Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- Last Sunday it seemed appropriate to post a past piece for the second time. Heidi and I had our second visit to John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy’s home outside of NY on Eastern Long Island. A comfortable respite from our workaday struggle in the tireless city. The chief overwhelming beauty of the home comes from the extraordinary garden Joe and John have built and cultivated. When we visited last year, it was June and everything was in the first blush of June. I could only compare it to my one visit to Giverny, Monet’s stunning gardens outside of Paris. I happened on to that country home at the perfect time when I visited years ago. The garden was as stunning as a . . . well, Monet painting.

This is my favorite of John’s paintings. A big piece that hangs in the living room
over the mantel. I found myself staring at the delicate washes of colors from
across the room. The wash of color plays nicely against the complicated linear
detail of the flowers. It’s a well planned painting done with a spirited energy.

Last year, John and Joe’s garden was lush and blooming and beautiful. The house was full
of John’s beautiful paintings of the flowers. If I lived near such a garden, that would be what I’d be painting too. These paintings were some of John’s best work; the art here was at least equal to anything he’d done in animation. So on that post, last June, I showed a number of his paintings, too.

Last weekend, Heidi and I arrived with the forecast of rain, but it didn’t seem to come with us. The night was cloudy, but the weather was otherwise pleasant, and we had a delightful chicken dinner outdoors. The garden, in August, wasn’t the same. As Joe had explained the odd weather we’d been having this year – high temperatures, heavy rain in the Spring and drought in the Summer – forced all the flowers to bloom at the same time, and earlier than usual. Once the flowers closed, they remained closed and left the garden very green with the occasional flowering bush.

Saturday was full of rain. To be honest, I enjoyed it. The light to heavy rainfall felt very present and tactile. Things seemed more in deep focus. We went to a local museum and bought some used books at a great, local shop.

Finally, on Sunday we had very nice weather, but Heidi and I had to leave at lunchtime. It was a great break for us and gave us the chance to allow our blood to thin out a bit before heading back to the City.

I took a number of pictures which I expected to post last week, but found that I’d many more than I remembered. So today’s post will cover this year’s bloom.

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While the rain came down Saturday morning,
I took a couple of photos outside our guest room door.

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We decided to take a trip to a local museum which
was featuring a show of photographs of NY Landmarks.
(Oh the irony! We came to the Hamptons to look at photos of NYC.)

This is Joe looking at the photo wall.

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When we were ready to leave it was raining again.
Joe went to get the car so the three of us wouldn’t get wet.

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It was barely drizzling, so I went out into the rain
to get a couple of pictures of John & Heidi.

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The rain took a short break.
Heidi went out to the pool.

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I went out to the flowers.

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I couldn’t pass up a photo of the garden ornaments.

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There was the rabbit that Bill Tytla’s widow had given John
as a house gift. It came from Bill’s garden in Connecticut.

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For dinner John made his linguini in clam sauce.
Heidi and Joe participated in the kitchen.

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I had a martini.

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After dinner we took a ride to the beach.

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The sunset was beautiful at the end of the rainy day.
It’d be nice on the next day when we’d head home.

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John and Heidi in discussion.

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Joe in thought on the beach.

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John, Heidi, Joe

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John, me, Joe

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John and me

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It had turned into the perfect evening.

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We heard about their cat, Lucy, who loved being outdoors
in their garden. Prior to coming out to this house, she had a
tough time getting over the death of another cat in the family.
The Bridgehampton house helped her.

Joe wrote a children’s book about her & John illustrated it:
Lucy Goes to the Country.

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These are photos of photos they’d taken.
She found a birdbath that was about to be discarded, and
made it her own place to lie in the sun.
She had a difficult time leaving at the end of the weekend, and
John & Joe had a hard time finding her.

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I know how Lucy felt. When it was time for us to leave, I was
prepared to hide somewhere so I didn’t have to get back on the bus.

- Last year at about this time, Heidi and I went to visit John Canemaker and Joe Kennedy at their wonderful Bridgehampton house. That weekend I was so overwhelmed by the flush and beautiful gerden as well as the wonderful floral paintings John had done. I reported it on this blog, and was quite pleased with that post.

This weekend we’re repeating the excursion and have come to a different trip. For one, as Joe told me, the flowers bloomed much sooner this year, including those that usually bloom late, probably because of the peculiar weather we’ve been having. Consequently, the garden looked very different this year. It is now very green without much color.

