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Art Clokey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Art Clokey (born 1921, Detroit, Michigan) is a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor Slavko Vorkapich at the University of Southern California.
Clokey received his undergraduate degree in 1943 from Pomona College in Claremont, California. His adopted father, Joseph W. Clokey had been dean of the school of fine arts at Miami University in Ohio. The aesthetic environment became the home of his most famous character, Gumby.
Beginning in 1956, Gumby has been a familiar presence on television, appearing in several series—and even in a 1995 feature film, Gumby: The Movie. Clokey's second most famous production is the duo of Davey and Goliath, funded by the Lutheran Church.
What is not widely known is that Art Clokey also made a few highly experimental and visually inventive short clay animation films for adults. Not only his first film Gumbasia, but also the visually-rich Mandala—described by Clokey as a metaphor for evolving human consciousness—and the equally bizarre The Clay Peacock, an elaboration on the animated NBC logo of the time. These films have only recently become available via the Rhino box-set release of Gumby's television shorts, all appearing on the bonus DVD (disc 7).
Clokey is also credited with the bizarre clay-animation title sequence for the beach movie Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), starring Vincent Price and Frankie Avalon.
His son, Joe Clokey, continued the Davey and Goliath cartoon in 2004.
In March 2007, KQED broadcast an hour-long documentary "Gumby Dharma" as part of their Truly CA series.