Tour Details 
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| Rip Squeak | |
| San Francisco, California 94133 | |
| Details: Rip Squeak Rip Squeak is a character who's greatest desire in life is to become a great adventurer. He is anxious to learn and experience new things. He has an innate cleverness and is therefore a good problem solver, a skill that comes in very handy as the stories progress. Rip is also very loyal to his family and friends and very protective of his little sister Jesse. He is compassionate and introspective, a staunch supporter of right over wrong. From the time that Rip and Jesse meet Abbey and Euripides, Rip goes from a somewhat quiet life, with only his little sister, his parents, and his imagination to keep him company, to an extraordinary life full of adventure and discovery. Rip had once thought of himself as cautiously curious, but as he becomes better acquainted with his friends he becomes more outgoing and daring doing things that he would never have expected he'd do. Leonard Filgate - Artist & Illustrator For nearly 40 years, Leonard Filgate has worked as a professional artist. His career began, when at the age of 16, he sold his first painting. He is self-taught, with no formal art training. The majority of his art education came from life experiences, his own studies of the great masters, and his unwavering determination and diligence to learn and succeed. Leonard Filgate grew up near the ocean in San Francisco, California. He spent many childhood hours roaming the beaches and parks with his friends, playing a variety of sports, and drawing and painting alone in his room. After high school, Leonard joined the United States Merchant Marine and continued his art studies through observation while traveling throughout Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and the Mediterranean. Shoreside, he lived in both San Francisco and New York City. After five years at sea, he left the Merchant Service and dedicated all his energies to his own personal study of art. In 1977, Leonard met Susan Yost. Two years later, she became his wife and collaborator on many artistic endeavors, which eventually led to the creation of Rip Squeak & Friends. Before starting on the Rip Squeak project in 1997, Leonard had sold numerous paintings to individuals, including commissioned work. He exhibited in many galleries and in shows throughout the United States and occasionally taught art privately and in schools. He completed several commissioned paintings for the United States Navy, one of which became a limited edition print. He worked on props for a Warner Bros. Television pilot and created storyboards and backdrops for commercial video and television studios. After the birth of his daughter in 1984, he developed an interest in children's book illustrations and created imagery for his wife's stories. The subjects of Leonard's paintings have included marine art, fantasy art, landscapes, and cityscapes, toy still-life paintings, theatrical backdrops, and reproductions of traditional Japanese screens. Prints and originals of Leonard's Rip Squeak & Friends illustrations have been sold worldwide through over fifty galleries which have carried his work. He was the featured illustrator at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2003, has had work in a traveling exhibition of children's book illustrators who's books promotes tolerance (organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance and Every Picture Tells a Story in Los Angeles), and in 2005, was honored with a one-man show at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington, Delaware. Creating art with a childhood theme and whimsy has brought Leonard great pleasure. He and his wife, Susan, developed Rip Squeak & Friends out of a need to create characters that would express Leonard's philosophy that art should imitate the best life has to offer, whether it be real or from somewhere deep within the imagination. His desire and intentions are simple: that his art makes the viewer smile and feel good. Susan Yost-Filgate Author Author of the RIP SQUEAK stories, Susan Yost-Filgate was born and raised in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. She long had a love of art and literature and spent her childhood creating short stories, poetry, drawing, painting, and making things from fabric, paper, and found materials. During and after high school, Susan traveled around the northeastern US, made many trips to eastern Canada and traveled throughout Europe. She developed a deep love of travel, literature, history and anthropology, but always maintained her greatest interest in the visual arts. In 1976, Susan received a bachelor's degree in art education from the Pennsylvania State University. She had a special concentration in museum education. Her main creative effort during those years was in soft sculpture; however, she also studied painting under the late Harold Altman and others. Soon after completing college, Susan traveled to San Francisco in search of a new adventure. While there, she met her future husband, Leonard Filgate and found work with Determined Productions, Inc. (Determined had 80% of the rights for Charles Schulz' PEANUTS characters as well as other licensed properties.) Susan gained a lot of insight into the world of publishing, licensing, and products for children from this experience. After the birth of their daughter in 1984, Susan began focusing on creating stories and products for children. She had long felt that her husband's incredible artistic talent could be directed to illustration for children. She has been focused on the RIP SQUEAK project since 1999. Before 1998, Susan had worked as an art teacher, a museum docent, a graphic designer, and a paralegal. She had been very involved in her daughter's education, serving on parent/teacher boards for three of four schools. She had also started both visual and performing arts programs in her daughter's elementary school. Getting along despite differences is a value Susan feels strongly about including in the RIP SQUEAK® stories. At the same time, she likes to create stories that have a sense of adventure - adventure that, if seen through the eyes of young children, could be found in your own backyard and with your best friends once you add a healthy dose of imagination and chance encounters. Susan works closely with Leonard on this project, writing and editing the stories, offering her ideas and suggestions for the book illustrations, and designing the layout of the books. Leonard and Susan were married in San Francisco in 1979. Their daughter Jessica was born in 1984 and has been their biggest inspiration. The Filgates live and work in a wonderful old house in California's Central Valley. Fortunately for them, their adult daughter has chosen to live nearby. |
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| Last Tour Update: May 18, 2012 |
