Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

- This is the third installment of photos sent in from Sicily by my friend, Steven Fisher. These pictures are just astounding, and I love being able to post them. Go Steve.

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Is Sicily burning?

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No, farmers often ignite some of their fields to rework the soil.

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A typical street lamp.

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A parking space?

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A good place for tomatoes.

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Putting tomatoes out to dry.

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The church

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A villa.

- From Sicilia comes more photos courtesy of my correspondent there, Steve Fisher. Just pictures of Summertime somewhere else.

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“Stonehenge” by J. M. W. Turner

- John Fowles is certainly one of my favorite, if not THE favorite author. Aside from the several novels he authored, there were a number of books he wrote to act as companions to photographic essays. Last year, I posted some work from his book on Shipwreck. This book spoke about the many ships that had crashed near Lyme Regis, Fowles home, and included many photos of these wrecks.

Another book of his, The Enigma of Stonehenge, accompanies the glorious photos by Barry Brukoff.

Fowles claims not to have any archeological knowledge, but he does fairly well in reporting the history and the legends behind Stonehenge, and it’s an enlightening book, beautifully written and illustrated.

I’ve decided to post the first two paragraphs of Fowles’ introduction to the material with a number of the photos – and there must be a couple hundred of them.

Thanks for tolerating my side trip from animation, at least for today.

MY EARLIEST MEMORY of Stonehenge is, like so many childhood memories, as much fiction as fact. I see a little boy standing at a country roadside. Larks sing, lapwings wheel. There across the cropped greensward the great stones rise and I run towards them, ahead of my parents – not at all, I’m afraid, as a budding scholar or an embryo Romantic. But at least I recognize a good natural exploring place when I see one. Climbing, scrambling, squeezing through stone pillars: it is not quite so jolly as Cheddar Gorge or the Valley of the Rocks, but above all it is not suburban, the world I know best. Already I know suburbia is sameness, sameness, sameness; that freedom, or my freedom, lies in the unsame; and that nothing can be unsamer than this.

One part of my memory must be very wrong, because people have not been allowed to walk up to the monument as they like since well before my birth; and even in the 19305 I am pretty sure, though one was then free to wander in the central circle, that eight-year-old mountaineers were not encouraged. But our present protectiveness and seriousness over the place is something new. Even possessing it, as late as 1915, had a remarkable casualness. A gentleman bought it at auction for £6,600 in that year. He was asked why. It emerged that his wife had happened to mention at breakfast that ‘she would like to own it’. The good man promptly sallied out and bought her her stone necklace. (She did not wear it long, however; three years later the Chubbs generously gave ownership to the nation.)

Of one thing I am certain: my own first meeting was happy. It may have been because I could not quite take that enticing clutter of boulders, so like a Dartmoor hilltop, as man-made, whatever I had been told beforehand. Almost all public buildings have always carried strong connotations in my mind of duty, work, imprisonment of one form or another – of the cell in all its senses. Where the wiser judge architecture by the way it plays with light and space, I tend to judge it by what it shuts out of those things. Stonehenge’s marvellous openness to them was what first pleased me. It came to me on that occasion, and has remained since, as the most natural building, the most woven with light, sky and space, in the world.

My latest remembrance, on a recent clear but arctic November day, is sadly different. Stone-henge stands in the fork of two busy roads, and the dominant sound in its present landscape is not the larksong of my memory, but the rather less poetic territorial whine of the longdistance truck. Visitors get to it now from a car-park, past a sunken ‘sales complex’, then down a subway under the nearest road: all this designed not to spoil the view, but the effect is unhappily reminiscent of an underground bunker. When they finally rise inside the wired-off enclosure, they are promptly faced with another barrier. The public is now forbidden the central area.

Conservation is a fine thing; yet one feels in some way cheated of a birthright, while the stone-grove itself seems deprived of an essential scale – indeed rather like a group of frightened aboriginals huddled together in self-defence against this sudden decision on our part to ostracize them so mercilessly. Everyone I had spoken to before coming had warned me that the new preserved-for-posterity Stonehenge – this was my first experience of it – makes a depressing visit. My wife, more fastidious than I am, took one look and turned back to the car.

