Sadly we must note the passing of our friend Wendy Jackson Hall. She passed away this past Monday in Seattle, from complications relating to cancer.Wendy was a true friend to animation and all involved with it. She was President of Asifa Pacific NW, a writer for various animation journals & industry trade publications, and a respected teacher. I knew her when she was involved with AWN from 1996 to 1999. She had a real passion for contemporary and classic animation - and her enthusiastic spirit will be missed.Her husband, Porter Hall, is updating her website in tribute to her life. There will be a memorial service on the West Coast on Saturday at 3pm at the Seabold United Methodist Church, 6894 NE Seabold Road off of the 305 on Bainbridge Island WA. On the east coast, a memorial service for Wendy will be held at the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Medfield, MA on Saturday, December 3 at 3pm. Directions to the church can be found here.

“Masters of American Comics,” a major exhibit co-organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art and UCLA Hammer Museum, opens in Los Angeles this weekend. Between the two museums, over 900 pieces of art will be on display. The exhibitions focus primarily on fifteen different artists: Winsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger, George Herriman, E.C. Segar, Frank King, Chester Gould, Milton Caniff, and Charles M. Schulz at the Hammer Museum, and Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, and Chris Ware at MOCA. Articles about the show are at the LA WEEKLY and LA TIMES, and the exhibition catalog/book is available at Amazon.

The combined credits of the three new bloggers below include DEXTER’S LAB, POWERPUFF GIRLS, FOSTER’S HOME FOR IMAGINARY FRIENDS and SAMURAI JACK. So you know to expect good stuff from these guys:Don Shank (who also has a couple terrific paintings in the upcoming BLAST #9)Chris BattleRob Lilly

And here’s a nice directory of animation artist blogs, courtesy of Smook. It’s not by any means comprehensive, but it’s the largest collection of animation blog links I’ve seen so far.

LA folks are in for a major treat this weekend.Saturday, November 19, is the opening of “3 Trees Make a Forest,” a three-man art show featuring new works by Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie del Carmen and Tadahiro Uesugi. I’m constantly amazed at how much quality work Enrico and Ronnie are able to produce and how dedicated they are to their various artistic endeavors — FRAGMENTS, Sketchcrawl, MIA, PAPER BISCUIT, fine art shows — and all this while holding down dayjobs at Pixar as story artists…truly commendable.

The show is at Gallery Nucleus (30 West Main St., Alhambra) and the opening night reception is from 7-11pm. All three artists will be in attendance — Casarosa and del Carmen will be coming down from the Bay Area and the amazing Tadahiro Uesugi is flying in from Tokyo. The show received a major write-up in today’s LA TIMES and it’s a good read.

VOICE: AIGA JOURNAL OF DESIGN has an interview with MISCHIEVOUS ART OF JIM FLORA author Irwin Chusid about all of the personal artwork that Jim Flora produced over the years, which includes hundreds of paintings, watercolors, drawings and woodcuts. Chusid says there is the possibility of more books dedicated to Flora’s art. The article also includes ten never-before-seen examples of Flora’s personal art, including the above piece.

Alexey Kobelev has launched a great new blog, The Russian Insider, which aims to document both classic and contemporary Russian animation. Currently he’s posting lots of great development art from PRINCE VLADIMIR, a nearly-completed Russian animated feature that should be pretty impressive if they’re able to maintain the quality of the concept art.
(via Hans Bacher)

SHEEP IN THE BIG CITY creator, book illustrator and native New Orleanian Mo Willems has organized an online auction to benefit the children affected by Hurricane Katrina. The Pigeon Auction starts today and runs through November 25. Lots of great items are available to bid on including original artwork by children’s book illustrators, signed books and posters by Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton and Craig McCracken, a huge GRIM & EVIL puppet, and more. More importantly, 100% of the proceeds will go to the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

TREE+ME is an amusing, oddly styled Flash short by an artist named VanBeater. Afterwards, take a look at all the crazy illustrations on VanBeater’s site. Good stuff.