Tribute: David Gildersleeve

2001 SEQA faculty (clockwise from bottom left): Ted Stearn, Mark Kneese, Paul Hudson, Durwin Talon, David Gildersleeve and Bob Pendarvis.

Cartooning lost another one when David Gildersleeve died on Sunday. In this snapshot from a 48-hour graduate review meeting at the Savannah College of Art & Design's Sequential Art department were my three committee members Mark Kneese, Ted Stearn (who also died earlier this year) and David. He would serve as my faculty advisor and chair again when I returned eight years later in 2011 to tie everything off/clean up my mess (ie research + write the thesis paper).

The tall, ponytailed Texan overall taught about a third of the classes I took over my time down in Georgia. Par for the course he would hand out scripts for assignments that required all sorts of outings to local community resources. Naturally most of them would somehow dovetail with his passion with muscle cars, or boats, trains and animals.This would in turn led to many a museum excursion, and our little band of fellow students would find ourselves following the leader from exploring the tombstones of Bonaventure cemetery (where he is be buried next week), to pitchers of PBR at a bowling alley – all in pursuit of the story.

Being on-site and making live sketches in conjunction with photo-reference is one of David’s hallmark attributes I’ve incorporated into my own classroom exercises. Another carryover is the omnipresent yellow sticky-notes on the back of everything I drew. In fact for the past forty-odd semesters whenever I use examples from my graduate work to show to my own students, every time a page is turned over in the portfolio show & tell, there’s another note to remind me. Same with the narration jotted down on the assignment overlays - still another aspect I admired and attempt to emulate: he paid attention to the details.

Plus he was just so nice – never heard him ever get angry - but could be tough and call you out when and where you could improve. I can hear his voice in the background each time I critique a page of student comic art, and it echoes even on my own work still to this day. For example, there’s not one time that I’ve ever drawn a tire without an immediate reflexive adjustment to account for the vehicle’s weight which has a subtle effect on the completely round perfect circle that I’d spent my whole artistic life drawing wrong until David dinged me on it. And don’t get me started on the pressure to get the details right when it came to automobiles. Also I’m not positive but pretty sure we must of had the only two pickup trucks in the entire city of Savannah, definitely at the college.

Same goes with all the subtle, subconscious cues employed by the artist - tricks of the trade he taught - to guide a viewer’s eye across a page: simple details such as re-orienting the direction of a character so as to ease the eyeballs to the next panel or encourage the turning of a page. I would argue with his compositional suggestions until finally admitting his was a much better way. And after the review Dave was always ready for a pint down the road at the local brewpub where he would share more insight and experience.

When I recently heard he was in hospice, I thought about mailing off a pack of recent stuff to cheer him up, as he made me feel so welcome way back when I was so far from home in a strange new land. Waited too long, and a week later it was too late. Just wanted to write a note here for his family and loved ones to know that his easy laugh and ready smile was big enough to stretch from Georgia all the way up to Alaska, and his lessons will live on.

Peace