I went up to an attendant in a little wind-shelter and explained I was preparing a text to accompany Barry Brukoff s photographs and would like to walk inside the barrier.

‘Are you an archaeologist?’

‘No. Just a writer.’

‘Department of the Environment, London. By letter.’ Then he added, ‘And I can tell you now you’ll be wasting your time.’

He looked bleakly over my shoulder at the mute clump of stones, as a prison warder might who has successfully foiled yet another clumsy escape attempt. I didn’t really blame him, for it was bitterly cold; and after all, who cares for mere curiosity and affection any more?

- Many a Sunday, I’ve featured some of the great photos of my friend, Steven Fisher. During July & August, Steve spends a lot of time in Sicily, and this Summer’s no exception. However, he just sent a couple of pictures from his arrival and stay in Caltabellotta, and I’d like to share.

- A couple weeks back, I posted some photos of things I love around my studio. When you have a place like I do, and you’re as much of a gatherer as I am, things start piling up. There are in the maelstrom I call my workplace a number of things I absolutely love and love looking at.

Here are more of them:

- Here’s a recap of photos from Summer 2007 when Heidi and I visited Coney Island, just prior to the close of Lunar Park. (Something similar has been built in its place.)

– Last week, Heidi and I went out to Keystone Park to watch the Mets’ AAA ball team, the Cyclones. This ball park is right next door to Coney Island. We went because Heidi’s group at the New Victory Theater planned the outing, and we had a great time with them. Since the amusement park is about to undergo reconstruction, it seemed like a good time to visit that as well.

I found some difficulty watching the game – we ended up in right field in the bleachers.
It was impossible to figure out who the players were for the Cyclones, never mind the opposing team, the Renegades. It’s hard to care who wins unless you’re a diehard Met fan, and I’m not. I don’t even like the Mets. As a matter of fact I kept checking into the Yankee loss on the radio during this AAA game.

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The field was attractive, and the park seemed small, despite the regulation sized field.
The team played well, winning the game after having to come back from a deficit.

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4. The scoreboard was impossible to read during daylight hours, but it was fun with the drawn, cut-out “Cyclone” (a roller coaster in coney island park) at the top.
5. It’s hard to avoid the real “Cyclone” behind the scoreboard toward left field. The siren call of the Wonder Wheel sang to us throughout the game.

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6 & 7. Nathans, of course, is the gateway to the Coney Island theme park. The place is always crowded, and I assume the food is great.

A little trip down a boardwalk, passing the gaming areas, brings you to Astroland.
This is the part of the park that’s undergoing reconstruction and closings..

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9. Walking down that boardwalk, the Wonder Wheel keeps beckoning. This ride is sort of a Ferris Wheel mixed with a Roller Coaster. It’s frightening. As you revolve, the carriages race forward or back as gravity dictates. It looks calm and takes you by surprise.
10. Finally you enter Astroland. It looks like a kiddie park; the ones that Walt Disney was trying to make obsolete. He wanted parents to be able to participate.

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12. The carousel gets more and more attractive to me as I get older.
13. The goofy looking haunted house was called Ghost Hole. We were starting to get into their versions of characters.

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14 & 15. The famous bumble bee is the first of the characters you come upon. I kept looking for someone walking around dressed like a bee.

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16 & 17. You know that’s not Mickey or Donald. They’d have to pay a licensing fee.

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18 & 19. And that flying elephant is no relation to Dumbo.

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20. As the sign says, it was also the day of the Mermaid Parade. Lots of people dress as mermaids and parade down the boardwalk. I usually watch a public access TV show in Manhattan that annually broadcasts the entire parade. They play musak in the background and you just watch the crazies flaunting their homemade costumes and eccentric makeup.
21. So all day long we were seeing the fallover from this parade.

