native son

Here's the letter from Winsor Robert McCay (great-grandson of artist Winsor McCay) that Kevin Collier read at the historical marker's unveiling:

Dear Mr. Collier and the Spring Lake Heritage Festival Committee,

On behalf of the McCay Family, I would like to take this opportunity to commend your organization and thank-you for honoring Winsor McCay at the McCay Day festivities. Our family would like to express their gratitude and are pleased that your organization has chosen to recognize Winsor McCay for his outstanding talents with this historical marker. It is fitting that you have chosen to honor him as a native son of Spring Lake. We know that this tribute will provide further inspiration and joy to future artists and fans worldwide.

His artistic genius and unique imagination were revealed at a young age in the village of Spring Lake. The foundation for this impressive ability as a master of both the comic strip and the animated cartoon is being recognized here today due to the hard work and determination of many of you. The dedication of this historical marker will remind us all to never stop dreaming or forget our childhood fantasies.

We regret that the family is unable to attend the festivities, but we look forward to visiting Spring Lake in the future. Again, thank-you for this wonderful tribute.

Best regards,
Winsor R. McCay

It all started here...

Here's the Grand Haven Tribune's recap of McCay's marker unveiling. Great article by Marie Havenga and wonderful photos by Abbey Moore. You can read the full article here: Winsor McCay historical marker dedicated
Here are a few excerpts:

"This is something to be very proud of, "said Mark Miller, chairman of the Spring Lake Historic Conservation Commission and the Winsor McCay Committee. "It all started here. This area influenced his beginnings and that's something to be very proud of."

About 50 people attended the dedication of a state historical marker at that site on Tuesday. It included speeches by historians and local and state officials, followed by a 90-minute presentation of McCay's life history and animation projects.

Michigan Historical Commission member Tom Trescott said Tuesday's historical marker dedication is the first of a planned West Michigan Pike tourist initiative, designed to promote West Michigan beach towns as far north as Ludington and perhaps Mackinac Island.

The cartoonist's great-grandson sent a letter to the local historical committee to express his gratitude for the honorary plaque and the work that brought it into being.

"We look forward to visiting Spring Lake in the near future," wrote Winsor Robert McCay in a letter read by Grand Haven Tribune cartoonist Kevin Collier.

McCay Day 2009!

McCay Day 2009 was tons of fun! Thanks to everyone who planned, presented, and participated. It was a wonderful, memorable day! Here are a few highlights for anyone not able to make it...

Chef Jim LaPerriere prepared Welsh Rarebit for a full room. And woah-ho-ho-nelly... was it good...


The McCay Party held for the younger set included crafts...


...and cookie decorating.
(Here's what happens when you let kids loose with frosting)


Children's book author/illustrator Aaron Zenz took everyone on wild adventures with Little Nemo and his friends.


Then all the kids were invited to create one last dream for Little Nemo to explore:




That's one CRAZY dream!


Later in the day, cartoonist Kevin Collier guided a full house through a great comic class.


And the evening held one of the events we'd been dreaming of for years: the dedication of a marker honoring Winsor McCay in his hometown of Spring Lake.

A crowd begins gathering for the unveiling and dedication...


Greeting were given by Mark Miller, chairman of the Winsor McCay Memorial Committee and the Spring Lake Historic Conservation Commission.


Some thoughts were shared by animation expert and historian, Ray Pointer.


Kevin Collier reads a letter from Winsor Robert McCay, the great-grandson of Winsor McCay.


Some of the kids in attendance were invited to help with unveiling...


Ta-da!


Here's a view of the backside of the marker, while Michigan Historical Commission member Tom Trescott gives some concluding remarks.


All in all, one great day! Stop by to see McCay's new marker... And give thought to McCay Day 2010!

Historic

A nice article about the upcoming Winsor McCay historical marker dedication appeared in the Grand Haven Tribune. Here are some excerpts:

"Winsor McCay is one of the many little-known Michiganians who have had a lasting impact on our state and our nation," said Michigan Historical Center Director Sandra Clark. "His pioneering work in animation is part of our state's historic and modern leadership in the field of design."

Mark Miller, chairman of the Spring Lake Heritage Festival and a local Winsor McCay committee, said he's been waiting for this day.

"Every community looks for that certain thing that really helps it stand out," Miller said. "Winsor McCay is just that. He grew up here. He's famous to this day. When he drew the SS Alpena sinking on the Union School chalkboard, that really kicked off his career. That ship sank in Lake Michigan in 1880."

