Essentially, he’s creating Art in film.

The outlet for his work had grown enormously when he started appearning in the NYTimes. There, for a year, he did a monthly video editorial for their internet site. After the year, they reduced it to a less frequent schedule. Now his videos appear more arbitrarily. (The Times is looking to make money, which means cutting back, yet charging the readers.)

These videos are short, lyrical, animated essays all made with a strong purpose of design in Jeff’s studio in Chelsea. Most of them have music by Shay Lynch. The two artists couldn’t be a better matched pair; their work together seems inseperable.

In a recent conversation with Jeff, I learned that he is self-distributing his DVDs, which collect the many films he has done. These sales are done through his own website, Fezfilms.net.

His enthusiasm for his art has always been an inspiration for me. Jeff seems to find new and adventurous ways of doing animation, and that, no doubt, keeps him alive.

.
He also has a blog which talks about the making of his current films. The blog has the wonderful title, Reasons to be Glad. The image above comes from a Paul Simon video he did called “Getting Ready For Christmas Day”. You can find that video on the blog here.
.
The website also features a gallery where you can watch some video and see art from many of the films (all of which is for sale.) I take pleasure in the beautiful piece of artwork Jeff gave me from his film “L’ Eau Life”.
It’s painted with watercolor on bristol, like all the other frames of this film.

.
Jeff teaches in New York at the School of Visual Arts and at N.Y.U. Tisch School of the Arts.
There’s an excellent interview with him, discussing process, here.

- More “Art” from Lyonel Feininger. These illustrations are culled from three separate show catalogs that Bill Peckmann has saved. We’re fortunate he’s sharing them with us. Thank you, Bill.

1
1907 – Road, Autumn Wind

2
Group of houses in dead end

3
1908 – Study for Jesuits

4
Jesuits

5
The Lighthouse

6
Locomotive

7
Cafe du Dome, Beer Drinker

8
Self Portrait

9
1909 – Church Above the Town

10
Still Life with Oranges

11
1910 – Study for Street, Dusk

12
1911 – Viaduct Near Meudon with Two Trains

13
Suburban Street with Figures

14
1912 – Promenade

15
1917 – White Man with Red Umbrella and Green Girl

16
1926 – Calm at Sea

- I recently completed Steve Martin’s autobiography, Born Standing Up, and I recommend it to anyone in the entertainment business – that means all of you reading this.

The theme throughout is his love for the work he’s doing. Fine tuning his comedy (which started out as a magic act, then a magic act with jokes, then just the jokes), took years and years of serious dedication, hard work and fine focus. His life was about little more than the act, and he eventually got it right and became an enormous success.

Like many such books, he predominantly writes about the lean years and the unapproving father who remained cold and distant to him throughout his life. Naturally, there’s plenty of funny material to read here. The short book, 206 pages, zoomed through my hands and was a great inspiration. I heartily recommend it. (it’s real cheap in paperback on Amazon.)

___________________ .
- Michel Ocelot talks to the Hollywood Reporter from the Berlin Film Festival where his latest feature, Tales From the Night is playing. (There’s also another, much longer, interview with him on Ghibli World.)

The interview is candid and interesting, as usual for Michel. He speaks his mind about animation, and that always makes what he has to say worth listening for. Because he started as a 3D cutout animator,who now works in cgi, it’s worth listening to his take on the medium.

I first met Michel back at the Ottawa Animation Festival in 1980. We were both over the moon for Tale of Tales, the Grand Prize winner of that Fest. The film made its North American Premiere there. The two of us spent the rest of the Festival talking about Norshtein’s film and were pleased when it won the deserved prize. It gave me another chance to see it projected. It was wonderful to have someone so articulate and animation-informed with whom I could discuss the film’s merits at length. I knew Michel would do well after that week’s encounter.

Reviews of Tales of the Night can be found at Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Screen Daily

___________________ .

On February 24th at 6:30pm, animation writer, Joe Strike, will interview animation filmmaker, J.J. Sedelmaier at the Society of Illustrators.

Here’s the press release that was emailed to me:

Interview with an Animator: J.J. SedelmaierThursday, February 24, 2011
6:30 – 8:30pm
Hollywood may be home to the big animation studios, but there’s no shortage of
cartoon creators in New York City, the city that gave birth to animation. Join Joe
Strike for “Interview with an Animator,” a multi-part series of live, in-person
conversations with some of New York’s best known and most creative animation
professionals.

On February 24th, Joe will interview J.J. Sedelmaier,
writer/producer/director/designer, Beavis & Butthead (MTV), Harvey Birdman ([adult
swim]) Saturday TV Funhouse and The Ambiguously Gay Duo (Saturday Night Live) and
many award winning TV commercials.

Tickets
$15 non-members, $10 members, $7 students
RSVP@societyillustrators.org or call Katie Blocher 212.838.2560

___________________ .

Sam Borenstein is the father of Montreal-based animator, Joyce Borenstein. On Sunday, February 27th at 2pm, Yeshiva University Museum will be showcasing paintings by Sam. Joyce’s Oscar-nominated short animated documentary about her father will be screened and she will attend the opening. Here’s the press release:

Yeshiva University Museum, in the heart of New York City, is proud to announce the very first American exhibition of the acclaimed master of post-war expressionism in Canada, Sam Borenstein (1908-1969).

You are cordially invited to the opening reception of

“SAM BORENSTEIN AND THE COLORS OF MONTREAL”
on Sunday, February 27, 2011,
at 2 PM.

Following the landmark retrospective at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which also toured across Canada, thirty-five of Borenstein’s most vibrant works will be on display at

YUM’s SELZ GALLERY, 15 West 16th Street, NYC
from February 6 to May 8, 2011.

We hope to have the honor of your attendance and you are welcome to invite your colleagues and friends.

___________________.

- Guillermo Del Toro has written the story with screenwriter, Matthew Robbins, and will co- direct a new 3D puppet version of Pinocchio. Set to take a darker turn than Disney’s film, the film should be an interesting mix.

Del Toro, a live-action director, is responsible for the Hellboy franchise, and he also directed 2006 the fanciful Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006. Gris Grimly will co-direct with Mark Gustafson in London. The two were previously involved in The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and the upcoming Frankenweenie. The film is being produced by the Henson Company.

To read more about this go here.