Tag Archives: Stevan Dohanos

17 Westport Artists Who Mailed It In

Posted on November 8, 2012 | 4 comments

The US Postal Service, it seems, is going the way of the rotary phone, hi-fi and horse and buggy. Americans send less and less mail every year, and right here in Westport our post office has been downsized to a shopping center storefront.

And when was the last time you cared what a stamp looked like?

But before “snail mail” vanishes like 8-tracks, let’s look back at the heyday of postage stamps.

The Westport Historical Society is helping us do just that.

Its current exhibit — running through December 31 — is a thorough, and very visual, collection of the 17 Westport artists who designed over 164 U.S. stamps, between 1959 and 1998.

That’s right. For nearly 4 decades, Westport — our creative talents, and our hometown scenes (of schools, streets, even our post office) — were responsible for billions of stamps, licked and affixed to just as many pieces of mail and packages sent round the world.

Stevan Dohanos spent decades designing stamps, and painting murals for post offices. He often used Westport’s post office as a model.

Westport was already known as an artists’ colony in 1957, when Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield formed the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. According to the WHS, too many congressmen and senators had been pushing the Post Office to issue too many stamps, with “mundane” designs.

One of the 3 original members of the committee was Arnold Copeland, president of Westport Artists, Inc. He gave commissions to artists he knew — including Westport legends Harold von Schmidt and Stevan Dohanos.

Von Schmidt designed the famed 4-cent (!) stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of the Pony Express.

Dohanos — who had painted murals for post offices beginning in the Great Depression (and continuing through the 1960s) — had also depicted local post office scenes for his Saturday Evening Post covers. He used Westport — and Westporters — as models, and continued to do so on his stamps.

In 1974, Dohanos became chairman of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee. He was responsible for over 300 stamp commissions — “shrewdly selecting artists, in Westport and beyond, by their particular styles and affinity for the subject matter at hand.”

The Historical Society exhibit is intriguing. All 17 Westport artists are represented. They include Miggs Burroughs — the youngest designer ever of a US stamp.

Miggs Burroughs’ display, at the Westport Historical Society.

That’s on display — as is a thank-you note from Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon’s secretary, after Miggs sent the president a 1st-day cover of his 8-cent “Prevent Drug Abuse” stamp.

In a wonderful twist of fate, Miggs later drew the “Nixon resigns” cover for Time magazine.

Also at the WHS exhibit: the 15 stamps designed by Ed Vebell. Still working in his Westport studio in his 90s, he depicted many local scenes in his works. Including a series set at the Westport Post Office.

It’s a fascinating exhibit, not to be missed.

Feel free to forward this “post” on to everyone who may be interested.

Or print it out, and mail it to them.

Nah.

4 Comments

Posted in Arts, Looking back, Organizations, People

Tagged , , , ,

Happy 100th, Girl Scouts!

Posted on March 12, 2012 | 11 comments

In 1962 — to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Girl Scouts of the USA — officials asked Stevan Dohanos to paint a portrait.

The noted illustrator — a Westport resident — chose the most typical Girl Scout in town he could find to model. Her name was Betsy Beardsley.

Twenty-five years later — in honor of the 75th anniversary — Judy Frey tracked down both Betsy (in Florida) and the picture (in storage at national headquarters).

Because Judy was a longtime Scout leader, active in both Westport and Connecticut activities, she arranged for a permanent loan to the state’s Southwest Council.

Right now — to celebrate the Girl Scouts’ 100th anniversary — it’s hanging in Westport Town Hall.

Westport Girl Scouts Christina Meehan, Shanti Wimmer, Malini Wimmer and Sarah Sherts pose proudly in front of Steven Dohanos' painting, now hanging in Town Hall.

It’s hard to imagine any Westporter more associated with Girl Scouts than Judy Frey.

A Scout herself as a child in the 1950s — in many troops, because her father was in the military and moved often — “girls didn’t get to do a lot of things,” she says. That’s why the Scouts’ outdoor activities were so welcome.

When she moved to Westport from Minnesota in 1978, she’d already had experience leading her daughter’s troop. She called Scout leaders, met “wonderful” people (including another famed leader, Betty Roberts), and began her long involvement here.

Judy Frey, with the plaque in her honor at Camp Aspetuck.

When her daughter was in 7th grade, Judy met Nancy Peach. They began bringing troops to Camp Aspetuck, in Weston. “Some of the girls were scared to go out at night,” Judy recalls. “It was great to take them out of their comfort zone. Making girls stretch is so important.”

