Basil Wolverton displays his pioneering “spaghetti and meatballs” approach to human anatomy.

As Oregon Cartoon Institute heads into its fourth year, I sat down to retrace the steps that led to its creation.

This timeline of development was originally written for Jill Hartz, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Thank you, Jill, for providing me with the impetus to pull this together!

1990’s in New York

As I fly back and forth between Portland and New York, I begin noticing the way Oregon press underplays the fame of Oregon’s most well received artists (Chuck Palahniuk a great example ) while at the same time New York press omits the Oregon citizenship of an artist all together. I begin to understand the way this has created a misperception that Oregon does not produce artists.

At about this same time Columbia sportswear begins showing up on the subways. The Simpsons are becoming a cultural mainstay. Elliott Smith, the Dandy Warhols, Courtney Love, Gus Van Sant — I start to feel  surrounded by Portland even when I am 3,000 miles away.

1999 visiting Portland

David Chelsea tells me about Basil Wolverton.

I knew about Homer Davenport, the Hearst newspaper cartoonist from Silverton.

I’d heard about Mel Blanc, Portland’s most reknowned voice artist.

But I am stupefied by Wolverton. How could a guy from Central Point (pop: 12,000)  influence an entire generation of  Americans? And do it via Mad Magazine ?

A seed starts to sprout in my mind.

2001, in Portland

Dennis Nyback and I teach an avant garde film survey course at Northwest Film Center. Preparing for it, I discover avant garde animator Harry Smith was born in Portland.

Smith was both the disciplined, insightful, completely original collector behind Folkways’ enormously influential Anthology of American Folk Music and a self taught, extravagantly experimental, completely original filmmaker. I never dreamt he had anything to do with Oregon.

In my previous understanding, Oregon rarely produced nationally known artists.

Now with Harry “High Brow” Smith and Basil “Low Brow” Wolverton in the picture, I am completely confused.

2003 in New York

Standing in Kim’s Video, I stumble across a footnote in a book about Robert Crumb which identifies Carl Barks, creator of the comic books which were a huge influence on Crumb, as being from Merrill, Oregon.

I turn the book over to see who wrote it — D. K. Holm, from Portland.

At this point I compile a list of living and dead Oregon cartoonists and animators and send it to John Canemaker, asking what he thinks. He calls me, excited and impressed.

He adds two new names.

He tells me Marc Davis, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, graduated from high school in Klamath Falls

and that Pinto Colvig, an early animator turned voice artist, is from Jacksonville.

2006 in Portland

Dennis and I interview Portland cartoonist  John Callahan for The Portland That Was.

Callahan is surprised to learn that Mel Blanc, a life long hero, is from his own home town. Our intern, a graduate of Lincoln High School, the school Blanc attended, tells us she never heard of him.

About this time, graphic journalist  Joe Sacco returns home to live in Portland, bringing with him his 1996 American Book Award.

Dennis and I return home too.

2007 in Portland

We hold the first Oregon Cartoon Institute public event, a three week screening series at Disjecta of 16mm animation from Dennis’ collection. Jim Blashfield and Rose Bond come and speak. Both have conducted far ranging film careers from Portland.

Blashfield made his acclaimed music videos here, and Bond her monumentally scaled installations. Both use animation.

Our model for engaging audiences emerges  — we will use living artists as interpreters as we raise awareness about the dead ones. Chel White, Bill Plympton, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestly, Marilyn Zornado and Will Vinton loan us 35mm prints for the final night of the Disjecta series, which takes place at the Hollywood Theater.

Second Oregon Cartoon Institute event: Dennis conducts video interviews with visiting and local artists at the Platform International Animation Festival. We put these online.

At this point, I thought we had found all the historic Oregon animation and cartooning figures there were to find.

I was wrong.

In the course of researching Oregon film history for the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival, I stumble across George Bruns, a four time Oscar nominee for animated film scores, from Sandy

and Dennis stumbles across Ralph Wright, who won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1957. He’s from Grants Pass.

2009 in Portland

Third Oregon Cartoon Institute event: we co-sponsored Bill Plympton Day at the Oregon Sesquicentennial Film Festival at Marylhurst.

Bill is as fascinated with this history as we are.

Not all our research comes from history books. Some comes from the news. Just when we weren’t looking,  Brad Bird received first one, then two Oscars.