Miller said the Michigan Historical Center found the McCay connection so fascinating that they sped up the historical marker dedication.

"They bumped it up so we could have it here for Winsor McCay Day," he said.

You can read the full article here: Winsor McCay Day celebrated Tuesday in Spring Lake

Fiend-Dish

Even more McCay fun here in his hometown!



On Monday, June 15, at 7:00 pm. - (McCay Day Eve), Executive Chef Jim LaPerriere is coming to Spring Lake District Library to prepare Welsh Rarebit. Welsh Rarebit (which has nothing to do with our long-eared, cotton-tailed friends) is a savory melted cheese dish, which occasionally spawns some interesting comic nightmares, if you aren't careful. Enjoy some samples and take home some recipes. (Pre-registration required)

Historical Marker!!!

Great News! We are getting a Winsor McCay historical marker!

We knew this had been put in motion, but it's creation and delivery was supposed to take months and months to accomplish. However the folks at the Michigan Historical Commission loved the focus of the project so much, they bumped it ahead of all the other projects in line so that it could be ready in time for the Heritage Festival's "McCay Day" celebration!

So... everyone is cordially invited to attend the dedication ceremony of the Winsor McCay State of Michigan historical marker on Tuesday, June 16 at 6:30 p.m. The event will take place in the park located between the Spring Lake Township Hall and the Spring Lake District Library, 123 E. Exchange Street. The site is the one-time-location of Union School which McCay attended as a child and is directly across the street from the location of his childhood home. You are invited to remain at the library for the Ray Pointer presentation on Winsor McCay beginning at 8:00 p.m.

There is hope that McCay's grandson and/or great-grandson will even be flying in to attend the dedication.

The marker is set to be delivered next week. It will be installed and covered, awaiting the big reveal. In the meantime, its resting place has been dutifully marked with what we've now dubbed the "Winsor McCay Memorial Stick":

McCay Day Events

Join us for McCay Day 2009!

When: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Where: Spring Lake District Library in Spring Lake, Michigan - Winsor McCay's hometown

10:30 a.m. McCay Day Party
Children ages 3 to 6 are invited to attend this fun filled party which will include cookie decorating, face painting, and a dinosaur craft. Special guest, artist and children's book author Aaron Zenz, will introduce us to Little Nemo and kick off a fun story time and art project!

2:00 p.m. I'm OK with McCay Cartoon Workshop
Artist and cartoonist Kevin Collier will highlight the art and life of Winsor McCay as well as lead a traditional cartooning and comics class. This program is designed for children in third grade and up.

7:00 p.m. Winsor McCay, Father of Animation
Ray Pointer, an animation expert and historian, discusses the many contributions of Winsor McCay to the world of animation. Currently the Creative Director of Inkwell Images, Pointer is also an instructor at the Kendall School of Design. With 40 years of professional experience in the field of animation, Pointer is a member of The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences Animation Peer Group, has worked with Nickelodeon Animation Studios and MGM Animation, and has over 300 credits to his name.

7:00 p.m. Winsor's Whimsical Creations
This fun program is designed for the kids. Boys and girls can participate in a scavenger hunt, put together their own Gertie the dinosaur puzzle, and paint a shirt.

McCay Day is on its way!

The 2nd Annual "McCay Day" Celebration has been scheduled! Join us on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at the Spring Lake District Library in Spring Lake, Michigan. The day's events are planned in conjunction with the Spring Lake Heritage Festival, held in Winsor McCay's hometown.

Details to come in the next post... In the meantime, here's a look back at some of the family fun we had last year!

























For all info regarding McCay Day - both this year and last - click HERE

The Comic Strip Library

Over at the fantastic Comic Strip Library, all the Little Nemo episodes have been uploaded. Now they're working their way through Winsor McCay's "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend." What a great resource!

Quote:

Quote from legendary Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones:

"The two most important people in animation are Winsor McCay and Walt Disney. I'm not sure who should go first."

Babu & Abu

The talented Mall made herself a great birthday present!

political

Golden Age Comic Book Stories has posted a great sampling of Winsor McCay's editorial cartoons...

Gertie makes her mark

The Spring Lake District Library in Spring Lake Michigan, Winsor McCay's hometown, recently held their annual bookmark making contest for elementary age students. This year kids were encouraged to create a bookmark featuring Gertie the Dinosaur. There were HUNDREDS of great submissions! Lots of budding artists reside in McCay's hometown. Here are a few favorites:

Wordle

I was just playing around with Wordle... I plugged in some text from Meeting McCay and got this thing of beauty:

Rex

Alongside Winsor McCay, another of my favorite illustrators is Adam Rex. While perusing his book Pssst, I thought I sensed a McCay vibe in his drawings. Today I stumbled across further evidence that he is indeed a McCay fan of some sort -- he's got a cat named Little Nemo. Which is Great! Because now I have an excuse to celebrate some of Adam's work here on our McCay-themed blog...

