Park West Hosts Benefit for Michigan’s Children 0comments
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2009-09-29 13:09:00
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The Park West Foundationsupports numerous organizations committed to strengthening positive values and leadership in communities round the world. The Foundation also hosts events for many charita ...
The Park West Foundationsupports numerous organizations committed to strengthening positive values and leadership in communities round the world. The Foundation also hosts events for many charitable organizations each year generating significant proceeds for many worthy causes.
Exhibit honors artist who had talent -- and a diseaseNEAL RUBIN • THE DETROIT NEWS
September 24 2009
I only knew Nolan Ross when he was strange. I missed the part where he was just slightly peculiar -- and I had no idea how good he once was.
I feel bad about that. About flinching when he'd stop near my table mumble something and stare blankly at a spot on the wall above my head for an increasingly uncomfortable five minutes. About wondering why we'd hired this stiff who couldn't even draw a caricature of a tiger for heaven's sake.
So perhaps I'm making amends by telling everyone about the showing of his job October 3 at Park West Gallery in Southfield a benefit for Michigan's Children. Or maybe I'm just impressed by the persistence of his brother Carter who's been trying for decades to hang Nolan's drawings where everyone can see them.
Mostly though I'm astonished at the art.
Nolan Ross was an illustrator at the other paper in the '70s and '80s. Quiet by nature he was largely overshadowed by some of the large names there and by people love the late cartoonist Draper Hill here at The Detroit News. In Ross' obituary in 1997 a former editor described his work like "marvelously right and truly daft" which might also have described the artist.
"He was incredibly talented and odd" says Jack Kresnak a former reporter who's now the president of Michigan's Children. "It would receive him a few moments to respond to your question or your statement and it would come back to you in a slightly skewed way -- not mean or unkind since he was truly gentle and kind-hearted except not quite on center."
Getting his dueThat was during the good times when he was just another mild eccentric in a newsroom thick with them. By the mid-'80s though no one knew it he was beset with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease a genetic brain disorder often taken for Alzheimer's.
His dad died of it too. Arthur Ross was a legendary GM desigb39ner whose kids graduated from Mumford High. Nolan 54 and a resident of Livonia when he died went on to what's now the College for Creative Studies. Carter 69 became a mechanical engineer in Chicago.
Carter often felt his younger brother was unappreciated. As for whether his sketches are well-enough remembered to draw a crowd "I'm as curious as anybody else could be" he says.
Ross has spent two full-tilt months at a computer restoring Nolan's originals to seem more like art than like newspaper illustrations dotted with dates coding and instructions. He'll mountain 60 of them at Park West and put 300 on slides to be projected against a wall: wine-quaffing dragons superhero asparagus stalks caricatures cars collages.
"We're just trying to give a shout-out to a man who did great work and had a sad ending" Kresnak says -- someone whose work serene speaks eloquently long behind he couldn't.
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Michigan's Children Art & Advocacy Benefit at Park West Gallery
Featuring the Cartoons of Nolan Ross
Details: Saturday October 3 7-10pm.
Tickets : $75/person. Beverages and hors d' oeuvres will be served.
Reservations: Visit http://www.michiganschildren.org/ / Call 517-485-3500.
Download the event invitation
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