Rhett Wickham: Crawling Around in the Cortex of Creativity
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If one argues that Walt Disney was America�s greatest story-teller to emerge from the early days of film, then we must counter that Jim Henson is the same for a generation born into the television era. Among the many personal traits that separate the pair is Henson�s innate sense of graphic design, which plays a key role in the development, styling, and even the personality of his creations. Disney was a showman, an entertainer and story-teller who learned his craft sitting on the other side of the footlights and listening to the language of theatre, falling under the spell of touring players who crafted personalities out of grease-paint and poetry. Henson, on the other hand, learned his craft more from what was shown than what was spoken. The unmistakable influence of contemporary art and design, and the power of television�s pictures versus televisions words, is evident in everything he produced. It�s also a large part of what made Henson so outrageously successful at a time when shape, color and motion held greater sway over audiences than language. Perhaps more so than Disney, Henson was ready to speak to the sixties and seventies. Nearly twenty years after his passing, he whispers to us with renewed relevance in a charming touring exhibition aptly titled JIM HENSON�S FANTASTIC WORLD.
What Henson had to say to our world, by way of his, resonates with hope and graphic genius thanks to an exhibit that focuses on the work of the man, and not the brand. JIM HENSON�S FANTASTIC WORLD is a combined effort of the Jim Henson Legacy in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institution and funded in part by the Biography Channel. The tour is currently on exhibit at Orlando�s Orange County Regional History Center thanks to funding from the Doctor Phillips Charities and members of the Henson family. Between now and May 3, 2009, anyone living in or visiting the Orlando area can enjoy a world of breathtaking originality that includes puppets, storyboards, sketches, scripts and scribblings from the vast combined collections of the Henson Family, Jim Henson Legacy, Jim Henson Company, Muppet Studio and Sesame Workshop. Inspired, in part, by a 2003 exhibit of doodles and drawings that were on display at Henson�s Alma Matter, University of Maryland, the Smithsonian tour started in 2007, and should not be missed by anyone who can find a way to visit.
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Once again, this is not a �Muppet� show � it is a Henson show. It�s a look into the mind of a man who changed the way children learn and both children and adults are entertained, and who left a legacy of popular entertainment as recognizable and enchanting as any who have gone before him. This is a mind filled with creative chaos, working at a fevered pitch to produce ideas and press them forward in a wildly energetic fashion. From his smart and appealing screen-printing efforts in high school and college, right up to the too-quickly forgotten �Jim Henson Hour�, the man was very much in step with the modern world into which his extraordinary talent came of age.