The birth of claymation

It’s no secret that Portlanders have always been innovators. When you attend 5th Avenue Cinema’s rare screening of The Clay Baker, presented by the Oregon Cartoon Institute Sunday, Feb. 12, you’ll get an earful of history, entertainment and a swelling of pride for the city you call home.

The decade is the 1920s, and young budding filmmaker Lewis Clark Cook is working on a piece that will change the animation landscape. That piece is The Clay Baker, and what Cook viewed as just “another project” spawned a legion of followers decades later.

Interestingly, according to records, Cook attended Portland’s Lincoln High School at the same time as cartoon animation’s “Man of a Thousand Voices,” Mel Blanc, who provided the voice of nearly every Looney Tunes character, including Bugs Bunny.

Filmed “sometime within the 1920s” with a runtime of around five minutes, The Clay Baker is a short film indeed, one that is surrounded with much mystery. Because of the ambiguous timeframe of its production, the film has been analyzed and re-analyzed to see what “era” of Cook is responsible for such a film.

Although the subject matter is simple (the film revolves around the primitive stop-animation of an amorphous blob of dough), its impact is legendary. Will Vinton, legendary Academy-Award–winning animator, cites The Clay Baker as being the catalyst for his countless clay creations, which began in his own Portland basement in 1973.

But the event isn’t just a celebration of Lewis Clark Cook’s young brilliance. The Oregon Cartoon Institute will also screen a 10-minute profile piece on Cook by Portland artist Jim Blashfield produced in the early 1980s for Oregon Public Broadcasting. The total runtime of both pieces is close to 15 minutes.

Additionally, the institute will also be announcing Gus Frederick’s Homer Davenport Project and the institute’s proposed Bill Plympton Project.