Indulging my Inner Child

I really needed to get out and do something yesterday, so Kyle and I went to see a new exhibition at the MOA. It's by Walter Wick, the guy who does all those I SPY and Can You See What I See books. Since it was opening night, there was also an artist's lecture. We debated for a while about whether or not to go, but I decided the possibility of it being awesome was greater than the risk of it being lame. So we went, and I was right: it was awesome. He showed a bunch of slides of how he made those images, and it was stuff that I never would have thought about just walking through the exhibit. I really enjoyed it. One of the highlights was definitely the kids in the audience. They knew those books backwards and forwards. In fact, there was one really cool image up in which there were 7 playing cards with missing parts. A little boy pointed out that "the king with the...um...broccoli..." (where "broccoli" can also be understood as "clubs" (or, even, "puppy feet")) was missing his mustache on the bottom half. Walter Wick eventually decided that the resolution on the screen must not be high enough to see it—and he couldn't remember. Sure enough, though, I checked the photo hanging in the exhibit, and he was right.

Afterward, Kyle and I went and looked at all the stuff, and it was neat. There were several of the photographs, as well as tons of the actual models and even a couple of the sets he used. I decided I may need to find myself a copy of this. (Actually, if you look around his site a bit, you can see several photos of how they created sets and such. Great fun.) All in all, it was a great way to cure my lousy mood.