Petit Lucien

Hmmm... Could it be that Little Nemo was inspired by an obscure comic episode published 20 years earlier in France? Interesting comparisons at Topfferiana (or click here for mangled English via babelfish)

Drop on the deck and flop like a fish...

On his blog, Roger Langridge shares some SpongeBob cartoons he did for Nickelodeon Magazine in the style of old-time comics, including this one in the style of Winsor McCay...

the location of Winsor McCay's childhood home

We've sure learned a lot since we started meeting a year ago. Here's a blurb from one of the very first posts on this blog:

Years ago I had asked someone at the Tri-Cities Museum if there was any way to know where McCay might have lived -- or even to determine a geographic location where we could say he had definitely been. She said she highly doubted it because the layout of Spring Lake is very different now because so many fires had destroyed the town since McCay's time. The fires had also destroyed most records from those days.

That post then went on to relay how excited we were to discover the site of McCay's former school... A plot of land right next door to the current site of the Spring Lake District Library:


Well since that early post, we've discovered the location of Winsor McCay's childhood home! Little did we know we were already looking at it... It was right here:


Turns out the site is right across the street, on the corner of Meridian and Tolford, in the spot where the First Baptist Church building now stands.



Here's some information about the site that librarian Chris Davis has pulled together:

Robert McKay, Winsor McCay’s father, came to Spring Lake to work in 1864 or ’65. Our collection of Assessment Rolls dates back to 1874. By that time, the McKay’s (McCay’s) owned a house at the corner of the current Tolford and Meridian Street. We do not know the date of the fire mentioned in Winsor's biography, but the McKay’s (McCay’s) owned that property throughout their life in Spring Lake. It would be logical to think that their house burned in one of the frequent fires, as Spring Lake had numerous sawmills at that time. They probably would’ve stayed with friends, temporarily, until their home was rebuilt. The house is gone by 1899, likely destroyed in the Spring Lake Fire of 1893.

Most written accounts tend to paint the McKays (McCays) as a rather transient family in Spring Lake. This is, apparently, not the case. Actually, Robert McKay was a land owner, near the center of the village (which was a status symbol in those times). He was well respected, as his service on the Village Council would attest. In 1874, he received 157 votes for Trustee, only about 90 less than the Village Recorder, who ran unopposed. Many of the people in political circles, at that time, are still known in the community today (Hunter Savidge, Aloys Bilz, etc.).

Kid Lit

So yesterday I was looking through Brian Lies' brand new children's book "Bats at the Library" and - surprise, surprise - saw this great Little Nemo/Rarebit reference:



Winsor McCay is an illustrator's illustrator. And I suspect children's book creators in particular love him. "Bats at the Library" is just the latest to pay homage to the man. William Joyce acknowledges Little Nemo in the dedication area of "Santa Calls," a book which includes this image of a galloping bed:



And of course I've already talked about Maurice Sendak in an earlier post... you can find all sorts of references to Nemo in "In the Night Kitchen":



So here are three kid lit examples... Who else am I missing? Does anyone know of any more Little Nemo tributes hiding in the pages of children's books? I'm sure they're out there...

20 Minute Loop

I'm loving the sound of "Winsor McCay" by the band 20 Minute Loop. The song is a tribute to an artist friend of theirs who died of cancer. In a backwards way, it also tributes McCay himself, if I can assume in their minds he was the ultimate artist to reference... Listen to it here...

Gordy

Here's a funny parody of McCay's film "Gertie the Dinosaur!"
Bryan Brinkman, Dan Pinto, and Matt Gaston of Uber Street Studios bring us the misadventures of "Gordy."
(It's funny, but gross... Funny and gross? Funny because it's gross? Just a warning...)

Volume 2 Times 2

A heads up on two new collections of Little Nemo comics coming out this month - both of them sequels to fabulous first volumes...

"Many More Splendid Sundays" is a best-of collection, reprinting another 115 digitally-restored Sunday pages at their original size: 16 x 21 inches... huge! Volume One, "So Many Splendid Sundays" truly is astounding (you can see my previous report). It's no wonder Volume One's first printing sold out in just 90 days. I can't wait to come across this sequel... Visit Sunday Press for more details.


