By Leo N. Holzer
Inspiration, appreciation and preservation. Those are the things behind the Totoro Forest Project exhibit at San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum.
The full exhibit includes about 180 of the 205 works created by artists at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, peers from Disney, Blue Sky, DreamWorks, LucasFilm and Sony Pictures Animation, as well as a few highly regarded illustrators.
An artists’ reception — free and open to the public — will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission St., San Francisco. Special guests include the Totoro Forest Project executive committee: Pixar Animation artists Dice Tsutsumi, Enrico Casarosa and Ronnie del Carmen, Yukino Pang of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum and several other creative talents.
The art was sold at auction in September to benefit the Sayama Forest, an 8,750-acre patch of natural beauty near Tokyo that served as the inspiration for master animator Hayao Miyazaki’s film “My Neighbor Totoro.”
The film follows two girls, Mei and Satsuki, who move to the countryside with their father after their mother is hospitalized. There, the children encounter and befriend the local nature spirits: dust sprites, a catbus and the head huncho of the forest himself, Totoro.
When the animation community learned that Miyazaki was leading efforts to protect the Sayama Forest, an area under constant threat by urban sprawl, a small group of artists decided to act.
“I saw the news about the struggle Totoro no Furusato Fund was having … and felt like we had to do something,” Tsutsumi said. “There are so many people in the animation/comic/illustration field whose work is heavily influenced and inspired by Miyazaki. I literally felt we owed him for all the inspirations.”
The seed of an idea to do a charity art auction hit fertile ground when Tsutsumi shared it with Casarosa and del Carmen. Artists frequently donate pieces to efforts they support and Casarosa organized an auction more than a year ago to benefit a group that builds hospitals in war-torn and poverty-stricken areas.
Encouraged by an endorsement from the Totoro no Furusato Fund in Tokyo and the support of Disney-Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, a fan of Miyazaki’s work, the three decided to tackle something bigger with the Totoro Forest Project. They solicited contributions, led the production of a high-quality auction catalog, launched a Web site and blog and, with Pang’s help, secured the museum exhibit. About 20 remaining copies of the catalog will be sold during the artists reception.
“Miyazaki San has been and continues to be such an inspiration to so many of us — a huge influence on me that’s for sure,” Casarosa said. “So, we thought it’d be nice to give something back for all the years of wonder and magic he’s given us. That’s how we came to this project.”
The team asked contributing artists to visually answer: What is your Totoro?” Many did so in ink and paint, clay and wire, in vastly divergent ways. There’s something in the grouping for every artistic taste, from light and whimsical to dark and foreboding.
Nate Wragg, a Pixar storyboard artist who grew up in Davis, created a spirit creature of autumn leaves carrying a young boy high in the air.
Pete Docter, director of “Monsters, Inc.” and Pixar’s next film, “Up,” painted a friendly blue giant in a forest of redwoods.
At the auction, which raised more than $200,000 for Miyazaki’s Totoro no Furusato Fund, Lasseter talked about a visit to Studio Ghibli just a few years ago when Miyazaki drove him to a nearby park to take a stroll.
“I don’t speak Japanese and he doesn’t speak English, but we didn’t need to talk. Looking at him as we walked it was clear to see how inspired, how restored he was by being out in nature, especially in a place like Tokyo where there are so many people living and working so closely together.”
Lasseter spoke with pride about how the Totoro Forest Project was artist-initiated, artist-led and artist-supported and how it united the community from across the globe.
“As someone who’s learned from and been inspired by Miyazaki-san,” Lasseter said, “I’m honored to help support the Totoro Forest Project.” That support included hosting the benefit auction at Pixar’s Emeryville campus to participating in the spirited bidding. Some pieces sold for a few hundred dollars, a handful topped $4,000.
To see more pictures of the art, visit totoroforestproject.org and click on “Gallery.” For more information on the exhibit — which continues in full from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays through Jan. 18 at the Cartoon Art Museum — call
(415) 227-8666 or visit www.cartoonart.org. To learn more about the Sayama Forest, visit www.totoro.or.jp. About half of the pieces will remain on display until Feb. 8.
