I haven't had a chance to write about it until now, but I went to New York to view and participate in the Harvey Art Show on January 14-16, 2009. The show runs at the MoCCA at 594 Broadway #401 until April 25, but I was there to appear at the Official Opening for the New York version of the show, despite the show having a soft opening on December 16, 2008.
The show is still called "From Richie Rich to Wendy the Witch: The Art of Harvey Comics" and still features most of the exhibits contributed by Skeet and Linda Rose, Dave Holt and myself, but also some new ones by Kent Meredith and by Adam Harvey.
The major differences between the San Francisco show and this one is that the display area for the Harvey show is larger in New York, but it is the only show going on, whereas the San Francisco display area was somewhat smaller and there were three other galleries to view.
The New York version also had more color with multi-colored painted walls and stencils of various Harvey characters like Hot Stuff or Casper, as well as displays featuring original comic books including some from the Harvey horror era and superhero era and a copy of "Richie Rich" #1.
There were some other new items added to the show including the original artwork to the cover of "Richie Rich" #200. I will be posting a video version of the New York portion of the show soon to YouTube. In the meantime, I have posted photo on Photobucket and have included one of them here.
I flew out early Wednesday morning from San Francisco to New York on Delta. It was great to be flying again and it was the first time I had been to New York since early 2001.
On the Wednesday night Opening, many illustrious people from Harvey history did manage to show up including artist Angelo DeCesare who worked on Richie Rich in the late 70s and early 80s and now works for Archie.
Former Harvey Production Artist Paul Maringelli was there as was three of the four sons of Alfred and Vicky Harvey: Eric, Adam and Alan. Sid Jacobson's son, Seth was there as was Sid Couchey's "de facto" manager and agent, Dan Busha. Harvey fans and former Marvel employees Jim Salicrup and Danny Fingeroth were also there, as were Allan Neuwirth and Nick Biales.
Harvey fan and writer for the "New York Villager" Will McKinley went around interviewing everyone at the show for an article. McKinley interviewed me via telephone a couple of days prior to my arrival in New York.
The Opening was well attended and a few speeches were made by Ellen Abramowitz and Karl Erickson, the museum's curators. The festivities went on for a couple of hours and many photos and some video footage were shot.
Afterwards, Salicrup invited me to dinner at ACME, a great Cajun food restaurant. I had the catfish and we discussed Harvey, Marvel, MoCCA and Papercutz (Salicrup's current company).
The next day I went shopping in 10 degree Fahrenheit weather with snow. It was cold!! After shooting a bit of video of the snow, I did a little shopping at Bleeker Street Records, partially to get in out of the cold and partially to see what they had. I managed to pick up a vinyl copy of the Richie Rich album called "Mysteries of the Deep!". This is not the rapper, mind you, but one of four children's albums released by Parachute Records, a division of Polygram, back in 1983. (I will cover these albums in a future issue of "THFT!")
Later on, after some other limited sightseeing, I went back to the museum for day two and the Harvey Q&A Panel. The panel was moderated by Salicrup and featured Paul Maringelli, Angelo DeCesare, Rick Parker (who worked at Harvey for a few months before later working at Marvel on "Beavis and Butt-Head"), Chris Barat and me.
In looking at the photos and video footage, I have to admit that there were shades of "Adam Awards" in how the presentation looks (see the photo at the top of this blog entry). Kent Meredith, Joe Torcivia and Chris' wife, Nicki were among those in the audience for this panel presentation. Nicki took the panel photos.
Everyone including yours truly had quite a bit to say and an edited version of the footage will be on YouTube soon. Most everyone went out afterwards for another meal at ACME sans Joe, Chris and Nicki.
I contemplated staying through Sunday, but decided since I have had limited funds due to being out of work during November and December, that I just best go home, though I wished I could have stayed longer.
I flew home on American and had an uneventful flight on Friday despite ongoing news coverage of another plane crash in the Hudson Bay on Thursday.
You can view all of the Photobucket photos by clicking here!
Details on the YouTube videos will be posted when I upload them. Stay Tuned.
After April, the show moves to Pittsburgh and the Toonseum.
