Exclusive Interview by Art

TODD WHITE AT ROBERT BRUNO GALLERY (FORMALLY JOIN STINSON FINE ART) AND THE LOUISIANA CHILDREN'S MUSEUM.

"Are you ready kids?...Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? SpongeBob SquarePants - Absorbent and yellow and porous is he! SpongeBob SquarePants! If nautical nonsense be something you wish, then drop on the desk and flop like a fish!

If you don't recognize the previous lines of verse, then it's safe to say you don't have little kids. SpongeBob is the genius postmodern Nickelodeon cartoon to which my children and I are addicted. SpongeBob, the nerdy undersea straight man, plus Squidward, Mr.Krabs and all of his scuttling little friends were originally drawn by 34 year old Texan born artist Todd White, who's rags-to relative riches bio goes like this: 20 something, high school art start White is giving tennis lessons, where he meets a lady who knows a guy at a Los Angeles cartoon studio who hires him as a studio gofer; a position he players into a clean-up artist gig, which eventually turns into a job as head cartoonist for a quirky toon (SpongeBob) that eventually goes global.

But White didn't want to ink cartoons forever, so after a few years of drawing, he tosses his hate into the fine art ring, finding that Hollywood taste-makers like Vin Diesel bought his canvasses like hot cakes.

White's paintings feature sophisticated cocktail party scenes rendered in a modernist melange of styles from Modigliani to Max Beckmann (the Rat Pack meets Picasso is White's favourite description).  They remind me of those celebrity bar room murals from the 1950s, for which I have a soft spot.  Although White's crowd-pleasing painting may never end you up in the pages of Art in America, who cares.  HES THE GUY WHO DREW SPONGEBOB! And he'll be drawing cartoons and signing autographs from 11 a.m. to noon on Saturday at the Louisiana Children's Museum