Saturday 21 August 2010

Occupation Outbursts


It's not every day you find a "new" artist that makes you go "Hey! That's good!" Well Craig J. Lane sent me a mail with a few attached images and thats exactly what I said when I saw them. (Even though I said it in Swedish, of course.)

Here's part of what Craig wrote

"[...] portrait artist and teacher Jim Schell has self published a book of his cartoon panels that appeared in the Pacific Stars and Stripes. They appeared under the title Occupation Outbursts. A few years ago I was fortunate enough to purchase three original panels that were listed on eBay. They in part caught my eye since they were signed Schell which was my wife Karen's adoptive surname. Since the panels were only signed Schell and did not include any further information on the reverse it took me a while to learn the identity of the artist. Thankfully and to my surprise Mr. Schell was still living and to my greater surprise had not retained any of his artwork when he returned stateside from Japan. Even though he was obviously a gifted cartoonist, I was also surprised to learn that he did not pursue a career as a cartoonist upon his return to Atlanta, but rather went into advertising and formed the Kirkland, White and Schell Advertising Agency. Recently it was brought to my attention by his daughter Susan that he had collected images of his assorted Occupation Outburst cartoons into a book. The images appear to be taken from microfiche which while imperfect have reproduced much better than I would have expected. [...]"

And here we have the three originals that Craig owns:
(As always, click on the images to enlarge.)




And a close-up so you can see how nicely inked these are.


Finally a snapshot of the Pacific Stars and Stripes Art Department in 1945. In it Jim Schell is featured at the upper right.


Craig continues:
"The books can be ordered through Jim's daughter Susan Tasse for $20.00 each plus $5.00 for shipping. Please pay by cheque or money order. PayPal is unavailable. Please make cheques payable to Jim Schell. Susan's address is:

1106 Standard Drive NE
Atlanta, GA 30319

Susan can be contacted at susantasse at aim dot com. I am sure Jim would gladly sign copies if asked."

Thanks for sharing these images and alerting us all on the book, Craig!

/Joakim.

3 comments:

Smurfswacker said...

I love this guy's ink line!

Unknown said...

WOW!! Thank you for posting all of this!! I'm his granddaughter, Heidi, and I love finding his art all over the web. Especially from people out of the States!
I do not know your connection to himn, but thank you for enjoying and sharing his art. =) He was one of the greatest artists of all time...maybe I'm a LITTLE biased.

Joakim Gunnarsson said...

Nice to hear from you Heidi! I was fortunate to get a signed copy of the book, that I really treasure. Great stuff!