(PRWEB) May 17, 2018
Kalamazoo Valley Museum Hosts June 1-2 AniMotion Festival
The Kalamazoo Valley Museum's AniMotion Festival kicks off with Kalamazoo City's Art Hop on Friday, June 1. Students from Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Center for New Media will display their posters advertising the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s summer traveling exhibit Cats & Dogs. Students competed against each other to be one of the top three. Commemorative stickers, buttons, and posters will be created from the winners and will be available during Art Hop and the AniMotion Festival. Winning artists will be on hand and all of the student posters will be on display. The exhibit will open at 5:30 p.m. in the WorldWorks room on the first floor of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
Throughout the past year, students from the Center for New Media have worked with students from Read and Write Kalamazoo (R.A.W.K.) to create Moving UniVerse Poems, an animation presentation collaboration. Students from R.A.W.K. wrote a series of poems, which they shared with Kalamazoo Valley Community College students who then brought those poems to life through graphic design and animation. Moving UniVerse Poems will be seen for the very first time at 6 p.m. on June 1, during Art Hop.
The AniMotion Festival continues on Saturday, June 2, from noon to 4 p.m. Adam Mellema, producer/storyteller, shares how he became a cartoon in Adam’s Answers at noon. Adam’s latest project, Adam’s Answers, is a multi-platform brand complete with YouTube channel, scripted series, publishing line, and a 12-week road show. Mellema’s love for storytelling began as a ninth grader competing in high school forensics all around Michigan. Now residing in Los Angeles, California, he has been seen on CNN and at the Washington Storytellers Theatre, the Detroit Institute of Arts, The Perkins School for the Deaf and Blind in Boston, and in Salt Lake City during the 2002 Olympics. In his spare time, Mellema brings his stories to the screen as a children’s television producer. He received a regional Emmy award for his work on Come On Over, a new kids' show from Enthusiastic Productions. Mellema was also a writer/producer of the popular Disney Channel “What’s What Edition,” including High School Musical 2, Camp Rock, and the production on Charlie & Company, a new preschool show from School Zone Publications.
Three Center for New Media students take to the stage to share their cat and dog creations and talk about how each was produced. Jill Middlestatdt, illustrator, will begin at 1 p.m., followed by animators Jordan Wilson and Alayna Fogle. Kalamazoo Valley Community College is proud of their cutting edge graphic design program, and the Museum is excited to be able to showcase their accomplishments. The Art and New Media program, housed at the Center for New Media, offer courses to help students in the fields of architecture, graphics, interior and fashion design, writing, film, fine arts, journalism, languages, media, advertising, and public relations.
Author, editor, and publisher Kim Childress will share on the changing technology in the field of art, including graphic design, at 3 p.m. Author of Find Your Future in Art, Childress began her thirty-year career in children’s publishing as a bookseller at Kids’ Ink Children’s Bookstore and book reviewer for Girls’ Life magazine. Later, she became an award-winning middle-grade editor for HarperCollins Christian Publishing (Zondervan), and has written and edited hundreds of books, stories, and articles for children and the adults in their lives—all while raising a personal focus group of four children. A self-proclaimed naturalist married to a veterinarian, Childress’ life revolves around books and caring for critters, which have included a crested gecko, an albino rat, two bearded dragons, African chinchillas, 11 chickens, and two dogs. Not to mention the children. She is the founder of Childress Ink.
Childress Ink will be at the Museum as a vendor, as well as Suzanne Brockway, author of a comic strip book called Memoirs of The Pet Sitter, A Journey with the Other Creatures of Our Lives.
The Kalamazoo Valley Museum is operated by Kalamazoo Valley Community College and governed by its Board of Trustees. Admission to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum is free.
Media Contact
Bill McElhone
Kalamazoo Valley Museum Director
269.373.7990, wgouldmcelh(at)kvcc.edu