Another Day at the Amadora Comics Festival
Visiting Lisbon, Portugal
The Agent/Distributor for Peanuts in Portugal, Copyright Promotions Licensing Group, had a Peanuts–filled summer, featuring a “Snoopy Parade” of eighteen, 6-foot tall statues placed around the city of Lisbon from July 15 to September 22, 2011. They were then moved to a downtown shopping center. As another part of the Peanuts fun, seven fashion designers were asked to outfit a plush Snoopy doll.
Roberta Moreira, from Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates here in Santa Rosa, and I were able to see the statues in the shopping center a week before their auction; this was during our visit to the Amadora Festival of Comics, October 20–23, 2011. The following weekend six of the statues were auctioned to benefit UNICEF. The auction also included the entire collection designer Snoopy dolls and raised over $6,500 to benefit the Nelson Mandela Schools in Africa. A second auction, online only, will be organized to sell the rest of the statues.
- Here are some of the styled Snoopys as they were installed for the exhibition.
- I even did an interview in front of the dolls.
Here I am with Helena De Gubernatis (right), the UNICEF representative in Portugal, and Bianca Ferreira. Bianca’s father is designer Augustus, and she is a designer herself. Unfortunately I am standing in front of the doll her father designed.
In addition to the seven fashion designers, seven of the plush were dressed by students at the Lisbon School of Design.
I was charmed by the plush in a traditional Portuguese fisherman costume designed by Lisbon School of Design student Eva Gaspar. I was the successful bidder for this doll, and before long we will be displaying it at Snoopy’s Gallery and Gifts here in Santa Rosa.
It makes me so happy to see the different charitable efforts that involve Snoopy and Peanuts. Some of the organizations include Love Foundation in China, Ein Hertz fur Kinder in Germany, UNICEF, and many Japan initiatives, including the sale of Peanuts shirts with all of the profit from those sales going to the victims of the tsunami.
Here are some of the statues featured on the streets of Lisbon and later in the shopping center…
- The humorist, Nuno Markl and his wife, Ana Galvao painted this Snoopy statue.
- This statue by Guilherme Parente was the highest earning statue that was auctioned to benefit UNICEF.
- This statue by Graça and Gracinha Viterbo for Barbot was another high earner in the auction, and is quite entertaining with its dots.
- One of my favorite statues was a fabric covered sculpture by Anna Westerlund.
- A detail of the nose of Anna Westerlund’s statue.
—Jean Schulz
Visiting Lisbon, Portugal
