Animation Art Exhibition Will Benefit

Palm Springs International Animation Festival

Palm Desert, CA: Join the Chuck Jones Gallery–Palm Desert in supporting the Palm Springs International Animation Festival (PSIAF), a nonprofit celebration and showcase of contemporary animation, on Saturday, March 21st, 4 to 7pm. The Chuck Jones Gallery is located at the Gardens on El Paseo, main level directly across from Saks Fifth Avenue. Welcome and remarks at 5 PM. $20 minimum suggested donation (which includes free admission to the PSIAF Showcase on April 18 at the Mary Pickford Theater). A generous percentage of all gallery sales to benefit PSIAF. With your art purchase, you will receive free admission to ALL PSIAF 2020 events, including the Festival and Awards on December 12^th. Wine and small bites will be served. Admittance is open to the public.

“We’re thrilled to host this fundraiser for PSIAF,” said gallery director, Michael Fiacco. “Animation is the most complicated and time-consuming way of creating a motion picture, requiring the creative talents of artists and engineers alike and PSIAF is committed to celebrating the many women and men who work in this exacting field.”

Special guests at the reception and fundraiser will include legendary animators Jerry Eisenberg and Willie Ito who will sign and dedicate new works, including a brand new Scooby Doo 50th Anniversary hand-painted cel art edition! An extensive array of original vintage animation art, as well as a huge selection of limited editions and fine art prints, will be exhibited and available for acquisition.  A portion of proceeds from sales the night of the event will benefit the programs of the PSIAF.

As a young child, Willie Ito learned to draw on the pages of Sears catalogues while his family was incarcerated at the Japanese internment camp in Topaz, Utah during World War II. He then studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles before joining Walt Disney Studios in 1954 where he became Iwao Takamoto’s assistant as an in-betweener on the “Lady” unit of the feature film, Lady and the Tramp, illustrating the movie’s famous spaghetti-eating scene. Ito then worked alongside legendary animator Chuck Jones at Warner Bros. before joining Hanna-Barbera during development of The Jetsons. Ito remained at Hanna-Barbera for the next fourteen years, where he worked on layouts and backgrounds for such series as The Flintstones and The Yogi Bear Show, and designed characters like the title characters from Hong Kong Phooey and Goober and the Ghost Chasers.

Jerry Eisenberg quit art school to take his first job, as an inbetweener for MGM, in 1956. The studio closed seven months after Eisenberg’s hire, and he went to work as an assistant to Ken Harris at Warner Bros. Cartoons in the Chuck Jones unit. In 1961, Eisenberg was hired at Hanna-Barbera Productions, run by former MGM cartoon producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Here, Eisenberg co-created The Peter Potamus Show, designed the characters on Wacky Races and Super Friends, and worked in layout on programs such as The Jetsons, The Huckleberry Hound Show, and Jonny Quest.

The Palm Springs International Animation Festival in its 4^th year is a global competition in animation and exhibition of the worlds most talented artists and filmmakers. Each year PSIAF awards over thirty filmmaking categories of animation including Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Short with over 20 different styles from 2D, 3D, Stop-Motion, Hand-Drawn, Painted, Watercolor, Sand, Paper, Experimental, VFX, and more.  PSIAF is a non-profit organization helping the Coachella Valley community experience various animated media and interact with the art form’s creators, artists and visionaries, enhancing their knowledge of the art of animation filmmaking.

The Chuck Jones Gallery—Palm Desert is a POPUP at the Gardens on El Paseo through March 31, 2020. Owned by Linda Jones Enterprises, the publisher and distributor of the fine art of the legendary animation creator and director, Chuck Jones, it is the only gallery in the Coachella Valley devoted to the art of the animated film.  Included in the on-going display is art from all major animation studios as well as original paintings and limited edition fine art from a variety of internationally known artists. For more information: [email protected].

To learn more about the Palm Springs International Animation Festival: www.psiaf.org.