Can’t make SDCC but want to do something neat and comics-related this weekend without leaving the comfort of your own home? How about a special Zoom courtesy of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, where you’ll get to see images of Peanut‘s creator Charles M. Schulz‘ life and career – with a Snoopy drawing workshop on top.
The free online talk and workshop will take place 2-3pm (ET).
According to the museum:
“Join us via Zoom for a pictorial journey through Charles M. Schulz’s life and career and learn why Peanuts is one of the most popular and influential comic strips ever. This live, interactive experience includes a hands-on, how-to-draw Snoopy workshop at the end (you will need paper, a pencil, an eraser, and your imagination to draw along).”
The registration link is here.
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, in partnership with the Charles M. Schulz Museum, are currently running a special centennial exhibition about Schulz’ life called Celebrating Sparky: Charles M. Schulz and Peanuts. Celebrating Sparky will be running until October 23, 2022 in the Billy Ireland’s Friends of the Libraries Gallery, Columbus, Ohio.
According to the exhibition summary on the Billy Ireland website:
“Charles M. Schulz, known as Sparky to his family and friends, single-handedly created 17,897 Peanuts comic strips during a span of almost fifty years. At the time of Schulz’s retirement in 1999, his creation ran in more than 2,600 newspapers, was translated into twenty-one languages in seventy-five countries, and had a daily readership estimated to be 355 million. Peanuts became a worldwide cultural phenomenon in the second half of the twentieth century. Its impact can be seen on everything from space travel and classical music to the Broadway stage, merchandising, and even the English language.
“This exhibition celebrates the centennial of Schulz’s birth and highlights the lasting legacy of his life and work. Schulz’s own words guide visitors to explore the themes of friendship, connectedness, unrequited love, and insecurity that made the strip resonate with so many fans.
“Celebrating Sparky is curated by Lucy Shelton Caswell and mounted in partnership with the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California, which is spearheading the international Schulz centennial celebration.”
Also well worth checking out, for visitors to the Billy Ireland, is the STILL…Racism in America exhibition which spotlights the work of father-and-daughter cartoonists the late Brumsic Brandon, Jr. and Barbara Brandon-Croft, whose collective body of syndicated work “chronicled the nation’s cultural landscape in their comic strips through the lens of racism.” It will also be running until October 23, in Billy Ireland’s Robinson Gallery.