The other book being released is "Little Nemo in the Land of Wonderful Dreams." It's the second half to the complete collection of Little Nemo comics. Checker Publishing's Volume One is my favorite of the full Nemo collection's I've seen. Visit Checker's site for more details too...

King Nemo

Marcus Thiele has a cool pitch for a comic book called "King Nemo."
Here's his synopsis:

This story imagines the later lives of characters first introduced in Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo" comic strip, which became public domain in 2005. As such, it is intended as a respectful homage to that great creator and his lasting impact on the history of comics, animation and the literature of dreams.

Love it! Check out three sample pages Here...

Overview

"Meeting McCay" has quite a few posts under its belt now... So I thought I'd take a second, back up, and provide an overview of what we're doing here and where we hope to go.

Late last year a small group of Spring Lake residents met to discuss fellow Spring Laker, Winsor McCay, and the disturbing lack of recognition here in his hometown. We brainstormed fabulous ways to mark his time spent here, but quickly realized our first step was going to have to be Education. Before a town can applaud a man, they have to know who he is. And very few people in Spring Lake had ever heard of Winsor McCay. So we came up with five steps to reintroduce Spring Lake to its most famous unknown son.

Step One: Start a good collection of McCay resources at the Spring Lake District Library
And boy, they've done that. When we first started meeting, the library had maybe two books on McCay and one DVD. In just a year they've amassed a Super collection of resources. And they are prominently displayed in their own special area. I try to review many of these resources here on the site as they come in.

Step Two: Start this blog
This is the 60th entry so far. Hopefully "Meeting McCay" can be a one-stop-spot for anyone seeking information on McCay - his life, his art, and they many ways he's been honored over the years. And it's intended to be place (for anyone who is interested) to keep up-to-date on the progress we're making in Spring Lake MI to create a permanent, physical, tribute to the man and his legacy.

Step Three:
Launch "McCay Day"
The first McCay Day was held in Spring Lake last month, and it was a great success! (You can read about it in posts below...) We hope to make McCay Day an annual event. This last year was a learning experience, and we hope to make the event bigger, grander, and farther-reaching year by year.

Step Four: Post a Historical Marker
In less than a year, we've accomplished steps 1 through 3. Step four, a Marker, is our current focus. Right now there is Nothing physically acknowledging McCay's presence in Spring Lake. Not a plaque, not a sign, not a name on a bench. We'd like to get a big historical marker, with good biographical content, and place it near the location of his childhood home or school. We're looking at our choices, examining costs, and weighing all the options. This is a huge next step.

Step Five: A Permanent Physical Memorial
This is the ultimate goal. We've talked about lots of ways to pay tribute to McCay in his hometown. Here are a few of the many things we've discussed:

• Name a park after him
• Name a street after him
• Start a McCay Art Scholarship for local students
• Hold an annual Film Festival
• Sprinkle bronze Dinosaur Footprints around town with McCay content
• Start a collection of original McCay art
• Start a Tribute Gallery of art by other professionals inspired by McCay
• Build a Statue

All these are good ideas, and we hope to do as many of them as we can. But I think our hearts are set on the Statue most of all. A statue of McCay... or of Gertie... or of Little Nemo characters... or all of them mingled together. A statue to be placed either in an existing park, or a new park designed specifically for this. We're dreaming big.


Illustrator Aaron Zenz whipped up this concept drawing for us, and I think it's a good place to start. I won't repeat in this post what I've already said before, so you can read more about the statue ideas here. But that's what the Big Goal is. That's our Rarebit Dream. It'll be expensive, and take lots of planning and fund raising. But I think McCay deserves a monument Somewhere in the world. And why not here in his hometown?

So Reader, what do you make of all this? Is McCay and his work worthy of a physical Tribute? Feel free to throw your thoughts into the comments area...

2008 Winsor McCay Award Winners

One way that McCay's animation legacy is honored is the annual bestowing of ASIFA-Hollywood's Winsor McCay Award. It "stands as one of the highest honors given to an individual in the animation industry in recognition for career contributions to the art of animation." It has been given out since 1972 and recipients of the honor include people like Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, both Hanna & Barbera, and Hayao Miyazaki.

The 2008 Winsor McCay Award winners were announced last night at Comic Con. The three newest folks to join an amazing list of recipients are:

John Lasseter (Toy Story)


Nick Park (Wallace and Gromit)


and Mike Judge (King of the Hill)


For full information, check out the announcement here...