This year we had more than overcast clouds affecting the weather. Rain stayed with us on much of Saturday. I didn’t mind very much, but there was little opportunity to walk through the garden with the ground so wet.

I’ve taken a few pictures this weekend and will add those later this afternoon once I get home, but for now I’m repeating last year’s post (with some minor changes).

- 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.

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.

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Well, it’s later that afternoon, and we’re home. But I’m beat.

There are too many pictures I’ve taken and the post would be endless if I added them here, so I’ve decided to post a couple of pics of John’s paintings, and I’ll save the remainder for next Sunday. I’m sure you won’t mind. Though they are good pictures. See John, Joe and Heidi sharing a kitchen as they make linguine with clam sauce; see the four of us romping on the beach; see more pictures of the garden sculpture Bill Tytla’s widow gave John and Joe for their garden. And see some great pictures of the garden in the rain. I’m sure you’ll want to return next Sunday for that. (or not!)

Here’s John, Heidi and Joe outside their house.
It looks as though they’re greeting us, but in reality
Heidi and I are about to leave on Sunday afternoon.

These two small paintings by John were
hanging in the guest bedroom we occupied.

This gem of a painting hung over the mantelpiece
in the living room. It belonged there.

- I continue to weave through the boxes that make up the collection of animation art assembled by Vincent Cafarelli. This week I have anothe rmix of artwork; these pieces were all xerox copies (sometimes copies of copies.) I’ve tried to make them all presentable having to photoshop out some of the schmutz that came with old copiers. Since these are all models and pieces from the 30′s, I thought it worth the trouble.

Let’s start with the mix of models:

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Gandy Goose a Terrytoon character. Not the best quality copy.

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Cubby Bear, an early Van Buren character

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Parrotville, another Van Buren product from their last years

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Another Parrotville model sheet

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I have no idea where this character was created,
though I’d bet on Van Buren.

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A Fleischer character to play off Pudgy

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Another kind of Fleischer dog.

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A Fleischer chicken

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A typically racist character from Fleischer’s ethnic types.

Here’s a copy of the program from the Paramount theater in New York on their premiere of Gulliver’s Travels.

First the outside pages (folded in the center)

Then the inside pages.

To add to the post, I thought I’d throw a random group of photos taken over the years with Vince and Candy at Perpetual Motion/Perpetual Animation or Buzzco.

Nick Tafuri’s party for animators
(LtoR) Jan Svochak, Candy Kugel, Vinnie Cafarelli,
And u-nion rep Gerard de Salvio.

Candy Kugel and Johnny Gentilella and Mrs. Tafuri

(LtoR) Howard and Iris Beckerman, Doug Crane, Candy Kugel and Ed Smith

Perpetual Motion Pictures:
(LtoR) Animators Vinnie Cafarelli, Jack Dazzo and Vinnie Bell

Buzzco: (LtoR) Candy Kugel, Lu Guarnier, Vinnie Cafarelli

Buzzco: (LtoR standing) Vince Cafarelli, Jack Dazzo, Vinnie Bell,
Jan Svochak, Arnie Levin, John Lopez, Max Seligman
(seated) Lu Guarnier, Bryon Moore

Some NY animation Academy members:
Vince Cafarelli, Candy Kugel, Jimmy Picker,
Frank Mouris, me and John Dilworth

- Given the selection of Paul Ryan as Romney‘s running mate, I had to tune in to the speeches of excess. The pair followed the George Bush lead as they appeared, running off a Navy ship (albeit a retired one), to make their speeches. Thus we can see that these great Republicans are would-be military men (except that neither of them has served any time in the military.)

I had to celebrate today by selecting some well placed flags from past blog posts and wave them high.
Again.

God Bless America.
(Of course, I’m nervous that Obama won’t win and these two will get in and completely derail America. They sure try hard but are completely unsympathetic to me or my family or my way of life. Read the editorial in today’s NYTimes.)

The first and last pictures are the brilliant handiwork of Steve Fisher. Thank you, Steve.

That’s about enough of that.

Happy Sunday.

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With all the weather we’ve been having lately, I had to laugh at this post from Feb., 2010. There’s more to it, really. When I moved out of my office space, I moved Robbie into my home – a one bedroom apartment where 2 cats already lived and had made peace with each other. Robbie’s a big guy, but he’s not the alpha male. Alex is. We expected raging battles, but no. The 2 boys act like long lost brothers. They fight every day for fun (lotsa flying fur.) It’s the girlio, Lola, who is the problem. She gets along fine with Alex, but if she SEES Robbie she turns into a screaming banshee waking our entire building and the ghosts that live in our walls. She’s taken private residence in the bedroom and the rest of us (excepting, of course, Robbie) have to pay homage a couple of times a day. Oh, for the problems of animation!

