Temecula Exhibit - The Art of Stan Sakai

[maichan]

Last night Maka and I drove down to Temecula to attend the "Meet the Artist" event for THE ART OF STAN SAKAI exhibition at the Temecula Valley Museum. This exhibit will run from August 25 to October 22, 2018.

We met up with Grusagi and his friend, and we enjoyed looking through the exhibit and talking with fellow enthusiasts old and new, as well as seeing and talking with Stan, Julie, Daniel & Emi.


20180831_093638 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


I took some overall photos of the exhibit, and I think Maka took some more detailed photos of various art pieces.

Here you can see what a good job of taking photos that Maka was doing...


20180830_194534 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


Here are the rest of my photos. I hope you enjoy them...

Here is Stan talking with some attendees.


20180830_195823 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_195424 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_201150 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_201204 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_201648 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_201717 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_201638 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_202543 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_202530 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


Here is a snippet from the documentary that Kyle made.
Unfortunately with so many people in attendance, it was a bit noisy so it was hard to listen to the documentary. I think Stan was doing a bird imitation here... (kidding!)


20180830_200140 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


20180830_202616 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


Stan sketching in my HC copy of The Hell Screen.


20180830_202936 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


2018-08-31_09-55-41 by Michael Foertsch, on Flickr


I look forward to seeing photos from Maka, and maybe Grusagi(?)...

[Eltanin]

Looks amazing! Thanks for sharing with us!

[Kaimuki]

Awesome photos!, Thank you Maichan!!
I wish I could watch Kyle's documentary.
It sounds like it is really good!

[Trevis Woods]

Fantastic photos! I'm California dreamin' and wishing all of this awesomeness was closer. Thank you for sharing and letting all of us that are west coast challenged live vicariously through you!

[Steve Hubbell]

What Trevis said!!!

[Maka]

Awesome post, Maichan. I'll just add my photos and thoughts to the post you started. Thanks for letting me tag along.

Recap of the night:

I left Santa Barbara around 2pm. I got to Maichan’s place around 5:30ish, I think? He introduced me to his cute dog, Momo (you might remember Momo has randomly picked out a winner in the Usagi trivia contests here). Maichan drove to Temecula and we got to the exhibit around 7:30ish. Grusagi and his friend had been there since the openning at 6:30pm and waited for us.

Outside of the museum there are two nice banners (collector items )

In the front, the museum store is on the right. Julie and Emi were working the store helping customers out as we walked in. We waved but didn’t want to interupt so we moved to the exhibit. The exhibit was upstairs but I have no sense of direction, so I walked in a circle until we saw the elevator. Grusagi walked out but I wasn’t paying attention, so Maichan (who hadn’t met Grusagi yet) walk passed him and went upstairs.


The first thing out of the elevator is an ungraded Albedo #2 from Stan’s personal collection.

Maichan and I saw Stan talking to a crowd of people. We didn’t want to interupt so we headed the the food (Turkey sandwhiches, hummus, chocolate chip cookie - great food for after a long drive).


They had a classical guitarist playing. He was playing this instrumental song I remember from the movie La Bamba that is sweet. It made me very happy and I told him he was awesome before he left.


If you follow the wall on the left of the photo above, they have a projector showing the latest TMNT / Usagi tv show crossover on the wall. Next to it is an original cell from an early TMNT TV show.

There is a lot of original art. And they have a wall focused on TMNT crossovers.

Original art for the TMNT/Usagi 2018 Mondo Poster

Sakai varient Usagi/TMNT crossover

Lots of awesome orginal colored covers

Stan drew Usagi and Kevin inked him, but you knew that already

They original 200 Jizo cover is here but I only took a picture of the info. But you can spot the Charlie Brown Jizo

The first page of Yokai is so beautiful

The original




The side by side of the first Usagi page and the first Chibi Usagi page






The creative process


. Kyle’s made a documentary on Stan that looks amazing. He hired a film crew and they went over to Julie and Stan’s home. Kyle produced, directed, edited, and did some camera work too. Unfortunately, people were having a great time and loud, so we couldn’t hear the documentary. But we did see that Grusagi got a special thanks for providing some comics to be filmed. We hope we will be able to watch it with sound sometime soon. Right Kyle?

