I believe it was the year in which I was born, that Walt Disney released
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length, animated feature film.
The film proved to be such a great popular success, that at the Academy Awards
Ceremony, Disney received a special honorary Oscar, accompanied by seven
miniature Oscars. Shirley Temple may have played a role as a presenter, in giving
the statuettes to Walt, but I'm not sure about that bit of Hollywood history.
Disney used the popularity of those seven little characters to licence them to toy
companies for reproduction in a great variety of forms, and I imagine that they are
still being commercialized to this day.
Some months ago, after a night of heavy rains, I found a little reproduction of
one of the dwarfs which a child had lost or discarded, and which was most probably
one of a set of all seven, The rain had carried it along the flooded, curbside gutters
from some unknown location, and deposited it in front of my studio at the opening
of the storm sewer. The little figure was lying there, along with one chipped and
scratched die, and only some twigs and leaf litter had prevented the two small
objects from falling through the iron grating into the sewer to be lost forever.
August was my birth month, all those years ago, when audiences were first
being charmed by Disney's dwarfs. And now I have to report that this August was
also nearly the month of my death. I had a heart attack, and that was followed by
extensive, open-heart surgery, and now a torturous recovery period which will last
past the middle of September.
During my painful convalescence, while I am waiting for the strength to return to
my normal routine of life, I have been doing some small drawings of little objects
including the little dwarf figure which stands just a bit over two inches tall, as well as
its lost companion die. I find the symbolism of this little lost fellow to be appropriate
to my message in this posting.....Just when we think that all is lost, our fate can
change, and the lost can be saved!