Anyway, here’s February, 2010 and Robbie’s romp in the snow.

- Sorry folks, but I just can’t help myself when it comes to big snowfalls. We had about 12″ this week, so that seemed a lot to me. The newscasters were saying upwards of 20″, but they’re always fulla crap.

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On the left you can see the weather at the end of Thursday.
On the right it’s the start of the new day, Friday.

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On Thursday night, going home it was a mess. It had rained all day
sort of a soupy, slushy mess of wet goo. Every corner had about a
foot of water you had to step in, around or through to get across
the street. Let me tell you it gets annoying.

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I walked across Bleecker Street heading toward the subway, at
about 7pm. It looks nice here, but it was a wet mess.

By the way, I couldn’t help leaving the blue/greenish tint to the snow
caught in these photos. The street lights at night give it that tone.

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The colors remind me of those the Disney BG artists painted snow in a Donald cartoon
where he fights his nephews in a snowball fight. Donald’s Snow Fight.

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The snow was wet wet wet and heavy.

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By 5:30 the next morning there was a different picture as I left
my apartment on 30th Street. This was the height of the storm.
Big thick, fluffy snowflakes everywhere.

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Here’s Park Avenue. No cars in sight. It was impossible driving,
though a bus crawled past me at one point.

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The over-busy construction site was drawn to a lull.

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This was Bleecker Street from the vantage point of the
old Portuguese Church on Carmine Street.

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Across from the church are two planters full of tiny trees.

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Here’s the view of my studio street, Bedford Street.

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Looking down the block toward my tiny sign.

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I was the last person to see the entrance steps look like this.
I cleared each step as I walked down.

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I went inside and put my things away and went out to shovel.
My boy Robbie came out to keep me company and try to
figure out what had happened.

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He kept going out all morning and coming back in covered
with wet snow. I regret I didn’t call him Snowball.

- This is part 4 of 4 of the Rowland B. Wilson book, Whites of Their Eyes. You can find the other three parts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The book was scanned and sent to me by Bill Peckmann, and, of course, he’s the one to thank for this great material from this 1962 book. Here are the final images from the book, and boy are they good.

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Bill Peckmann sent me the following note with the scans:

For all fans and friends of Rowland B. Wilson, I just want to give Suzanne Lemieux Wilson a big standing ‘O’ and a shout out of our appreciation for authoring the very soon to be released book ‘Rowland B. Wilson’s Trade Secrets, Notes On Cartooning & Animation‘. Without her diligence and heavy lifting of putting this book together, we would never have seen this wonderful collection of RBW art in print form, plus the added topper of actually finding out Rowland’s thoughts and reasoning that went into producing the art that we’ve come to know and love. Suzanne, again, many, many thanks!

Here’s a little photo trip down memory lane with Suzanne and Rowland.

(England 1973.)

England 1973

England 1974

Belgium 1974

Connecticut 1981

Moving Day 1982

California 1984

August 11th a big show and retrospective of the work of the Quay Brothers will open at the Museum of Modern Art. Part of the exhibit will be a small puppet world within glass casings that they created called “Dormitorium.” This was actually exhibited in New York several years ago, and I photographed that presentation. I thought this might be a good time to repost it, getting us all in the mood for the world of Quay.

Dormitorium: an Exhibition of Film Decors by the Quay Bros

The Brothers Quay have an exhibition on display at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street on the ground level. It’s on exhibit from now through October 4, 2009.

Stephen and Timothy Quay claim writers Franz Kafka and Robert Walser, animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica, puppeteers Wladyslaw Starewicz and Richard Teschner, and composers Leoš Janácek, Zdenek Liška, and Leszek Jankowski among their influences. All of these artists can be felt with each of the constructions on display.

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On entering you see a darkened room with boxes about
the size of your torso – maybe 3′ x 4′ – on display.

Of to the side there’s a theater with constantly running films
showing Quay brother works. One of every kind of chair.

Within the boxes there are whole worlds.
Magnificent detail upon detail.

To the next box for a wholly different world.

Again the amazing detail is brought to the enclosure.

