CalArts Students Make a Bid to Be Better Neighbors

CalArts is the most famous institution--with the exception of Magic Mountain--in the Santa Clarita Valley. But area residents do not all take pride in the college, which has a reputation for putting on avant-garde plays, cutting-edge music concerts and wacky art performances.

“People who live here think of CalArts as someplace that is secluded, with all these middle-class or well-to-do students who don’t have anything to do with the community,” said Alfredo Vasquez, a social worker with the Santa Clarita Valley Service Center, an agency funded by Los Angeles County.

Student Tim Myers agreed.

“I think the people who live around here think of the school as the castle on the hill,” said Myers, who is a fourth-year student in character animation. “They have this image of it being full of crazy artists who dress different and have very different ideas about the world.”

Myers is spearheading a project that--along with other recent efforts by the school to reach out to Santa Clarita Valley residents--could go a long way toward engendering warmer feelings about the college. He and fellow students have put together the fourth annual Winter Show of animation art, which begins Saturday, culminating in a benefit auction Dec. 1.

Proceeds from the auction, which will feature original drawings and animation cels by prominent animators, will go to the Santa Clarita Valley Service Center’s Christmas program, which provides low-income families with a holiday meal and presents for the children.

“I guess they never expected it from us,” Myers said. “When we called up the center to tell them we wanted them to get the proceeds, the woman on the phone started to cry.”

Myers, 27, started the Winter Show in 1987, not long after he arrived at CalArts from West Virginia University, where he had been studying art. The exhibition was, at first, only meant to be a showcase for work by animation students.

“The first year, we just stuck some art on the walls and said, ‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ ” Myers said. “We put some posters up to advertise the show, and people came to see it, so it worked.”

Myers was happy with the results and decided to do another Winter Show the following year and to add an auction to the proceedings.

“I decided there was a potential here to not only show off our work, but to do some good too,” he said. “I wanted to try to raise some bucks for kids who need it.”

The plan to auction off the student work quickly fizzled.

“None of the students were submitting stuff,” Myers said. “Everyone was busy, and we just couldn’t get them interested. Ten days before the show, the head of our department said that if we couldn’t get students to bring in their art, the show would have to be canceled.”

In a last-ditch effort to save the event, organizers of the show decided to ask well-known animators if they would donate animation cels and drawings that could be auctioned. Without an appointment, they went to the office of Ralph Bakshi, best known for his feature film “Fritz the Cat,” talked their way in and got his commitment to donate four cels from his “The Further Adventures of Mighty Mouse” television show.

They also received donated art from the Disney studio and Don Bluth (director of “The Land Before Time”), and from such television animation studios as Hanna-Barbera, Marvel Productions and DIC.

The resulting auction raised about $4,000, which was given to the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in Los Angeles.

The auction of donated art was repeated in 1989, and that year the proceeds amounted to about $6,000. But Myers did not want the money to go to another large institution.

“Right after we gave the money to the hospital, we heard that they got a huge government grant,” he said. “They really didn’t need us so much.

“We decided that we wanted the money we raised to go to the little guy, the people who don’t get big grants but still do a lot of good, the people driving around in vans and giving out sandwiches.”

They donated the 1989 proceeds to the Hollygrove Orphanage in Hollywood and Para los Ninos, a social service agency for children in Los Angeles.

Myers said the upcoming Winter Show will be the biggest so far. Among the items to be auctioned will be drawings from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” and “Roger Rabbit,” cels from a Babar the Elephant film made by Nelvana Studio in Canada, and cels from the “Mutant Teenage Ninja Turtles” television series, from Murakami Wolf Films.

There will also be art from such famed animation figures as Chuck Jones, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. Ward Kimball, renowned for his work on Disney features, sent a letter saying he unfortunately had nothing available to donate.

“We’re going to auction off the letter,” Myers said with a laugh. “He is such a legend that we figured someone would want to have it.”

Myers hopes to raise at least $10,000 at this year’s auction.

The students looked into several organizations as possible beneficiaries before settling on the Santa Clarity Valley Service Center. “They do so much over there, and they do it on so little funding,” said Myers, who added that the center was not chosen because it was close to the school.

Vasquez, however, believes that because the money is being raised by CalArts students, relations between town and gown will improve.

“People like me have said that we have never seen CalArts get involved in community activities,” Vasquez said. “We can’t say that anymore.”