“Clouds, so to say, were indigenous to my soul. I did not begin to notice them. I did not learn to love them. I have always loved them.” – William A. Quayle
I used the quote above, with permission, in my new book “Ellie and the Clouds”. Quayle’s “A Book of Clouds” was a stunning revelation to me.
Invitation for the dedication of the Eric Sloane studio wing, 23 May 1986. The first paragraph is a quote pulled from Eric’s 1969 dedication speech for the opening of the (then called) Sloane-Stanley Museum of Kent, Connecticut. From the collection of @wilmauch.
Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.
Eric Sloane at home, 1958, as part of a series of publicity photographs concerning the publication of his book Seasons of America Past.
Photo courtesy of Wil Mauch. Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.
Luci W. Shaw, pictured at the edge of Eric Sloane’s driveway on Carter Road in Warren, summer of 1971. At the time, Ms. Shaw was a 2nd semester senior at Hollins College in Virginia, studying as an independent project the barn architecture of southeastern Virginia. From Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum founder Wil Mauch. Learn more about this most fascinating and talented of American artists by visiting www.weatherhillfarm.com.
Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.
One of Eric Sloane’s illustrations for Your Body In Flight (T.O. # 00-25-13), prepared by the Aero Medical Laboratory of Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio), published by the Air Service Command, Patterson Field, Fairfield, Ohio for the United States Army Air Forces, July 20, 1943. Eric Sloane’s contribution to the training of pilots both informally just prior to the onset of WWII and formally as in this Army Air Forces manual, is often ignored. Eric Sloane contributed to two publications prior to the war that were used by civilian pilots as well as military recruits: Your Wings, by Assen Jordanoff (Funk and Wagnalls, May 1940) and Let’s Fly: An ABC of Flying by Earnest Vetter ( William Morrow and Company, 1940). Sloane also authored and illustrated his own Clouds, Air and Wind (The Devan-Adair Company, 1941). During the war, Eric Sloane wrote and illustrated Camouflage Simplified (The Devan-Adair Company, 1942), Gremlin Americanus, A Scrapbook Book Collection of Gremlins (B.F. Jay and Co., 1943). While the latter title was meant to be humorous, it was both quite an effective remainder of the dangers that faced pilots, as well as a probably much needed break from the military training manuals. During the war, Eric Sloane also contributed to Junior Aviation Science (by D.H. Grimm, Noble & Noble Publishers, 1942) and to at least one other publication for the Army Air Forces, Pilot’s Information File (1943, the Army Air Forces).
Photo from Wil Mauch’s Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane. Learn more about this most fascinating of American artists by visiting www.weatherhillfarm.com.
Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.
In 1965, Eric Sloane was approached by Walt Disney (or perhaps, more accurately, by representatives of the Disney Company) to see if the author/artist might sell the rights to Diary of an Early American Boy so that the studio could spin the story into a Disney movie. Sloane must have asked – or the production company disclosed – how much they were willing to spend to secure the rights. Sloane rejected that amount, stating that it was an “astonishingly paltry sum” (Eighty). Eric Sloane responded to Walt Disney via a letter in a way he intended to be humorous: “I am well aware of your frugality and I feel embarrassed at your offer. I so admire your work, however, that I’d rather give you the script for nothing, but I am sure my wife (and my psychiatrist) would object to that…I might settle for two bucks” (Eighty). A check for two dollars soon arrived from Walt Disney Productions, along with a seventeen-page contract. Not to be outdone, Sloane promptly found an appropriate location to hand his now framed check: over the toilet in his studio bathroom. The framed check remains in the possession of the Eric Sloane Museum of Kent, Connecticut, hung in Eric’s (recreated) studio.
Photo from Wil Mauch’s Aware: A Retrospective of the Life and Work of Eric Sloane. Learn more about this most fascinating of American artists by visiting www.weatherhillfarm.com.
Learn more about how the Friends of the Eric Sloane Museum supports and promotes the legacy of Eric Sloane through a robust partnership with the Eric Sloane Museum by visiting us at www.friendsoftheericsloanemuseum.org.