Charles Schulz Museum

Many years ago, my husband and I ventured to California for our honeymoon, which turned out to be his first trip to the west coast.  We've been there many times since then, but our honeymoon was special, and due to an unfortunate hard disk crash, we lost all our photos from that trip.  One place we visited, which is one of my favorite places in the world, was the Charles M. Schulz Mueseum in Santa Rosa. 

Well as luck would have it, thirteen years later, we planned a family vacation to the west coast, and luckily there were TWO Peanuts fans on this trip, who insisted on taking the day trip to Santa Rosa. I have to tell you, for me it was like coming home.  The first stop along the way was a quick visit to downtown Santa Rosa, where a bronze statue of Charlie Brown and Snoopy stands in Railway Square.  It was nice to see this little gem again.  Scattered throughout the downtown area are several fiberglass statues of more peanuts characters, painted by artists as part of a local project.  We made sure to take advantage of these photo op's while we could.  You can read more about the statues here:  http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/24523. 

The Museum itself is loaded with goodies for any fan of Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and the artist behind these famous characters.  One of the most fascinating components of the permanent exhibit is a recreation of Schultz's studio, including his original drawing table, his desk, and his books.  Also on display in a nearby room is the legendary Nursery Wall, a section of wall from Schultz's former home in Colorado Springs, containing original artwork from his early career.  The museum also features rotating exhibits throughout the year.  When we visited in the summer of 2015, the theme was Ice Hockey, and the many references to skating and hockey in Schultz's work.

One of the more fascinating items to see at the museum was this unusual structure called a Peek-a-Boo Box.  From a distance, it appeared to be a tower-ish wall with peek-holes in it.  Burried inside the wall, and viewable only through the holes, were these beautiful 3-dimensional shadow-boxes of Peanuts characters made from cardstock.  I held my camera up to every peek-hole and captured them.  If you walked by this structure without taking the time to look inside, you missed all this magic.

As of the date I'm writing this, just two days ago was the 16th anniversary of Schulz's passing.  I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without his influence, his creativity, and his inspiration.  May he continue to inspire young cartoonists everywhere.

For more photos from this visit, please view my online album here.

Barker's Cartoon Museum

Several years ago, I had wandered into Barker's Animation Gallery and was quite blown away by their collection of animation cels and artwork, and quite frankly, by the pricetags.  It was easy to get lost in this place for a couple hours.  Of course, I somehow thought that their gallery was the actual museum.  It wasn't, and it took me a few years to figure this out.

Two years ago, I separated from my previous employer, as my job, along with several hundred others, were being sent overseas.  Luckily I landed on my feet with a new place to call "job", but before I got started, I took a trip back to Cheshire, CT, to visit the infamous Barker's Cartoon Museum.  It's taken me this long to get around to posting about it.  I'm not sure why it took me so long, but I know what made me think back on it today... I've been reacquainting myself with Disney and Hanna Barberra, so I thought it would be a good fit since this is where my brain is presently at.

The museum is tucked away to the back of the property, and from what I'm told, is NOT the full collection.  If you didn't know any better, you would think you'd have wandered into an incredibly well-stocked flea market.  It seems that the Barkers have been collecting cartoon memorabilia for decades.  You name it, they have it:  toys, action figures, lunch boxes, drinking glasses, Pez containers, puzzles, games.  If they put a cartoon character on it, they had it, at least, if it was an American cartoon, it was probably in there.  Pokemon seemed to be one of the few Asian imports represented.  No Voltron, but you didn't need him to feel entertained here. 

I was especially taken by the age of some of the items in the collection, particularly the tin toys.  Disney was well represented, as were so many others.  Here are some photos... let's let them do some of the talking (I could have taken pictures all day... I took a lot; here are some of the better ones):

If you've seenthe Peanuts book by Chip Kidd I've discussed in this blog, these will look familiar.

Tinykins by Marx.  I'm currently hunting these down.

Just a few character glasses....

Peanuts, The Art of Charles M. Schultz

In my previous post about my first exposure to cartooning ("How To Draw Cartoons"), I mentioned Charles M . Schultz as an early influence of mine, and I must say, I have not said enough about him.  In as much as I was a consumer of his work, I really studied it too.  I think I must have read every book of his comic strips in our elementary school library.  I was also quite taken by the idea that all his characters had a similar look and feel.  His character designs basically had interchangeable parts.  All you had to do was change the hair and the clothes, and suddenly you had another member of the Peanuts gang.  As an adult now, I understand that the drawings are but one component of the overall character... just watch, or even just listen to, any Peanuts holiday special to get the idea.  But in any case, some of my earliest characters were directly inspired by the Charlie Brown characters.  For this reason alone, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Schultz and his work.

A few years back, I stumbled upon a stunning art book whose title is also the name of this post. The book features incredible close-up photography of the actual printed comic strips, so that you can see the half-tone dots that are a by product of the printing process used to render Schultz's ink work.  Many of the pages show tape marks as they were photographs of scrapbook pages full of strips clipped from newspapers.  Scattered throughout the volume are photographs of toys and other memorabilia.  The overall effect is one of a gigantic collage that is enjoyable to explore.  The book shows Schultz's work in a much more intimate way than it had probably ever been presented before.  It's worth noting that the book is designed by Chip Kidd, a world famous book designer.  In as much as I find Schultz's cartoons inspiring, I must say I also find Kidd's books to be as much inspiring if not more.  They make you want to design your own books in such a compelling way so that people will WANT to read them.  I think I'm quite a ways off from doing that, but the direction is there.  Of course, when I just want to feel like a kid again, I reach for this book.  It's been a welcome and well used member of my collection.

The book cover... this just screams of Chip Kidd's style.

We actually saw this wall at the Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa on our honeynoo in 2003.