while shoveling mushroom bread pudding and beef down my gullet at the work holiday party last night, my colleague yukino tapped me on the shoulder and i turned around — stuffed mouth trying to contain spewing crumbs — to face her and this young asian fellow.

he looked really, really familiar, and if she didn’t introduce james jean so quickly, i still would’ve recognized him as one of my favorite artists of all time.

the next few minutes entailed a frenetic one-man freak show (starring me) that cycled over and over again in a shrill excited voice: “you are one of my favorite artists ever,” “my friends and i all think you are the absolute best; some of them are cartoonists and illustrators!,” “i’ve been following you forever!,” and “i bought two recess series prints from you at APE a few years ago! i dream of owning the entire series one day!!!” he was graciously demure and patient with my wild ranting!

suspend your belief, but i don’t like idolizing people (and there are maybe five people in this world i’d wait in line to meet). even the coolest folks are human beings like you and me, just way luckier. however, james jean is a true hero to me in so many ways. if you’ve ever seen his sketchbook you would gasp endlessly and die from sheer astoundment and admiration, and then you would want to gouge your own eyes out and crawl under a rock to die, frustrated that you were never born with even a nano-fraction of his talent.

also, he’s a very kind, gentle man, a taiwanese-american, and sickeningly young and accomplished.

so the big Q: why the heck was he there? well, yukino is way involved in the totoro forest project; she was one of the principle organizers of this incredible endeavor to save the forest in japan that’s succumbing to urban development. the forest inspired my neighbor totoro. a bunch of artists, some from pixar / academy of art, some of whom are illustrators, cartoonists, etc, banded together to make sweet totoro-related art and auction it off to raise $$$.

james jean of course chipped in with his piece, which our japanese curator bought for the museum!

the museum rules, but now it’s even way cooler in my books because our japanese curator, who’s a total charming cutie, has manifested her good taste in another unexpected way.

so go see everyone’s totoro artwork while it’s still up at the cartoon art museum.

ps – if you check out his recess series, i own “pickup” and “flush”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 8:31 pm and is filed under arts, comics, events, work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.