Arthur "Art" Clokey (October 12, 1921 - January 8, 2010) was 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.
[citation needed].
From the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth invented
Gumby. Since then Gumby and his horse Pokey have been a familiar presence on television, appearing in several series beginning with the
Howdy Doody Show and later
The Adventures of Gumby. The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when American actor and comedian
Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on
Saturday Night Live. In the 1990s
Gumby: The Movie was released, sparking even more interest.
Clokey's second most famous production is the duo of
Davey and Goliath, funded by the
Lutheran Church in America.
[1] In honor for his contribution to clay animation
Google doodle of October 12,2011 was based on his animated clay characters.
[edit] Biography
Born in
Detroit, Michigan, on October 12, 1921. His birthname was Arthur C. Farrington. When Clokey was nine years old, his parents divorced and he stayed with his father, Charles Farrington. After his father died in a car accident, he went to live with his mother in California, but his stepfather had no interest in raising another man's son, and so Arthur was sent to an orphanage. When he was 12, he was adopted by
Joseph W. Clokey, a
classical music composer and
organist who taught music at
Pomona College in
Claremont, California. He schooled Arthur in painting, drawing, and film making while also taking him on journeys to Canada and Mexico. The aesthetic environment later became the home of Clokey's most famous character,
Gumby, whose name derives from his childhood experiences during summer visits to his grandfather's farm, when he enjoyed playing with the clay and mud mixture called "
gumbo".
[citation needed]
At
Webb School in Claremont, young Clokey came under the influence of teacher Ray Alf, who took students on expeditions digging for
fossils and learning about the world around them. Clokey later studied
geology at Pomona College, before leaving Pomona in 1943 to join the military during World War II. He graduated from his adoptive father's alma mater,
Miami University, in 1948.
[citation needed]
Art Clokey also made a few highly experimental and visually inventive short clay animation films for adults, including his first film
Gumbasia, 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 and are included in the
Rhino box-set release of Gumby's television shorts.
His student film
Gumbasia (1955), consisting of animated clay shapes contorting to a jazz score, so intrigued Samuel G. Engel, then president of the Motion Pictures Producers Association, that he financed the pilot film for what became Art Clokey's
The Gumby Show (1957). The title
Gumbasia is an homage to Walt Disney's
Fantasia.
Clokey is credited with the clay-animation title sequence for the 1965 beach movie
Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine starring
Vincent Price and
Frankie Avalon. His son,
Joe Clokey, continued the
Davey and Goliath cartoon in 2004. In March 2007,
KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary
Gumby Dharma as part of their
Truly CA series.
In 1995, Clokey and Dallas McKennon teamed up again for
Gumby: The Movie, a feature film. The movie was not a great success at the box office and was widely panned by critics.
In the mid-90's,
Nickelodeon aired every episode of
Gumby for it's anchor spots at 8:00 am and 2:00 pm. It was on top of their ratings for over three years.
Art Clokey died in his sleep on January 8, 2010, at age 88, at his home in
Los Osos, California after suffering from a recurrent bladder infection.
[2][3][4][5]
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