Letters, Sets

For any of you seeking extracurricular Sendak fun this weekend, the following:

The Animazing Gallery's Sendak in Soho exhibition and sale is well worth a visit. Well. Worth. Perhaps you'll head home with a bronze of Max and his ship, with a set design from the Nutcracker Suite or Where the Wild Things Are Opera. Or maybe you'll just levitate a little, floating among the drawings, clutching the price list in your hot little hand. Preview the art here. The sale runs through November eighth.

For those of you who would prefer not to brave the rain, peruse the Booooooom/We Love You So Wild Things Fort Contest, and get out your hammer, your sheets.

And because I cannot help myself today, an excerpt from a particularly wonderful letter between (who else?) Ursula Nordstrom and (who else?) Maurice Sendak:

"Maurice, before I sent the paste-up I went through it, rereading the words, and looking at the pictures again. It is MOST MAGNIFICENT, and we're so proud to have it on our list. When you were much younger, and had done only a couple of books, I remember I used to write you letters when the books were finished, and thank you for "another beautiful" job--or some such dopiness. Now you're rich and famous and need no words of wonder from me. But I must send them, anyhow, when I look through Where the Wild Things Are. I think it is utterly magnificent, and the words are beautiful and meaningful, and it does just what you wanted it to do. And you did just what you wanted to do."

To doing the things you want to do.
Happy Friday, all.
A.

{Art by Maurice Sendak, via the Animazing Gallery}