Jim Buckels

Since my last post I got very nostalgic thinking about my high school days, and then got even more nostalgic thinking about my middle school and elementary days, and one artist whose images especially bring back the wonder and emotions of my childhood are those of Jim Buckels.

I first remember seeing a coffee-table book of his post-modern, neo-surrealist images when I was about twelve. They immediately struck a chord with me. I would spend hours gazing at them all.

I swear I could almost smell the fragrance of mid-summer roses, hear the gentle warble of a wood thrush, and feel a cool vapor rising off the lake onto my face. His images were captivating and dream-like, so much so that part of me yearned more than anything to live inside their perfect stillness forever.

Born in 1948 in Iowa State, Jim Buckels' fascination with fantasy began in early childhood when his mother, who taught English comp and literature at Iowa State University, would read to him from storybooks illustrated by N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. The similarities between Buckels' and Parrish's use of light and architecture are quite apparent.

Maxfield Parrish

Jim Buckels

When he was eighteen, Buckels won an art competition and received a full scholarship to the University of Northern Iowa. In 1968, he interrupted his studies to join the army and serve two years in Vietnam. Once he returned he completed his education, found work as a freelance illustrator, and later worked in a design firm, becoming known for his stylized landscapes and dreamscapes.

On first glance they appear "pretty", perhaps even uninspired landscapes, meant only to please the viewer. Art for art's sake. However, on second glance they seem to reveal truths of lingering memories that continue to haunt you long after wards.

There is an interplay of warm fantasy and mythology to them, as well as an element of cold, modern starkness. Perhaps, this is due to Buckels' airbrush technique which produces straight lines and reflections of such geometric precision, and detail of such meticulous, crystalline clarity... but it's not just that. Everything is almost off-puttingly serene; the water so untouched, the lawns so exactly cut, yet there isn't a human soul to be found.

Buckels' surrealist influence is evident from his use of marble spheres and random pianos floating on water and in air. Are these objects purely symbolic or actual embodiments of the artist's dream-like subconsciousness?

I suppose for a young impressionable girl of my age there was nothing more alluring than a world of fairy tale chateaus, magical palaces, and elegant villas, but I like to think there was something more to the images that enticed me than silly girlhood fantasies.

Perhaps it was the ever vigilant moon, a symbol of the feminine, or the female busts and statues named after greek goddesses that seemed to address a certain feminine mystique.

All I can say, is there was something about the dusky twilight and glow of the street lamps that made me swell with awe and almost dread. The best way I can think to describe the beauty is that it made my heart ache. Way to elicit an emotional response Mr. Buckels.

~S

Tim Burton

Well, since I just made a post of one of Tim Burton's biggest inspirations, I thought I might as well do one of Mr. Burton himself, seeing as how he was a huge High School inspiration of my own.

When most people think of Tim Burton they think of a pudgy-faced filmmaker with crazy hair who directs films about quirky, misunderstood characters in a dark, Gothic style, usually with Johnny Depp as his lead, and often with his partner, Helena Bonham-Carter playing primary roles. Some of his most famous blockbusters are, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and most recently, Alice in Wonderland.

What most people don't know about Tim is that before he was a filmmaker he was an artist and animator. Born in Burbank, California, Tim grew up in a classically suburban neighborhood (as seen in Edward Scissorhands) and soon realized he didn't quite fit the mold of normality. From an early age he was a recluse and enjoyed drawing and watching classic horror films, especially those featuring Vincent Price.

In the ninth grade his artistic skills were recognized when a garbage company placed his poster on all their trucks for a year. Boy, would I pay to see that. After high school Tim received a scholarship to attend the California Institute of the Arts, but once he lost the scholarship he decided to make a "proper" pencil sketched animation titled "Stalk of the Celery Monster" (1979). The film shocked many of his school mates and caught the attention of Disney execs, so Tim was offered a job in the animation department.

During this time Burton animated for The Fox and the Hound (1981), but found animating in the Disney mold unfulfilling. He often described his attempts at animating Disney characters as looking like "road kill". Even when he was set to create concept art for the The Black Cauldron (1985), a relatively "dark" fantasy film by Disney standards, his sketches were considered too deviant and never used.

