Gumby creator Art Clokey dies at 88

Art Clokely, the claymation pioneer responsible for the genesis of the strange, angular green figure known as Gumby, has died in his sleep at the age of 88.

Clokely’s son Joseph spoke with the LA Times about his father’s life, saying that even as a small child he sculpted figures from mud at his parents’ farm in Michigan. Young Art Clokely’s parents divorced at the age of 8, and his father was killed in a car accident not long after. (Pictures indicate that Gumby’s odd head shape reflects Clokely’s father’s distinctive hair style.) It was then that Clokely moved to Los Angeles, left in a halfway house by his newly married mother until his adoption at the age of 11 by a man named Joseph Clokely. The elder Clokely taught Art to draw, paint and sculpt and took the young boy on international trips. Clokely’s son Joseph credits his grandfather Gumby’s adventures being “so adventurous.”

In the early 50s, Art Clokely experimented with stop-motion claymation, and one of his films, Gumbasia, fell into the hands of the head of 20th Century Fox. The man, Sam Engel, asked Clokely to produce a children’s show based on the concept, and Gumby soon became a cultural icon.

Clokely’s son said his father died Friday at his home in Los Osos, CA, after suffering repeated bladder infections.

[LA Times]