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22. There were a couple of other mermaid dressed people I photographed but seem to have deleted the pictures. Sorry.
23. Finally, I grabbed my own mermaid, and we went home. I was tired; I’m getting too old for this.

- I thought today that I’d post a bunch of photos of things I love in my studio. If you’ve ever seen my office, in the studio, you’ll see that it’s a warren of a mess of things. Lots of books, paper, awards, and other crap.

I’ve always been a puppet fan and as a result people have sent me and given me gifts of a lot of puppets. Most of them are gems that hang from shelves and cover books and tapes.

These first four are puppets that were gifted to me.

They’re all more for display than actually using for marionette shows.

I also love the Japanese edition videos of two of
my films on the shelf behind the witch.

This crocodile hand-puppet was given to me by John Dilworth
during the production of LYLE LYLE CROCODILE in 1987.

Here’s a sculpture of me made by a Russian animator on staff,
Mark Bykov, back in the ’80s. I don’t know why he made me a
caveman, but I’m holding the Dancing Frog character.

This bronze monkey is a birthday gift given me by my Heidi.
It’s a business card-holder, and it holds a bunch of my cards.

This paperweight was designed by Tony Walton for Lauren Bacall.
She gave it to me as a parting gift on the play “Woman of the Year”.

The engraving: to MS (Michael Sporn) love BB (Betty Bacall).

This bronze Praxinascope was the award given me in Ottawa
for THE MAN WHO WALKED BETWEEN THE TOWERS as the
Best Children’s film that year.

Finally, this award was given to me for THE MYSTERIOUS
TADPOLE from the Caroussel International du Film de Rimouski
a Canadian festival for children’s films. It’s an original object.

It’s been hot enough in NY, that carrying your
own swimming pool could come in handy.

- Steve Fisher, who took these photos, has been part of a touring photo exhibit in New York about the NEW New York. The show has finally gotten its own website where you can see many of the pictures.

The New New York website

If you click on ‘The City We Imagined’ it will lead you to the timeline of events that you can scroll through and read more about each issue by clicking on it.

If you click on ‘The City We Built’ it will lead you to a map of the almost 1,000 photographs taken by approximately 100 volunteers. You can navigate to view the map pinpointing specific photos taken from various vantage points (clicking on them will bring up the photo and any explanatory text provided by the photographer); you can check out individual photographers, their bios and statements, or narrow the search in other ways as well, such as photos by borough, neighborhood,, project, etc.

NEW New York has its own website.

- My friend, Steve Fisher sent me a note about the photo exhibit in which he’s exhibited. It’s moved from the gallery in which it was showing and is now travelling.

The New New York exhibition will travel this summer to Governors Island, where it will be on view from July 2 through August 15. The show will be open the same hours that the island is open to the public: Fridays, 10-5, and Saturdays and Sundays, 10-7.

It will be on view in the ground floor of Building 110, which is the first public building to your right as you exit the ferry. I will be out of the country throughout that period, but I hope you will be able to see it if you missed the Manhattan show (which ends 26 June).

Check out Governors Island website for more information, including ferry schedules: here

Meanwhile, here are some new pics from Steve:

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Fig tree

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Rock garden

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Cardinal red

Cardinal hidden

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Saint under wraps

- Bill Peckmann sent a cute piece that I thought I’d share with you. Let me put it in his words:

Your “Dumbo” posts have been outstanding, beautiful!

I thought you might enjoy these 4 Emails.A few years ago, our little town of Rhinebeck’s charity drive involved local artists taking a “Birdhouse” theme (riffing other big cities cows, horses, fish etc.) and making a statement with it. This was the 3rd one I did, with “Casey Jr.” always being in the back of my mind.(See #3 & #4)

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This is apparently an invitation to create.
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#2
(Click any image to enlarge.)
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#3
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#4
(Sorry, our pooch snuck in there.)

Many thanks to Bill Peckmann for sharing the photos and the creativity.