A Stop Motion Whimventure®
I gotta gal, in Kalamazoo- she's a medusa
I had Saturday off and Sue and decided to have a Whimventure. Somehow we ended up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. You see, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum had a special exhibit on the work of Ray Harryhausen. If you don’t know who Harryhausen was, you probably have seen his work in various films. He was a master at stop motion. I’m just going to link to his Wikipedia article because I’m bound to mess up trying to explain his filmography. Ray Harryhausen - Wikipedia
The Ray Harryhausen Foundation The Ray & Diana Harryhausen Foundation shipped over pieces used in many of his films for this small (no pun intended) exhibit. Growing up I remember watching many of his films after school or in the summer. When I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area on of the local stations would show old movies every afternoon. These would follow a weekly theme. This was where I saw most of the classic Science Fiction films that shaped my youth. When we moved south a local theatre would have matinees of old movies and many of those were action adventure films like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.
This Whimventure included lunch at Bell’s Brewery and a stop in Battle Creek to wander a really cool sculpture garden where the art was made from the dead tree stumps after the emerald ash borer had killed many of the trees in the arboretum. While only five spots It was a well done Adventure Lab. There are more than five sculptures to look at when you visit.
When we got home we sat back and watched The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) which was pretty corny, but then again it was state of the art for the 50’s.
Where does a Whimventure idea come from? This one was all Sue. I was willing to coddiwomple but she had seen something about this exhibit and thought I’d like it. It’s wonderful to have someone watching out for you.