Then it was on to the Appalachian Trail. “Nancy taught me so much about the outdoors,” she marvels. Today, Judy takes adults on outdoor adventures, from the White Mountains to Corsica.

But she continued working with Girl Scouts, long after her daughter’s graduation from Staples in 1987. Judy was involved with the high school troop, 8 or 10 girls a year who enjoyed learning skills, camaraderie, and taking trips to places like London. The typical Girl Scout, she says, is “driven to achieve things.”

Judy also volunteered with the district office. A building at Camp Aspetuck now bears her name.

She calls the state of Girl Scouting in Westport “pretty good. There are some very enthusiastic people involved.” Earlier this month, 500 Scouts and adults met for a “Thinking Day” at Bedford Middle School.

Judy Frey, in her beloved outdoors.

Of course, she wishes more women were involved as leaders. “Not as many women stick around long-term as before,” she says. “We need help with camping events. There’s more to Scouting than just taking trips to the fire station.”

Over the years, Girl Scouts have changed. The cooking badge now emphasizes nutrition, and where service projects once were Westport-specific, now the Scouts make dresses for girls in Africa.

Today marks the actual 100th anniversary of the founding of Girl Scouts in America. A small display is set up at the Westport Library.There will be a low-key flag-raising at Town Hall. Second selectwoman Shelly Kassen will issue a proclamation.

No word on whether those delicious cookies will be served.

11 Comments

Posted in Children, Organizations, People, Staples HS, Teenagers

Tagged , , ,

Channeling Stevan Dohanos

Posted on May 25, 2011 | 2 comments

In 1953, Westport illustrator Stevan Dohanos posed some Camp Mahackeno boys at the wooden bridge, where Poplar Plains Brook runs into the Saugatuck River.

The result was a classic Saturday Evening Post cover.

This afternoon  — 58 years later — Westport Y officials gathered some Water Rat swim team members at the same spot.

A few things were different — there’s no totem pole, but there are girls and safety railings — yet much remained the same.

The kids loved the watermelon.  The trees and rocks haven’t moved.  There’s still no mountain in the background (Dohanos’ artistic license).

(Photo/Miggs Burroughs)

The photo will be used as part of the Y’s fundraising campaign.  And although the new Y will be built just a few yards from where the 1953 cover was drawn — and the 2011 photo taken — the brook and river will remain.

Hopefully they’ll look the same in 2069 — 58 years from now.

(The August 1, 1953 Saturday Evening Post cover is courtesy of Peter Prigge — a Mahackeno camper who posed for Dohanos’ illustration.)

2 Comments

Posted in Arts, Children, YMCA

Tagged , ,

Seymour Schachter Illustrates Success

Posted on May 13, 2011 | 27 comments

Seymour Schachter’s parents were from the old country. They told him he’d never make a living doing art.

Seymour Schachter, in his Westport studio.

Seymour loved to draw and paint.  At 8 he won a national art contest — for adults.  Yet when it was time for college, in 1978, and his parents said he could go to art school only if he paid for it himself, he ended up at Boston University’s school of business.

But he showed his artwork to the dean, who made a deal with his art school counterpart.  They waived all business electives, so Seymour could take art courses.

After graduation he landed a high-paying job selling eyeglass frames around the world.  It was a dream job — “for anyone else,” he says.  Driving to an important meeting in France, all he wanted to do was paint the countryside.

He quit cold turkey — and got a job in a Hackensack mall art supply store.  But he was so successful — doubling sales in 1 month — that he caught the eye of the chain store’s president.

Through a series of similarly fortuitous meetings, legendary creative director Hazel  Spector asked him for a storyboard.  He had no idea what a storyboard was — but he stayed up all night, and created a great one.

That led to more offers.  One company requested 25 panels; they’d pay $40.   Hey, it’s money, Seymour figured.  He tried not to act surprised when he received $1,000 — $40 for each panel.

Continuity hired him as head artist.  His 11 years there “were better than any art school,” he says.  His work was critiqued by the best in the business.

Seymour Schachter, with a few of his product labels and designs. More line the shelves behind him.

Seymour’s ability to switch styles — from cartoons to superheroes to photo realism — proved invaluable.  In 1995 he formed his own company, and never looked back.  He crafted a career as an illustrator for Fortune 500 companies.  He’s drawn national ads, and designed some of the most popular product labels in the world.

Subway, Pepsi, Fruity Pebbles, Tropicana, Arm & Hammer, Sierra Mist,  Ragu, Skippy, Newman’s Own, Goldfish — all are Seymour Schachter clients, and Seymour’s artistic creations.

