Yesterday evening I had the great pleasure of discovering a gem in my own backyard. JLI Academy located right here in my hometown of Stockton, California is a two year old art academy founded by Jon Guerzon who comes from an animation background. And through this connection to animation he has found a powerful way of inspiring, supporting and helping to develop young local artists. Starting with just 20 students two years ago Jon says he has approximately 100 local. This weekend’s Mel Shaw exhibition is an example of the creative ways Jon uses to inspire his students which have included field trips to animation studios in the bay area.

The Academy space is plastered with the work of his students and witnessing firsthand the care and time Jon took as he worked with his students in a class and reviewing their workbooks was a real pleasure. When I found that Jon’s students were using low quality Chinese made office supply pencils in his class I simply couldn’t resist contributing a supply of our Palomino pencils to the program. For more on JLI Academy course offerings visit our new learning resource listing read on here.

Mel Shaw color study for "The Black Cauldron"
Mel Shaw it turns out is a local resident of Acampo and was present at the exhibition which includes both work from his Disney years and from his Western and California history drawings and paintings. Mel was named a Disney Legend in 2004. Mel worked on many Disney animated movies particularly as a story and character developer. He contributed to such classics as “Fantasia” (1941), “The Wind and the Willows”, the great mouse detective and later consulted and helped train animators working on I was particularly excited to see the simple classic elegance of his graphiteⁱ pencil work from his work on a storybook of “Dumbo”. I bought two reproductions from the California and nature series including this one here with a share of the proceeds going to JLI Academy. It was interesting to talk to Mel particularly since my own grandfather was a writer for Disney in the 50s and 60s, though he did not work on animations. I found this video from the 1981 television which has a few minutes of Mel discussing character development for the Disney Movie “The Fox & the Hound”.