Blue Skies: Trixy Sweetvittles

Thursday, March 29, 2012

A Plainfield Sibbling - Another Ellie Bogardus

Encore Un Peu - Ellie Bogardus, 1975

I received a comment on the Hotel California blog post of the photographs of Ellie Bogardus paintings provided by the University of Southern California instructor Trixy Sweetvittles. The Plainfield, New Jersey Public Library has a collection of paintings, and one donated by Joseph Da Rold is titled Encore Un Peu - Still A Few by Ellie. Da Rold is the director of the library, and in his background biographical sketch, it mentions: During the 30 years he lived in California and worked in the library science field doing advanced research projects for Warner Brothers, Da Rold eventually became the director of a small municipal library and served as president of his condominium association. So, a California connection that may have been when he acquired the Bogardus painting. I sent an email to find out more details.
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Postscript - March 29, 2012

I wrote to the director of the Plainfield Library asking about details regarding the Ellie Painting he donated to the library. Below is his reply - more information behind the painting.

She is one of the few artists whose work I have purchased that I never met. While I was Director at the Santa Fe Springs City Library (Los Angeles County) I was asked by the City Council to acquire paintings by area artists for the City Hall. I worked with Tom Enman, then Director of Laguna Beach Art Museum, and Micheline Schwartzkopf, owner of Abraxas Gallery in Newport Beach. On one of my art buying trips I saw the Bogardus paintings in another gallery. Although I did not select one for the City's collection, I purchased one for myself, which I eventually donated to the Plainfield Public L[i]brary where I have been building an art collection for 20 years.

The date (1975) is on the painting itself; the title is on the back. I have never known her first name or anything about her, except I understood she was in her late 80's or 90's back in the early 1980's. My staff has been gathering biographical information on the painters in our collection, which is why I have been reaching out to find out something about her. I wrote to the Laguna Beach Museum a few years ago but never had a response.

Thank you for getting in touch. I'm sorry I don't have any other information, but If you have any details you can share with us, I would be very appreciative.

Sincerely,
Joe Da Rold

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In response:

Thanks for the reply and the details. Below are links in my blog that have a fair amount of information about Ellie to pick through, and some links about vital information - she was only 67 when she died in 2002. She was a neighbor near my parents' second home in Cambria. I have been collecting information about Ellie through the blog, and have acquired photographs of her works from various folks who have replied to my blog - such as you!

Feel free to use the information. Ellie was an artist on some of the earliest television cartoons, and on television cartoon features such as Charlie Brown and Garfield. I have also been in communication with her former husband and his children (not her children) who are French and all artists in their own rights.

Have a good weekend,

Jeff

http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/08/ellie-bogardus-exteriorinterior-art.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2012/01/letters-from-france-more-about-ellie.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2012/02/titled-drawing-another-ellie-bogardus.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/11/ellie-bogardus-hotel-california.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/11/manholes-to-murals-bogardus-wall.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2012/02/ellie-bogardus-commercial-side.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2012/03/plainfield-relative-another-ellie.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/01/street-art-manhole-covers.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/12/ellie-bogardus-midnight-in-paris.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/10/ellie-bogardus-french-connection.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/12/ellie-bogardus-lost-generation.html
http://blueskiesinannapolis.blogspot.com/2011/11/artists-house-ellie-bogardus.html

Friday, November 25, 2011

Ellie Bogardus - Hotel California

In an earlier blog I mentioned a neighbor of my parents' in Cambria, but more notably, Ellie Bogardus was an illustrator from the production crew of Charlie Brown cartoons and cartoons in the early days of television. She also was an artist known around the small

5275 Nottingham Drive, c. 1985

coastal community, and after posting an update about her work, I heard from a gentleman in France who is the son of Ellie's husband in the 1960's. Following that post, earlier in the week I received a message from an instructor at the University of Southern California (my attitude towards that institution had already mellowed over the past six years since moving to the east coast - much different from my earlier college days) who along with her husband have the good fortune of just this week acquiring an entire collection of Ellie Bogardus' original paintings from family friends who were obviously serious collectors of Ellie's paintings. If I thought the drawings my brother and sister-in-law have were great, these canvases are spectacular - a bonanza.

More than a month ago, I wrote my new friend in France that I would look for photographs of the Cambria house, and with grateful receipt of the cell phone images received earlier this week from southern California, and another request for more information about Ellie - well... I was able to locate two sketches I drew of Ellie's house about 25

Wall landscape, non-artistic rendition

years ago. I am leaving myself quite vulnerable to criticism by displaying these because by no stretch of anyone's imagination am I an artist, and the two inquiries about Ellie come from accomplished artists in their own right. The first sketch is a perspective of the front of the house facing the road away from the ocean. The second is a very rough drawing on the south-facing exterior wall of the house showing a larger landscape scene that nicely ties together the characters from the manhole cover skirts out in the street - the drawings on the wall and the manhole covers together complete the habitat. From my sketch, it looks like that part of the house had a flat roof, so Ellie's exterior "canvas" was a rectangle. The canvas for this blog now runs in a triangle, from Annapolis, to France, back over the U.S to southern California, and to the east coast, again.

A quest continues. In the meantime, below is the first public showing of Ellie Borgardus original paintings from the Allyn Morris Family collection. They are as my mind remembers seeing ones like them, decades ago at the Seago Gallery and the gallery that is now a pizzeria on Main Street. I will need to find out whether the paintings have a title written on the backs of the canvases. The artist's signature dates them in the late 1970's - an imagined interpreted title is provided for each, like earlier aerial Iowa landscapes.
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