Looking ahead:

An interview about Oregon Cartoon Institute’s next public event, which will take place in 2011, can be found online at  KBOO.fm. Conducted by S. W. Conser as part of his Words & Pictures series, this interview introduces our first artist in residence, Heather Perkins.

Oregon Cartoon Institute is all about partnerships. As soon as the details get finalized, we will announce our upcoming partnerships with others who share our goal of raising public awareness of  this state’s rich animation and cartooning history.

Tonight production designer Nelson Lowry and key animator Brad Schiff team up with cinematographer  Tristan Oliver to discuss their work on the Oscar nominated The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Portland’s gift to Wes Anderson! Lowry and Schiff perfected their skills on The PJ’s and Gary and Mike, at Will Vinton Studios.

One name kept coming up. Ellen Thomas said “Homer Groening”. Will Vinton said “Homer Groening”. Tim Smith said “Homer Groening.” Bill Plympton said “Homer Groening”. What was the question?  Dennis and I were asking them who we should know about in Portland film history.

From the Seattle Times obituary for Groening, in 1996.

Homer P. Groening was born Dec. 30, 1919, a U.S. citizen in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, the son of Mennonite farmers. He spent his youth in Oregon.

He earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was a co-founder in 1936 of Camp Pioneer at the base of Mount Jefferson. He graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1941.

He met his wife, Margaret, at Linfield. They married in 1942.

Mr. Groening flew a B-17 over Europe during World War II and participated in the D-Day invasion, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to Portland and joined the Botsford, Constantine and Gardner ad agency as a production assistant.

He was called up again to fly transport planes in Korea.

Upon his return, he became a vice president at the ad agency, working on accounts such as Jantzen, Pendleton, Olympia beer, Idaho potatoes and Western Hotels. He started his own agency in 1958.

“He was an absolute creative genius,” said former Advertising Federation President Mick Scott, who worked with Mr. Groening to found the American Advertising Museum in Portland.

When film caught his interest, he taught himself the craft.

“He was a one-man show,” said his daughter, Lisa. “He did the producing, writing, shooting, sound recording, editing, directing and narrating.”

Among his film clients were Jantzen, Timberline Lodge, Johnson Motors, Eastman Kodak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He won numerous Golden Eagles, given by the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE), and awards from the Advertising Association of the West and the American Film Festival.

He produced a string of films about water in all its forms, including “Get Wet,” “Getting Wetter,” “Psychedelic Wet” and “Study in Wet.”

Mr. Groening’s son, Matt, said he received creative encouragement at home, in part because his father was a cartoonist himself. Mr. Groening took colored pencils and sketch pads home to his five children. He would make up the beginning of a story and his children would finish it.

When young Will Vinton stood in Portland with his brand new Oscar in 1975, wondering if he should stick around, he took a page from Homer Groening, and decided to stay.

One consequence of that decision…..

Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson next month will be in LA nervously waiting for the moment they open the envelope for Best Animated Feature. Both artists are former Will Vinton Studio employees, mentored by Will, who was mentored by Homer.

Learn more about Oregon’s rich animation and cartooning history at the first public meeting of the Oregon Cartoon Institute, Feb. 25 at 7:00 PM. Location: 13 NW 13th, first floor of Ackerman Films, in Portland, Oregon.

A Wild Hare (1940) Mel Blanc voicing Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, nominated for Best Short Picture, Animated

Tweetie Pie ( 1947) Mel Blanc voicing Tweetie and Sylvester, won Best Short Picture, Animated

Sleeping Beauty (1959), composer George Bruns nominated for Best Music

Babes In Toyland (1961), composer George Bruns nominated for Best Music

Sword In The Stone (1963) composer George Bruns nominated for Best Music

Robin Hood (1973) composer George Bruns nominated for Best Music

Closed Mondays (1974) c0-directors Will Vinton & Bob Gardiner won for Best Short Film, Animated

Rip Van Winkle (1978) director Will Vinton, nominated for Best Short Film, Animated

The Creation (1981), director Will Vinton, nominated for Best Short Film, Animated

The Great Cogito (1982), director Will Vinton, nominated for Best Short Film, Animated

Return to Oz (1985), claymation director Will Vinton nominated for Best Special Effects

Your Face (1987), director Bill Plympton nominated for Best Short Film, Animated

Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase (1992), director Joan Gratz won for Best Short Film, Animated

Guard Dog (2004), director Bill Plympton nominated for Best Short Film, Animated

Coraline (2009), director Henry Selick/lead animator Travis Knight, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film

This installment in the Handy Guide Series brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

By the time Joan Gratz joined the Will Vinton Studio, she had already begun making 2D claypainted animation, a technique she used on the short film The Creation, which was nominated for an Oscar. You can also see her claypainting in some scenes in The Adventures of Mark Twain.

