Portrait of Maria with Her White Cat
By Jeff Stanford, 2023
Buy prints at:
https://jeff-stanford.pixels.com/
Inspired by the painting “Lady with an Ermine” attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci as well as the photography by Irving Penn.
Irving Penn was born in 1917 in Plainfield, New Jersey. I was born there in 1955. He attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts from 1934–38. In 1964 the school became the Philadelphia College of Art, where I majored in Photography and film from 1977-81. It is now named University of the Arts.
😂 Selection of finals from ANIM*342 Episodic Animation class (soon to be renamed Television Animation, BTW). These came in too late to screen at the Fall Animation Showcase. Hilarious work, #UArtsanimation students! Mature content warning. 😂
#UArts
Work by Manny, Frankie, Ceyda, Damien, Renee, Christopher, Sebastian, Sydney, Stefan, Bean, James, Devon, Jake, Julia, Siobhan, Gabriel, and some other people who didn't put their name in the filenames! 😮
**Spoiler Alert for the current West End production of Cabaret
This summer, I studied abroad in London and experienced a ton of professional UK theatre. Among these pieces, one stuck out as my favorite experience in a theatre that I've ever had! This was the currently running West End production of Cabaret, at the Playhouse Theatre turned Kit Kat Klub. This production of Cabaret is like no other you've ever seen, with immediate full immersion into a gritty, sensual nightclub. There was a complimentary shot at the door, pre-show nightclub acts in every corner, multiple themed bars, and a stage setup that was fully in the round with three turntables!
Aside from the stunning fully immersive setup, I was really enamored with the way the show used theatrical devices and the intimacy of the set to create jaw dropping narrative moments. During the tense scene between Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz where they discuss their engagement-party-turned-Nazi-uprising, the Emcee entered with a bottle wrapped in glass. This gave the impression that this scene would end in a happy reconciliation of their relationship and a marriage. The Emcee raises his foot to smash the glass, and there's a blackout and the sound of smashed glass. You feel relieved! Everything will be alright between them, they'll still get their love story. Until the lights come back up. There's confetti everywhere. And a rock has been thrown through the window. An anti-semitic hate crime has occurred, shocking both characters and cementing the relationship's fate as dead. The confetti remains for the rest of the act, signifying the stain of the Nazi regime and the moment that the everything "breaks". This is the most stunning and heartbreaking moment I've ever seen onstage, and the rest of the production uses similar sensibilities and devices to its advantage.
Listen. I could sit here and type for hours about why I love Cats the Musical. But I only have 10 minutes to type this so. Here we go.
Cats follows a group of Jellicle Cats who have gathered for the Jellicle Ball in order to decide who gets to pass on to the Heaviside Layer. It's based on a collection of poems by TS Elliot and began as a songwriting exercise turned song cycle turned musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Many people have preconceived notions about Cats. Many people who have never seen it before seem to hate it. But I find Cats to be a genuinely charming and just plain fun musical.
With sets and costumes designed by the amazing John Napier, it should be clear going in that an incredible amount of care and time and dedication went into designing this show. Each cat has their own name, their own unique costume, and even their own way of dancing. The costumes are all different but uniform in how they are designed: a painted bodysuit, a tail wrapped around the waist, furry leg warmers, and a wig of fluff and fur and ears. The set is all blown up big versions of normal sized things. The entire show is simply fun and entertaining. I cannot stress how happy that makes me. Sometimes theatre takes itself a bit too seriously--it's stuffy, it's dramatic, it's too much. But the thing I love so much about Cats is that it's just hilariously absurd and entertaining and fun. No other show compares to the beautiful detail of every single design element of Cats. There was clearly so much care and time that went into the making of this show and I absolutely love it.
This Saturday a fantastic cel painting workshop hosted by faculty Karl Staven had students working on their own hand painted cels to later be paired with background art! Students left with a newfound appreciation for their animation software, no doubt!
I love you people going into "useless" fields I love you classics majors I love you cultural studies majors I love you comparative literature majors I love you film studies majors I love you near eastern religions majors I love you Greek, Latin, and Hebrew majors I love you ethnic studies I love you people going into any and all small field that isn't considered lucrative in our rotting capitalist society please never stop keeping the sacred flame of knowledge for the sake of knowledge and understanding humanity and not merely for the sake of money alive