So was Joe Camel.

In 1984 — just 24 years old — his team drew the already-infamous cartoon character on cigarette tins and matchbox covers.

But Seymour felt conflicted.  He called the American Cancer Society, and offering his services at a lower-than-usual rate.  They asked him to draw posters.

“It was my way of balancing my conscience,” he says.

When his father died of a brain tumor, Seymour gave up doing cigarette ads altogether.

Eighteen years ago, Seymour and his wife Jamie began house-hunting.  She worked in Milford, so they searched for someplace between there and New York City.  Several friends suggested the “beautiful little artists’ community” of  Westport.

They knew nothing about it.  But they fell in love with the “nice beach, nice people and nice houses,” and bought a place off Cross Highway.

To his surprise, Seymour learned that the area teemed with promotional advertising companies like MCA, Ryan Partnership and Catapult —  huge firms with national accounts.

“We stumbled into an artists’ colony,” he says.  He’s been busy ever since.

Seymour Schachter is a successor to earlier generations of Westport illustrators — men like Harold von Schmidt, Steven Dohanos, Hardie Gramatky, Bernie Fuchs and Howard Munce.  For a century — starting in 1902 — they drew ads, book and magazine covers, product cans and boxes, putting this town on the international art map.

Impressed with Westport's DARE program, Seymour Schachter created this model -- and cardboard cutout. It sports a Westport Police badge.

They even spawned a noted correspondence course, Famous Artists School, located where Save the Children is now.

In the last 20 years, computers and the internet have taken work away from illustrators.  The world is changing in many ways, and commercial art has not been spared.

But, Seymour says, “for the few of us who can draw Flintstone characters standing around a Christmas tree, there’s still a lot of work.  And this part of Connecticut is still the place to get work.

“I hope to remain an illustrator as long as I live.”

27 Comments

Posted in Arts, Local business, Looking back, People

Tagged , , , , , ,

Howard Munce’s Kiwi Connection

Posted on April 4, 2010 | 6 comments

During World War II, Howard Munce was a Marine platoon sergeant.  En route to Guadalcanal, he and his unit spent a couple of months in New Zealand.

On their first weekend in a new camp at Papatoetoe, outside of Auckland, they were invited home by a local family.  It was a nice change:  Howard sat by a fire as a man, his wife and their two young children served tea and scones.

Howard was invited back, and over the next weeks a friendship developed.

Westport illustrator Howard Munce, long after his Marine Corps days.

He soon left New Zealand for battle (and the rank of lieutenant).  Back in the States on leave, his good friend and fellow illustrator Stevan Dohanos threw a party for Howard.  He sent a photo — complete with Stevan’s “Long Time No See” poster to his friends the Smithermans, but that was the last contact they had.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

That’s when Howard received a letter from the Smitherman children.  Now grown — in fact, now in their 70s — they sent greetings from New Zealand.

They enclosed plenty of photos.  “As soon as I saw the pictures of their mother and father, I had total recall,” Howard says.

The Smithermans had sent a letter to the Westport Public Library, seeking Howard’s address.  The staff there suggested Google — and voila!  After nearly 70 years, the wartime Marine and his other-side-of-the-world hosts were reunited.

“It was absolutely wonderful to hear from them,” Howard said.  “I still feel so much affection.”

So will he head Down Under, to visit the Smitherson “kids”?

“If I had the fare and the time, I’d be on my way,” Howard — now 94 years young — said.

6 Comments

Posted in People, Totally random

Tagged , ,

Famous Artists School Lives. Who Knew?

Posted on March 29, 2010 | 11 comments

Recently, in my other life as a “Woog’s World” columnist, I made a snarky reference to Famous Artists School.

Specifically, I called it — and its kinfolk, the Famous Writers and Famous Photographers School — “a Westport institution that crashed nearly as rapidly as it grew.”

A few days later I got an email from a Magdalen Livesey.  Though her name sounds like the creation of one of the only people ever to flunk a Famous Writers course, I opened it.

Magdalen Livesey wrote:  “Although your article didn’t say it in so many words…it left the impression that Famous Schools has been moribund for quite some time.”

She was happy to inform me that “Famous Schools” are alive and well.

A meeting of Famous Artists' artists, circa 1954. Clockwise from lower left: Ernest Fiene, Doris Lee, Ben Stahl, Stuart Davis, Adolf Dehn, Arnold Blanch and Will Barnet. (Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

They were acquired by Cortina Learning International in 1981, she said.  In 1990 the offices moved from Riverside Avenue to Newtown Turnpike, and in 1995 to Wilton.  That’s the current location, with a warehouse and shipping facility in Danbury.

