Directors Ron Clements and John Musker are undeniably some of the most influential people to have worked at the Disney Studio in quite some time and their upcoming project MOANA seems to be carrying the brand safely into the future. Now, however, Disney is taking a look back at some of the best work to result from their collaboration and it’s being done with new artwork by seven phenomenal artists.
Walt Disney Feature Animation, Cyclops Print Works, Disney Fine Art, and Gallery Nucleus have all teamed up to present: An Art Tribute to the Disney Films of Ron Clements and John Musker.
The special limited-time show will open on November 19, 2016 at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA. Artwork will be on display until December 6, 2016.
ABOUT THE FEATURED ARTISTS
Brittney Lee: Brittney Lee is an art director at The Walt Disney Feature Animation Studios. A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, she knew that she would pursue a career in animation from the moment she saw The Little Mermaid at age 6. Brittney currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their small orange cat. Her handiwork can be found in Frozen and Wreck-it Ralph as well as the Disney short films Paperman and Get A Horse! She is currently busy working on Disney’s upcoming feature Gigantic.
Griselda Sastrawinata-Lemay: Griselda was born in Indonesia and fell in love with animation as a little girl watching Walt Disney’s Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. She graduated as a valedictorian from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and then joined Dreamworks Animation as a visual development artist and character designer. In 2015, Griselda joined the Walt Disney Animation Studio’s Art Department as a visual development artist and character designer on Moana.
JC Richard: JC RICHARD is a Commercial & Fine Artist from Beverly, Massachusetts. Raised amongst the oceanside galleries of the North Shore and Cape Ann, he developed an early affinity towards natural landscapes and sea renderings; years later, he would attempt to bring these natural aesthetics into his commercial work. His professional creative life began as a freelance 3D matte painter, texture artist and modeler for various scifi television productions, and after a brief-but-educational stint as Creative Director for a large metro ad agency, he found his new home in fine art and “pop culture” art gallery world. He then began to bring various popular culture elements into his nature-based settings, attempting to strip away their obvious “pop” familiarity while highlighting these characters’ relationships to the natural world. He quickly gained commercial notoriety for his screenprinted poster and design work for multimedia giants such as Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, DC, Universal and Sony Entertainment. He has cultivated a dedicated collector following around the world, and has shown prints and originals in galleries all over the country from New York to LA, San Francisco, Chicago and Austin, as well as internationally in such locales as Singapore and China.
Joe Dunn: In Joe Dunn’s current role as a Marketing Art Director for Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disneytoon Studios, he has created film logos, marketing and publicity key images, trade and industry ads, presentation visuals, and other promotional materials. Properties include, Prep and Landing, Tangled, Winnie The Pooh, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Planes, Tinker Bell, Big Hero 6 and upcoming Disney titles. Joe started his career at WildStorm Comics working with Jim Lee.
Josh Holtsclaw: Josh Holtzclaw lives and works in the beautiful state of California. He studied illustration & graphic design at the Savannah College of Art & Design in his home state of Georgia. Over the past several years, his clients have included Disney Design Group, Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Publishing, Random House, Universal Creative, Hallmark Cards, and Laika Animation. Currently, Josh is a Graphic Artist at Pixar Animation Studios.
Mark Englert: Mark Englert was born in 1979. The first movie he ever saw on opening day was Star Trek: The Motion Picture and he slept through the whole thing. Since then, he grew up a little, saw a lot more movies, watched way too much TV, spent countless hours reading comic books when he wasn’t busy playing video games and has been steadily working as an illustrator since 1999. After working for development at Microsoft, he got married, had a kid and started drawing posters for fun and profit. His future plans include continuing to work on comics, illustrate a lot more posters and to one day stay awake for an entire viewing of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Tom Whalen: Raised by feral robot wolves in the backwoods of Northeastern Pennsylvania and nourished on a steady diet of comic books, Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and swedish fish, Tom Whalen has a high-pitched, metallic voice in his head that compels him to endlessly churn out all sorts of vectorized madness. Infatuated with all things giant, japanese and city-destroying, Tom is a confessed monster junkie who cannot wait for earth to be overrun by either zombies, werewolves or vampires so that he can field test the wooden-stake-firing chain gun that he’s been working on in his basement for the past 40 or so years. He also adores kittens. Introduced to graphic art by the likes of Ditko, Lee, Mcfarlane, and Simonson at an early age, Tom formally studied illustration and design at Kutztown University before working as a graphic designer and an editorial illustrator.
