These are some of the best-known characters on Sesame Street from Season 15 of the amazing Children’s Television Workshop show. In my life, I was inspired by Sesame Street which was created out of the ideologies of the civil rights movement to educate children not just about the “the Three R’s”, but about kindness and compassion, and empathy for others, especially those who aren’t just like “you”. This message was truly brought home by the Muppets, who I grew up with, along with their human counterparts. Created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett and directed by Jon Stone, who realized that kids had been watching the dreck of Howdy Doody like shows, only built to entertain and to sell things in insipid ways, but that children were smart, and the television as a medium could also have education as their message, using short bit clips, akin to commercials and to Laugh-In sketches to convey content. Kids were memorizing beer commercials; wouldn’t it be entirety more edifying for them to learn from watching instead of becoming non-critical thinking passive consumers of the worst of capitalism?

The show was supposed to take place in a symbolic urban environment, based on Harlem, with a multi-cultural cast that represented a plurality of race, religion, and class working with cooperation and understanding in harmony and “sunny days” that make the “clouds go away”. The magic cosmological keystone was their recruited partner, Jim Henson, whose Muppets had been also bit players in commercials and talk shows—but had so much potential to inspire, enlighten, and warm the hearts of kids of all ages throughout the cultural universe. This was the beginning of a revolution in children’s programming—and it worked for decades and continues (albeit more muted and diminished by politics) as the Children’s Television Workshop, now the Sesame Workshop, that was the cornerstone of an era. Season 15 of Sesame Street (1983-84) was the pinnacle of the show, Mr. Hooper had died (which was acknowledge through a canonical sequence of Big Bird coming to terms with death with the rest of the group), and this is from an old postcard of that era. The show first premiered on November 10, 1969, I remember learning about it and watching and being captivated, which I did throughout my childhood, even when I was older and more of an Electric Company age, when home sick and bored–and when I was 10, fully matriculating to the Muppet show when it came out in 1976. Instead of GI Joes and other gender coded toys and action figures, like the human characters on Sesame Street, I surrounded myself with puppets (and Muppet puppet toys) and enjoyed playing and playacting with these more gender fluid (and character enhancing and enriching) avatars—that also engendered becoming an artist creating cartoons, comics, and narrative art throughout my entire life. Part of the secret of cartoons is that one can transcend themselves, “suture” into the avatars and, like in an RPG game, go on the characters journey, and this was true with the Muppets—a child could relate to the giant yellow Big Bird whose character was consciously contrived to be like an innocent six year old learning about life—and like in this picture, relate to and understand the meanings of this show, as I did when I was a child and now when I was painting, my inner spirit being rejuvenated into the vehicle of the work both for me and hopefully now for the viewer. I have also taught fine art and comics my whole professional life, for both the all too rarefied world of fine art but, inspired by Jim Henson, along with other great popular artists, the narrative art that is able to transcend into the broad public and have a positive impact. To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, “an artist’s job is to tell stories for a culture to understand itself in order for it to progress” and Sesame Street consciously did this as part of Sesame Street’s mission, with the Muppets as their iconic, relatable (as they were multi colored and gender transcending personas in felt!) of Henson’s wanting to bring entertainment to the people but with a heart that translated his love for life and for others.

At his memorial, his son Brian read his message to his children “Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody–it’s a good life, enjoy it” which is a sentiment that that is synonymous with Sesame Street. I feel that, like performing puppets, the secret to animating and alchemizing art in any realm (and of any character, live action or otherwise!) is to be able to project one’s agency and feeling into your work, like a puppeteer, bringing your work to life by thinking and emoting through your hand and brush or pencil into your medium to alchemize the elements and make a greater whole spirit out of the parts, something I hope all these works do to bring about the message of love and peace, which we need so much in these times.