Art Clokey

Art Clokey

Arthur "Art" Clokey (October 12, 1921 – January 8, 2010) was an American pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California.

After the Gumbasia project, Art Clokey and his wife Ruth came up with the clay character Gumby. Gumby and his horse Pokey became a familiar presence on American television; they had their start in the Howdy Doody Show, and later got their own series The Adventures of Gumby. The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when American actor and comedian Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live. In the 1990s Gumby: The Movie was released, sparking even more interest.

Clokey's second most famous production is the duo of Davey and Goliath, funded by the Lutheran Church in America.