Our visit to MOMA in New York this week reminded me not to stifle kids’ creativity. That student with the drawings of a mangled, stitched-together corpse in a stained wedding dresses could be the next Tim Burton.
The Burton exhibit at MOMA showcases his childhood drawings alongside storyboards from his movies, Batman costumes and dozens of “Nightmare Before Christmas” art pieces.
The childhood sketches and student films show an early predilection toward the bizarre and the somewhat macabre. The art is more likely to be healthy catharsis than a dangerous warning of criminal and evil intentions.
The world would be a less interesting place if a bored kid from Burbank had been psychologically profiled and never allowed to sketch out the characters that became Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice and Jack Skellington.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFZ3gP0pqzE]
Also, looking at the dozens of little Jack Skellington heads drawn with each possible expression, I can’t fathom how much work is involved in making a stop-motion movie.