A closer look at David Peterson’s Usagi seasons


The draft sketch and the original Garfield variant cover

Sergio


Hector Protector - you are a big Stan fan if you have this

Beautiful cover

Frank Miller




Guardian



Stan x 2



Original thumbnails

Julie and Stan collaboration



Close up of Sergio and Stan Lee


Stan’s Mouse Guard story page





The original

I’ve never seen this before and I have no idea where it comes from

How usagi got his scar


There is a section of the museum for kids to color Usagi.
A cool photocopy of a sketch at the coloring tables

Early Usagi
Early Usagi (color)



The awards Stan has won throughout the years from the industry and his peers
Do any of you have this t-shirt?

. The very hungry Usagi original art by Eric Carle (it's not really called that)

Some of you own this (not me) but this is the original


Thanks to Grusagi friend, we took a photo with Grusagi, Julie, Stan, me, and Maichan.

The museum said this was the biggest opening they every had. Stan introduced us to the person who put together the exhibit. I asked her how she found out about Stan. She said someone sent her newspaper article on Stan that mentioned that Stan lived in Temecula. She facebook messaged Stan and got a response the same day. “They were so gracious. They invited us over to their home and let me pick out all the art for the exhibit.” If there is any chance you come down to see the exhibit, you will love it. And by seeing it you are also supporting the Sakai's and letting their town know what a greatly loved artist they have in their community.

Stan signed and sketched in Maichan’s hardcover book, which you see above.

Stan also signed the Sixth Gun
and
UY Saga Legends books I brought.
As Stan signed the Legends book he pointed out it was dedicated to Emi. And Emi was selling me the shirts, so I showed her the dedication (and she humored me ).


As mentioned in another thread, the Sakai’s put aside all the t-shirts dojo members ordered.


Julie came out of the museum after we left and handed us four jars of custom made jams (one for each of us). That's how thoughtful Stan and his family are of us fans.

On a side note: Stan knows that my parents' health has been an issue and always asked me how my mom is doing when I see him. He also asked about my daughter since he read about her having health issues here. To me, that is a pretty unique relationship between fan and artist. Throughout the years, I grown to think of Stan as a nice friend. Not in a creepy obsessive fan way. More like pen pals that don't write that often. Ha!

So thanks to Stan, Julie, Emi, Daniel for greeting us and making us feel welcome. Once again, it is a great exhibit that runs through October 22nd.

[Gaffey]

Thanks for the pics guys.

I would think those two early Usagi sketches have to be the most valuable Usagi art in existence.

Do you remember what the Garfield thought bubble said?

[jabba359]

Do you remember what the Garfield thought bubble said?

"Who cares about lasagna when there's sushi?!"

[maichan]

Maka, thank you for sharing your photos and personal account of our trip! I enjoyed seeing and reading your portion of the experience!

I thought the part where we missed Grusagi was funny, since up until that day I had never met Grusagi, and only knew him from his Avatar image on the Dojo. So, before we entered the elevator to go to the second floor, I had noticed a guy and gal getting out of the elevator and going into the museum shop. At that moment I thought to myself, "heh-heh, that guy looks a lot like Grusagi's Avatar, I wonder if that's him?" Sure enough, it turned out to be him!

I also thought it was cool when we were in the shop before we left, that Julie remembered my dag, and mentioned to Emi and me that we both have dogs named Momo! I've only met Julie a few times, including once (maybe twice) with my wife and dog, so I was surprised that Julie remembered my dog - after all, Stan & Julie must meet hundreds, or thousands of fans a year, so for them to remember my family and me is a special feeling.

[maichan]

I’ve never seen this before and I have no idea where it comes from

Stan mentioned on Facebook that "You will find out in the next issue, part 6 of The Hidden."

Dr. Wherewhen!?! Who is he? He looks human!.... there haven't been many 'humans' in Usagi Yojimbo!!

[Stan Sakai]

Stan mentioned on Facebook that "You will find out in the next issue, part 6 of The Hidden."[/size]

Dr. Wherewhen!?! Who is he? He looks human!.... there haven't been many 'humans' in Usagi Yojimbo!!

From the look of this, The Hidden will have a very unexpected twist, but it really doesn't. At least, not this unexpected.

[jabba359]

Julie came out of the museum after we left and handed us four jars of custom made jams (one for each of us). That's how thoughtful Stan and his family are of us fans.

That's the flavor I bought when Julie and her friend were doing an event at Fish King last year. In fact, I just used it with some chicken stir fry the other night and it turned out really good. I still have some left, so may have to experiment with it again.

As for the museum, I finally made it down there the other weekend with Spam Musabi. It was a cool exhibit and it was fun seeing some of the displays. I grabbed a shirt for myself (and a couple for others that missed your shopping run). Somebody had asked me about grabbing any fliers they had for the show (Gaffey, perhaps?), but they didn't have anything of that sort.