Despite having a unique set of aesthetics compared to the light and cheery Disney cartoons, Disney recognized Burton's talent and gave him the freedom to develop his own personal projects. Burton indulged in directing cheap, odd-ball films such as Doctor of Doom (1980), and the infamously bizarre Luau (1982). He did some designs for the cartoon Family Dog which was later turned into an episode of the Steven Spielberg TV series Amazing Stories. He did some uncredited work on the computer animation Tron (1982), and came up with a poem and several sketches that would later become inspiration for The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), what I consider to be the greatest animated film of all time.

It was also during this time that Tim wrote and directed the strange and beautiful, German Expressionist-inspired, black and white stop-motion animation, Vincent (1982), a semi-autobiographical film narrated by Tim's childhood idol, Vincent Price.

It's captivating. It's genius. I kind of wish Tim would return to this style rather than the highly commercialized feel of his recent films. Oh well, that seems to be the curse of all successful Blockbuster directors. Anyway, the pet dog and mad scientist themes would continue to inspire many of Tim's other films (Frankenweenie, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, etc.). We can only hope that in the future Tim will stick with producing films that are personal, in order that his talent and originality might continue to flourish.

~S

Edward Gorey

For those of you who don't know Edward St. John Gorey by name you will surely recognize him through his drawings. His highly stylized, black and white pen illustrations and eerie poems and stories have been featured everywhere from children's books, notebooks, calendars, and cards, to the opening title sequence of PBS's Mystery! (was any child growing up in the 80's not disturbed by the wailing woman on the wall?).

This definitely brings back memories; watching my parents curl up on the couch on a rainy evening to watch Rumpole of the Bailey, or The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In fact, according to my mother I was born at 3 pm on a Thursday in 1984 and my parents did everything they could to leave the hospital with enough time to catch Rumpole by 8 o'clock. Anyway, I really wish Edward Gorey had made more animations like this. They're quite hypnotic.

Born in Chicago (an American!) in 1925, he spent one semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943, then spent 2 years in the Army stationed at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah (hello!), then attended Harvard University where he studied French (a language I WILL learn one day--hey, I already know Spanish), and then basically became a professional Illustrator once he moved to New York from 1953 to 1960 and worked for Doubleday Publishing.

Mr. Gorey was quite fond of cats...

and tennis shoes...

and fur coats...

...and ballet. I knew I felt akin to him for some reason! He didn't miss a single performance of the New York City Ballet for years, attending each one dressed in a full-length fur coat and tennis shoes. Ah, only the eccentricities of an established artist can be construed as genius.

Mr. Gorey also had an extensive knowledge of literature and devoured pop-culture by watching soap operas, comedies, and dark TV series such as Batman: the Animated Series, and the X-Files (could this man be any cuter?). He never married (was purportedly asexual), and in later years resided in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod (how quintessentially Edward Hopper-esque, no?), until his death in 2000.

His style has influenced film and animation for decades and continues to do so today, as with the directors Tim Burton and Henry Selick, who drew heavily from his delicate etchings as inspiration for the sets on The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.

Uneasy, macabre, and with a slightly twisted sense of humor, Gorey's stories, which nearly always take place in Victorian and Edwardian settings, have developed a cult following and continue to captivate audiences of all sorts, especially those of the Goth subculture.

"Each night Father fills me with dread
When he sits at the foot of my bed;
I'd not mind that he speaks
In gibbers and squeaks,
But for seventeen years he's been dead".

-The Listing Attic, by E.G.

Mr. Gorey was my "first" favorite illustrator before I knew of many others, and he will always hold a special place in my heart. Please enjoy some pieces from the great and gory Edward. May he rest in peace (although he's probably having more fun in death than in life).

~S

Suzie Templeton & Women in Animation

The film industry--well, the production side of the film industry anyway (especially the animation film industry), is notorious for having been a male-dominated industry since it's inception in the early 20th century.