Famous Artists School currently has students in “many different countries around the world, as well as in the States,” Magdalen continued.  Since 1967 they’ve had “a very active licensee” in Japan — Kodansha Famous Schools — with 15,000 students.

The present Famous Artists Courses include “the classic textbooks,” along with complete-at-home assignments that are sent in for “critiquing and evaluation by artist-instructors who work in their own studios.”  Coming soon:  a revised, updated downloadable version.

In 1993, Magdalen said, a 45th anniversary exhibition was held at the Westport Arts Center.  Stevan Dohanos — the last surviving member of the original 12 apostles founding “Famous Artists” — was still active then.

“We actually had quite widespread publicity for that event,” Magdalen added, “including a featured article in the Westport News.  Perhaps you are too young to have been aware of it.

Perhaps not.  A more likely answer:  Who remembers 1993?

But Famous Schools is not resting on its 45th-anniversary-17-years-ago laurels.  Their next project:  rejuvenating Famous Writers School, “which is still active but on a more limited basis.”

Magdalen’s email came at an appropriate time.  It’s Easter Week.  Her name conjures up Mary Magdalene.

And her tale about Famous Schools is an important reminder that — when you least expect it — someone, or something, can rise from the dead.

11 Comments

Posted in Education, Looking back

Tagged , , ,

Honoring Permanent Art

Posted on October 4, 2009 | 2 comments

Giants of the Blues — Westport artist Eric von Schmidt’s sprawling, 7-canvas work chronicling the roots of American music — should hang in the Smithsonian.

Instead, it graces the Staples auditorium foyer.

Westport artist Stevan Dohanos's Saturday Evening Post cover -- part of the Schools Permanent Art Collection -- has special significance. The models were all Staples students.

Westport artist Stevan Dohanos's Saturday Evening Post cover -- part of the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection -- has special significance. The models were all Staples students.

And that powerful piece is just 1 of over 1,000 paintings, sketches, cartoons, busts, murals and photos that fill the classrooms, hallways, offices and conference rooms of every Westport school and public building.  For 4 1/2 decades the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection has brought art into children’s lives, while paying homage to our town’s rich art history.

Now, the Westport Historical Society returns the favor.  Starting this weekend, and running through the end of the year, the WHS will showcase the collection, with a pair of shows.  Special treasures will be shown in the Betty & Ralph Sheffer Main Gallery, while cartoons and comic strips grace the Little Gallery.

An opening reception is set for this afternoon, from 3-5 p.m.

The Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection began modestly.  In 1964 Green’s Farms Elementary School art teacher Burt Chernow asked a few local artists to donate works.  Ben Shahn gave a pencil sketch — and the rest is history.

Westporter Curt Swan drew the "Superman" comics for many years. This illustration is part of the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection.

Westporter Curt Swan drew the "Superman" comics for many years. This illustration is part of the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection.

Today’s 1,000-plus artworks include paintings by Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Robert Motherwell and Christo.  There are cartoons by Charles Schulz, Al Capp, Whitney Darrow, Dik Browne, Mel Casson and Mort Walker, and photos by George Silk, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Philippe Halsman and Victor Keppler.

Over 150 local artists, past and present, are well represented.

The collection is curated by a committee of dedicated volunteers — including the indefatigable Mollie Donovan, who signed on 45 years ago expecting to work for a month or two, plus an an energetic group of young mothers.  The group collects, studies, catalogs and displays the work — and keeps all artwork up to date on a computer database.

The Westport Schools Permanent Arts Collection is such an ingrained part of our town, we don’t even think about it.  But we should.

The next time you’re in a school — or the library, Town Hall, or even Red Cross headquarters — look at the art that surrounds you.  Admire it; think about it — and understand how it got there.

Then, sometime between today and the end of the year, wander over to the Historical Society and check out the exhibits.  Forty-five years ago, Burt Chernow’s wanted to expose children to art.  Today, every Westporter is enriched by his vision.

Westport artist Hardie Gramatky donated this "Little Toot" book cover to the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection.

Westport artist Hardie Gramatky donated this "Little Toot" book cover to the Westport Schools Permanent Art Collection in honor of beloved Green's Farms teacher Lucy Gorham.

2 Comments

Posted in Arts, Education, Organizations

Tagged , , , , , ,