After this weekend in Vegas I can now say that I have met the great Jack Davis (and have a signed sketch!). He has an incredible story and career. A foundation has been set up to “facilitate the study and appreciation of Jack Davis’s contribution to 20th-century art through development of databases, archives, education and exhibitions.” Their website is http://jackdavisfoundation.org/.
Through his career, Jack Davis has done a massive amount of illustration work for magazines, books, comics, advertising, animation, and record covers. At the Jack Davis Foundation’s website, we’ve provided a small sampling of Jack’s work, some of which can be found in books of his work and other places around the web. For this blog, however, we hope to showcase some work of Jack’s that hasn’t been seen as much; his rough sketches, abandoned projects, anecdotes behind more renown pieces, and photographs. We’ll try to update a few times a week to share some of these Davis gems with those of you who admire his work so much.
Jack is one of my heros. I know his work from my childhood of reading MAD magazine and all those glorious TV Guide and record album covers he did. If I ever become a fraction of an artist like him, I’d die a happy man.
Our son bought a used record for me at Goodwill today. It’s the Jonathan Winters’ Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World record, which has a series of cartoons on the front, drawn by Jack Davis. I have it hung up in front of me, for inspiration. The price was 50 cents; value, priceless.