Friday, March 5, 2010

Copper Plates and Incredible Manitoba Animation!

As I've been organizing and purging closets this week, a few large boxes of posters and art projects have surfaced. Some of the things—mostly my old drawings and prints—are just so awful, I can't imagine what possessed me to keep them. But a few of them are so fun, I wish I could find enough wall space to hang them.

One thing I'd love to find room for is this huge glow-in-the-dark Van Gogh reproduction I painted in college on nine sheets of poster board. I had this in our kids' room for a while in Dallas, and it took the place of a night light. It does bring back good memories.



I also came across this oil pastel drawing. I'm not sure what I think about it. Maybe if I had a beach house in Hawaii I'd get it framed. It's very, um, bright.



In another box, I found a tall stack of my old intaglio prints, which I'm rather fond of, but they don't translate well into digital photos, because they have a lovely 3-D quality about them; they're printed using a copper plate that leaves an impression in the paper. I still have the plates, too, which have formed a nice patina during their ten years in storage.



Among the things that are definitely better off in hiding? How about this perfectly creepy drawing? My only excuse is that it wasn't my idea; the assignment was to take a photograph and distort or abstract it somehow. Yikes.



And then there's this lovely self portrait. I wrote "Planar Analysis" in the corner, so I guess this was an assignment, too. Thank goodness. I'd hate to think that I came up with the inspiration for this from the depths of my own soul.



But of the things I didn't make, this poster is probably the greatest treasure I unearthed this week:



This was on my wall for a very, very long time while I was growing up. My dad was, at one time, the head of the Canadian Studies program at the University of Idaho, and during that time he ended up with a number of Canadian-made films. Of all those VHS tapes, Incredible Manitoba Animation was the best loved, and we must have watched it at least 100 times. (That probably explains a lot, come to think of it...)

Finding this beautimous poster made me realize that it's high time I introduced my kids to these very strange cartoons. I hadn't thought about them in years, and then, as though it were a sign, the very day that I found this poster, I was looking at a friend's blog, and this video was posted there!

The Cat Came Back:



Coincidence? I think not. Surely it must mean that I was destined share these cartoons with the world! Or at least with the handful of people who will read this blog post.

So, as my very special treat to all of you uninitiated into the weird and wonderful world of Manitoban animation, I am posting a few of the cartoons here for your edification and enjoyment. You'll thank me later. I hope.

Getting Started (for the piano player in your life):



The Big Snit:

5 comments:

Unknown said...

so are you just trying to get me to waste my whole afternoon watching cartoons??? cuz it's working! :) and thanks for the walk down memory lane with your old artwork... i actually remember a few of those... i also remember you sitting in philosophy class with prof. kok sketching away... i think it drove him crazy that you appeared to be paying no attention yet you always answered his questions well... :)

Bobbinoggin said...

that "hawaii" flower deserves to be in my kitchen. i have no doubt about it. i LOVE it!

p.s. the cat came back gives me warm fuzzies. i love that too (and vaguely remember seeing it a long time ago).

Kathryn Church said...

wow! Hannah - you are so talented!

MLT said...

Getting started...... oh, does this evoke too many memories of my own piano practice days!! Very funny!

Nicole Lewin said...

Hannah,
For some unknown reason, my mom currently has your old Manitoba video tape. My kids watch it all the time, and call it david, because of the little mouse named David in 'getting started.' I must say, though, that one cartoon with the pencil sketched man wearing a rainbow scarf and blowing bubbles is just downright creepy!
Funny stuff.

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