A couple of the boxes are seen through a prism.
The interior is magnified.

You have to get close to it to get real clarity.
You virtually enter these little rooms.

Some of these worlds seem enormous.

There are many closeups one could take given all there is to see.

This little scene is in the upper left box of the full view above.

The central character on the main stage.

You can get an idea of the cases and the display.
All contain their own little worlds.

Another magnifying glass focuses on a feather.

Just beyond the feathered quill there’s the writer.

The last box near the exit has a label within.

Many of the cases can be viewed
from three different perspectives.

Happy July 4th

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Another beauty of a still by Steve Fisher.
Many thanks to him for all the photos that
he’s contributed to this blog.

Keep scrolling down for the routine Wednesday Animation post.

- I love shots of animation people at various functions. It’s particular fun when you know the people and the pictures show them from a different time and place. Here are a few that nicely fill the bill.

- Ralph Bakshi was in touch after seeing the Fleischer model sheets that I posted. He sent me a photo from the early 1960s.

(L to R) Al Chiarito, Vinny Bell, Arnie Levy, Nick Alberti, Bill Ackerman

Candy Kugel had a couple of other photos from two events. The first two are from a Lcl 841 u-nion meeting. Candy and I tried to ID the people in the photos, and we’ve named a number of them. If you notice an error or can name some others, please just drop a note in the comments.

(L to R) Cliff “Red” Augustin, unknown, Izzie Klein,
Marsha Kaplan (seated), Johnny Gentilella, Gordon Whittier,
female center unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown,
unknown woman seated, Nick Tafuri

Johnny Gentilella (L), unknown fem, Pepe Ruiz,
unknown, unknown, Gordon Whittier, Unknown fem.

Other photos are from an exhibition of animation art and screenings from the different commercial studios in NYC. This was held in April 1952.

Pauk Kim was the artistic designer of the exhibition.

This is Lu Guarnier in front of a sign which lists
all the studios at the time that participated in the
exhibit of cels and artwork – and a screening of spots.

Rose Eng (?), Anne Eng (Fred’s wife), unknown visitor, Fred Eng

Francis Lee

Pablo Ferro

Lu Guarnier

And at the very same time these animators were being
photographed at the animation function, I was holding up
my twin brothers and older sister dressed in my cowboy garb.

Among Candy’s photos was this one of an inbetweeener,
Fred Diamond, at his desk in Famous Studios. I thought
it interesting to see what the setup looked like at Famous.

Finally here’s a picture of Assistant Animator, Gerry Dvorak, who painted baseball cards in his early days, then went into pictures of snow leopards.

This is Gerry posing with Mickey Mantle at Mantle’s hotel room.
They’re holding up Gerry’s baseball card painting of Mantle.
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- In the past week the Shuttle Enterprise was ferried up the Hudson to the aircraft carrier, the Intrepid. There it would settle into its new home. Steven Fisher photographed the delivery.

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This followed with a photo essay by Steve on the World Trade Center memorial under construction. hese are not only his photos but his words as well.

After quite a few years, I ventured back to the site of the World Trade Center.
Last time I was there, when it was a giant hole in the ground, I stood at the perimeter, alone, and wept. This time, I have to say that I did not experience much of an emotional reaction, and I don’t believe that it was because of the passage of time.

There were the two large pools demarking where the towers once stood; there was the new tower rising ever skyward alongside the original site; there were the myriad of names carved into the metal band surrounding the pools; there were the crowds of people, tourists mostly, strolling among the trees, sitting on stone slabs, photographing the views and each other. But it did not have the impact that I expected.

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As well-detailed as the fountain walls are (and they really are
quite lovely to watch and listen to,) I get a mental image
when viewing the pools that distracts me.

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The central secondary depression reminds me of a floor drain in a tub.
I wish the water would disappear magically, out of sight, instead of
so blatantly going down a drain. It somehow lacks respect.

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I think, too, that the presence of the visitors, an obvious
unavoidable necessity, is a detraction from the sense that
something horrific happened here. It’s like traipsing about
the ruins of Greek temple sites among so many tour groups
– it makes it more difficult to relate to the scene that
transpired here one September morning.

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I do believe that the plaza will work better once the trees
have a chance to mature; perhaps it will be easier
to reflect and contemplate then.

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Anyway, here are a bunch of photos I took, which are
probably like the millions of images being snapped by
thousands of others, but I found it still compelling to do so.

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