The majority of women who did work for Disney in the 40's and 50's were not allowed to do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen; that work was done by young men. Instead, women were consigned to the "nunnery" (as the Ink and Paint Department was known) to trace the characters on celluloid sheets with ink and fill the tracings on the reverse side with paint.

There were a few great female exceptions to this rule: Mary Blair, Retta Scott (seen below), Marilyn and Madilyn Woods (seen above), Retta Davidson, Tissa David, and Kathy Zielenski all worked for Disney throughout the decades; also Lillian Friedman who worked at Fleischer Studios in the 1930's; and La Verne Harding who worked at the Walter Lantz Studio in Hollywood in the 1940's. I hope to showcase and learn more about these women in future posts. :)

From personal experience, I know the majority of film major students are men; from screenwriting, to cinematography, to computer animation, the female to male ratio in class is generally 1:3 (and I can recall semesters in which I was the ONLY girl in the class). Luckily, this trend is changing, but it still begs the question, why?

There's a major bias that assumes women have trouble with technical abilities, and since film production involves an in-depth knowledge of cameras, cables, and computers, the tasks more often than not fall upon men to perform, who supposedly have a deeper knowledge and interest in these things.

Ironically enough, back in the day editing was considered to be a woman’s job because it was something akin to knitting or sewing, and for this reason women learned all of it's technicalities (just as they did during WWII when a shortage of men forced women to learn "men's" work). Below: Anne-Claire Poirier, a Canadian film editor, director, and writer.

It wasn't until sound came into the picture that men began to infiltrate the ranks of the editors because it was somehow considered more "electrical" and important... it was no longer "knitting".

Of course women are more than capable and desirous to gain technical skills, (heck, men have to learn them to, they're not born knowing), however it's more difficult for women to seek acceptance in a competitive, male-dominated environment, much less be accepted as the boss or director.

A Hollywood survey recently found that the number of women directors whose films featured in the list of the 250 biggest films of 2001 was down from 11% in 2000 to 6% in 2000, and the situation is even worse in the UK, of all places, where more work has had to be done to ensure women have an equal shot in the industry.

The findings also revealed that the number of female writers declined from 14% in 2000 to 10% in 2001, and that men worked as cinematographers on all of the films in the survey.

So with that feminist rant, when I heard that Suzie Templeton, a young, beautiful woman from the UK had won an Academy Award in 2008 for writing and directing the animated short, Peter and the Wolf (based off of Prokofiev's score of the same name) I fell instantly in love.

Not much is written about her life, other than she was born in Hampshire, England in 1967, received her BA in Animation from the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, and that her films have received widespread critical acclaim, including a BAFTA award, two British Animation Awards, the Rose d'Or, the Hiroshima Prize, and the Cristal d'Annecy (in addition to her Oscar). You go girl.

Her films are haunting, to say the least. Her first film, Stanley (2000), could be categorized as a "black comedy" I suppose, in that it's about an old man who has a pseudo-sexual relationship with a giant cabbage he's growing, and his frightening wife who wants to chop it up for her beef and cabbage stew. I won't give away the ending but it's dark and fitting.

Her second film, Dog (2002) is about a boy coming to terms with the death of his mother. It's quite disturbing how the death of his dog reveals certain secrets about his father. I have to say it's incredible how much human emotion can be conveyed through stop-motion animation, much more so than through computer animation anyway.

Suzie's third and final film (for now) is the Oscar-winning adaptation of the classic tale, Peter and the Wolf (2008), with Prokofiev's original score. I can see why Suzie was chosen to direct the film, her forte seems to be that of young boys and their relationships with animals and old men, which is exactly the focus of Peter and the Wolf. You'll be amazed by the incredibly life-like expressions and movement of her characters. Here is an excerpt from her beautifully crafted film:

I can't mention Suzie's accomplishments without noting the unprecedented event that took place this past February in film history; Kathryn Bigelo, an American filmmaker, became the first woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Director with her film, The Hurt Locker (2009).

Maybe I should dye my hair brown and grow it out to get a better chance, eh?

Despite the hertels still faced by women, progress is nonetheless being made on behalf of films of the feminine-craft. Let's keep pushing it forward!

~S