Ten years later she would be nominated again for an Oscar, and win, for Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase (1992).

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute, your source for Oregon cartooning and animation history since 2006.

Will Vinton and Jim Blashfield each directed a segment in this feature length film, conceived and produced by Michael himself.

Will Vinton directed Speed Demon, in which Michael dances with a life sized claymation Spike Rabbit (just out of frame in the image below). You will never see a more relaxed and joyful Michael.

Jim Blashfield directed the much acclaimed Leave Me Alone sequence, in which Michael flees the pressures of fame in a mini-spaceship very similar to the flying baked potatoes in Suspicious Circumstances.

Moonwalker doesn’t observe story logic. But there is a story being told – about Michael’s love/hate relationship with his own career. One sequence has him turning into a heavily armed spaceship, another has him running from a pack of dogs, as if he had stepped straight into Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

See for yourself what Michael had in mind when he made Moonwalker. And remember that he tapped two Oregon filmmakers to help him make it.

I hereby claim Moonwalker as an Oregon film, on the basis of the sequences directed by Will Vinton and Jim Blashfield.

Whatever the mysterious forces are which bring Oregonians to animation success, they were especially powerful in the mid-1980’s, when Will Vinton made the first feature length Claymation film in Portland. The following year, Matt Groening debuted The Simpsons and Brad Bird debuted Family Dog, both on network television, and Bill Plympton, working in NYC, was nominated for an Oscar for Your Face.

All four men are animation geniuses. If you are unsure that a successful advertising man like Will Vinton belongs in this group, see The Adventures of Mark Twain to appreciate just how miraculously odd he is as an artist.

If you remain skeptical of the size of Vinton’s contribution to American film, just watch the credits. Count the names who went on to other things — animator Mark Gustafson (The Fantastic Mr. Fox) and sound editor (now a director) Kelley Baker are just two.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was Vinton who modeled the passionate engagement with technique which paved the way for Coraline.

I hereby claim The Adventures of Mark Twain as an Oregon film, based on many qualifying factors. It was made at the Will Vinton Studios in Northwest Portland, and written, directed, produced, animated — you name it— by Oregonians.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Number of Oregon films with a Michael Jackson theme song: 1

Number of Oregon filmmakers who have directed Michael: 2

Number of Oregon filmmakers who directed Michael twice: 1

Number of pop critics with roots in Portland  who were chosen to write about Michael Jackson: 2

Number of Oregon filmmakers who danced with Michael at his Neverland Ranch: 1

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Key for the Oregon/Michael Jackson challenged:

Michael Jackson sings the theme song Will You Be There in Free Willy (1993), which was shot on the Oregon coast and starred Medford resident  Jason James Richter.

Will Vinton directed Michael in the “Speed Demon” sequence of Moonwalker (1988).

Jim Blashfield directed Michael in the “Leave Me Alone” sequence of Moonwalker (1988).

Will Vinton directed Michael Jackson first as a California Raisin, in 1987.

Former Portland journalist Mikal Gilmore wrote the cover story for Rolling Stone’s memorial issue devoted entirely to Michael Jackson.

Former Portland journalist Kim Morgan has three chapters in the forthcoming “Official Michael Jackson Opus” book, which, at 38 pounds, serves dual purpose as a weight training system..

Will Vinton traveled to Neverland Ranch to co-create, in person, the choreography of the duet which ends the “Speed Demon” sequence. Just as experienced Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers fans know that Fred worked out his routines with Hermes Pan before shooting them with Ginger, the experienced Oregon movie buff can see that in the “Speed Demon” duet, Spike Rabbit stands in for Vinton himself. Vinton studied dance growing up in McMinnville, along with his sister, who later, as Mary Vinton Folberg, founded Portland’s Jefferson Dancers.

What happens when you make an EXTREMELY popular set of commercials for the California Raisins Advisory Board?

If you’re Will Vinton and Barry Bruce, you follow it up with a mock doc.

Strange but true: In 1986, she wrote and produced the Claymation feature film ADVENTURES OF MARK TWAIN AND she wrote, produced, and directed the live action feature film SHADOW PLAY (1986), both at Will Vinton Studios.