The latest piece to arrive for our “Playing with the Box” exhibition comes from artist turned toy maker, Mitch Mitchell. His piece is entitled “The Monkey King and Queen” and is comprised of a mini puppet theater depicting a jungle paradise, complete with a pair of royal monkeys. It reminds me of the dioramas we used to make as kids, or a Pollock’s paper theater. (We will have to start putting images of some of our box art on this blog – but you will have to write in and beg us to do it, so we will have motivation to learn yet another computer task!)

Mr. Mitchell has many interesting and amusing facts in his CV, not the least of which is the fact that he went to the Ringling School of Art and Design. Now that sounds entertaining. He has worked as an animation artist and an illustrator, but his current profession is one that we find especially near and dear. Mitch makes SOCK MONKEYS. He has a wonderful web site with interactives that we wish we had thought of. Check out the Incredible Sock. This will need to be a future accession for LATDA.

We hope to work with Mitch to create a Super Sock Monkey exhibition in the future.

We just filed our Support Schedule for Advance Ruling Period...this is lRS-ese for "proof that people really will support a toy museum by actually giving it money". In order to show that we are not just deluding ourselves by plowing our own money into a dream, we needed to show that other people were willing to become supporters (members) of our museum. Our gross receipts were not mammoth, but they were in such a proportion as is required by the statutes of the law. Meaning that you (you, wonderful members, you) sent in money that correctly balanced against the money we have shelled out of our own pockets.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

And to those of you who have not yet become members, we need to continually prove that we are a publicly-supported institution, so your help is still needed! Join us now!