Canvas book launch for Dan Lee a wild success!

Emphatic enough for ya? I may be overstating it but I haven't done many gallery openings where I'm involved, so maybe not. Nevertheless, it was a great tribute to Dan. The Canvas was packed! The center gallery had Dan's art up, flanked by his friends' artwork all around the walls of the cafe. People arrived and the buzz was amazing. Terra, the gallery director had speculated that since we all worked with Dan that the rest of the gallery was going to be digital as well. But she was pleasantly surprised that every one of us exhibited personal, practical media artwork. Actual pencil, watercolor, gouache, charcoal...what have you. Friends, colleagues, familiar faces and new faces all mingled around the work and celebrated the one gallery event that Dan didn't have a chance to have while he was with us.



Sunny, Dan's sister spoke to the audience to welcome everyone and thank his friends who made all this possible. I first met Sunny when she spoke at Pixar at Dan's memorial and I was very impressed by her presence and voice, confident, clear and welcoming--obviously used to speaking publicly or leading. This evening she tells the audience the reason the gallery was held at Canvas was because Dan would drive all the way from the East Bay to sit there and draw, "So, if some of you recognize yourself in the book or the framed work, you know why." Even when Dan was pretty sick, and now sporting a disabled sign to hang in his car, he still drove in; enjoying the signal privilege of being able to park behind the cafe and walk in from the back door. In closing she mentioned Joe Ranft's tragic accident knowing that most of the audience have that loss in common with us that night.

My thanks to all who made this possible. Beaming pride to be part of this with you all.

And lastly, to all of you who bought artwork, thanks so much for contributing to Dan's evening and, if I can speak for all of us exhibiting, we're really so very flattered and honored that you shelled out hard-earned cash for the work. I personally have the usual crisis of spirit and direction (maybe out of habit) but this gesture, well, I can live off of this when I get in my gray moods. Our deepest appreciation, folks.


I wish I had taken more pictures, so many people were there. These were the ones that I managed to not botch--low light, medium performance digital camera and walking around completely oblivious to photo ops. Thanks to all who visited, seriously.


The gallery will be up for a month for those of you who wish to see what the hubbub is all about. Go and drop by, say hi to Terra and tell her we sent you. Next post will have Canvas in it as well. We just finished the 4th World Wide Sketchcrawl yesterday, finishing right there at Canvas. I have a report and pictures.

Be well.

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Better pictures and a report of the evening at Enrico's spankin' revampted blog here.

Dan Lee "In Your Face" blog for info on how to get his book here.