Maurice Sendak watched Disney’s “Fantasia” when he was 12 years old. That was the moment when he decided he wanted to draw for the rest of his life, he said.
Mickey Mouse figures were the first things Sendak drew. In 10th grade, his assignment to draw scenes for Macbeth was done so well that his teacher let him skip the next assignment if she could keep the drawings. Sendak went on to write and illustrate “Where the Wild Things Are” and to help adapt the story to the stage and screen.
Fifty of Sendak’s original illustrations are on display until March 26 at the Monroe County Public Library.
“It’s an internationally touring exhibit of all privately owned works,” Library Communications and Marketing Manager Mark Hoerger said. “An old friend of Maurice Sendak knew all the collectors and people who had bought pieces over the years, and he organized the whole thing.”
The exhibit came from Toronto and is going to Grand Rapids, Michigan, next. It started 50 years after the publication of “Where the Wild Things Are.” Along with the 50 works, there are 50 quotes, displayed on a banner outside the gallery, from people who either knew Sendak or were inspired by him in their own artistic endeavors.
Sendak’s friends Jim Henson, who produced “Sesame Street,” and Dr. Seuss are among the quoted people, as well as admirers Stephen Colbert, Lemony Snicket and Barack Obama.
“Whether child or adult, we were together invited to explore his world of magic,” magician David Copperfield said in one of the quotes. “Maurice opened our eyes and allowed all of us to dream, discover and imagine.”
Limited-edition lithographs of the original watercolors for “Where the Wild Things Are” join original ballpoint pen sketches of characters for the 2009 screen adaptation, as well as costume concepts for an opera adaptation and original animation cells.
One sketch of the costume for Max, the main character in “Where the Wild Things Are,” has Sendak’s scribbled notes on the side that say it should be made of “soft terrycloth” with exactly three buttons and a “fox-like tail.”
Before the exhibit, art teachers in second-, third- and fourth-grade classes of Monroe County Community School Corporation had students draw their own wild things after they analyzed the textures and artistic images in “Where the Wild Things Are,” Hoerger said.
These paper cutouts of colorful monsters, with varying numbers of eyes, limbs, tails and horns, fill the hallway leading up to the exhibit.
“We’ve worked with the local school systems,” Hoerger said. “Every second-grader in MCCSC and RBB (Richland-Bean Blossom), basically all the second-graders in public schools in the county, are coming for private tours of the exhibit and a special storytelling.”
One displayed quote is Sendak’s description of a piece of fan mail. A boy sent him a card, so Sendak drew the boy back a picture. His mother replied, saying the boy loved the drawing so much he ate it.
“That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received,” Sendak said. “He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
