When Gina  Huntsinger, Schulz Museum Director, told me that the ‘light boxes’ for the Education Room, a plan we had talked about for a couple of years, were almost ready downstairs in the workshop, I was eager to see them.

 

What I had envisioned was a light table I remembered from an exhibition in London several years ago.

 

The exhibition, “Good Grief, Charlie Brown,” (October 2018) had a very clever hands-on activity at the end, which allowed visitors to trace characters and essentially draw their own comic strip.

 

We had discussed various characters and props we would use, and the artwork came from the Creative Associates studio.

I was excited to see the finished product -above- but I have to say that I thought it was too busy. How would people know what to focus on, what to choose to copy?

So I was a bit of a ‘nay-sayer.’

The jury is out.

This girl wasn’t sure she wanted to try drawing. Then she did step up to the table.

Soon she was drawing a complete story to take home.

The education room was full on the Monday after Christmas-but I still lured my Turkish cartoonist guest into the room to try the light table.

He might have been able to draw the characters free hand-but he drew a perfect one from the model.

His wife was a little hesitant, but she did pick up the pencil. That is a start.

The jury is in, and our visitors, young and old, are enjoying the challenge of using the characters to make their own art and stories.

Just to prove that we ARE a destination-and an International destination at that: my friends, the Turkish cartoonists, ran into another couple visiting from Turkey.

This new year I encourage everyone to try the light table to start your year off with a spark of inspiration!

—Jean Schulz