Muppet mischief and magic

GREAT BARRINGTON — In the Museum of Civil Rights Pioneers at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center in Great Barrington, a document hangs on the wall displaying the signature of President Abraham Lincoln. Next to it, another exhibition piece is signed by Joel Schick.

Schick’s name may not draw as strong an image to mind as the mention of Lincoln does, but the drawings Schick has produced over the years have made an equally lasting impression on American culture.

On Friday, an exhibit called “Bein’ Green: Why Every Color is Beautiful,” will open at the Du Bois Center, with nearly 100 original sketches, drawings and paintings of classic and Sesame Street Muppets characters, all Schick’s creations: beloved characters such as Kermit the Frog, Cookie Monster, Elmo, Gonzo, Miss Piggy, and many others from the Muppet menagerie, along with some of the books and toys for which the illustrations were created.

Schick, a longtime Monterey resident, has recently moved to California.

His illustrations and watercolor paintings, which have spent 25 years stored in footlockers and art binders, have come out at the urging of Randy F. Weinstein, founder of the Du Bois Center.

“These paintings will naturally speak to children of all ages, but they also bring back wonderful memories and feelings in the adults who grew up with them,” Weinstein said.

The exhibit coincides with the holiday release of Disney’s new movie, “The Muppets” (now in theaters), and the celebration of what would be Muppet creator Jim Henson’s 75th birthday. Henson died in 1990.

“With all the racial unrest in this world, we also thought it was a good time for people to re-experience a childlike perspective,” said Weinstein. “Someone green can still love someone blue, and someone turquoise can still play with someone red. The Muppets have spent years showing us that, regardless of color, we all sing and laugh and love.”

Schick said though he appreciates this subtext, the Muppets have always been good people to him.

“The Muppets are what we all ought to be, and those of us who get to work with them already have that ‘childlike perspective’ that Randy talks about. If you ‘mature’ out of that, you can’t draw for kids at all — and you especially cannot draw the Muppets,” Schick said .

For Schick, who holds a psychology degree from Chicago’s Roosevelt University, working with Muppets came later in life.

Always one with an upbeat perspective and a good sense of humor, he worked as an artist while his wife, Alice, worked as a writer through the 1960s and 1970s.

“When I started working with The Muppets, Jim Henson had just died. But they still worked according to his insistence that every Muppet product must have a piece of art created especially for it,” said Schick.

“There were only a handful of us artists allowed to draw the characters, and hundreds of products requiring hundreds of pieces of original art. So we were all working all the time,” he said.

The “Bein’ Green” exhibit at the Du Bois Center exemplifies this: Schick’s sketches can show different character placement, colors and expressions when displayed next to a finished book page or toy.

Asked how he’s been able to create such lively characters, who are always in action, Schick said, “This is why I love to draw and always have done: Drawing something is a way to achieve a tremendous intimacy — a oneness — with the subject. You become Cookie Monster while you’re drawing him. You make his faces; his voice is in your head. You draw the picture, and while it’s coming out of your pencil you look at it and laugh. That’s when it’s right.”