Space Monkey, an Interview with Charlie Rose and Dan Peeler

Posted by: annaholler on July 14th, 2009

spacemonkeyblue Laura the Mum has been diligently working towards the launch of an amazing project. Newly, she’s become the marketing director for a division of Peeler-Rose Productions called Space Monkey Art.

Space Monkey Art designs quality art for your children’s spaces. The founding father’s of Space Monkey, Dan Peeler and Charlie Rose are two incredibly interesting fellows. Recently I was able to ask them both a few questions about their art and business.

First, I asked the Peeler-Rose team to talk a moment about the concept of Space Monkey. Dan says,

Space Monkey is an ever-changing and growing gallery of wall art for children’s rooms and facilities that cater to children’s needs. All the art is designed especially for this site. We are animators and character designers who would love to see children and their parents have the opportunity to choose a new line of decorator art inspired by our years of experience with styles of fun characters.

Also, most of us are already familiar with Rose and Peelers work. Dan tells us about their characters and book illustrations.

We have animated and done character design work for Sesame Street, The Disney Channel, Warner Bros, Chuck E. Cheese, PBS, The Learning Channel, and many other respected names in the corporate world. To name a few (characters), we illustrated Bugs Bunny in Cartoonland, a number of “talking” children’s books, including A Cat Named Bob and The Boy who Became a Frog, a line of story and activity books based on our PBS puppet series, Swamp Critters of Lost Lagoon, and book versions of several TV specials we animated, including the Disney Channel’s Easter Egg Morning. In totality we’ve illustrated and/or written over 25 children’s books.

What is the most fullfilling project you’ve worked on?

Space Monkey probably will be. A lot of the PBS-related shows have been fulfilling too, since we are heavily into children’s quality education. It’s also always exciting to work on a project featuring a classic character like Daffy Duck or produce something for Disney. Singling out one project is difficult since we enjoy various elements of so many of them.

Are you willing to make children’s art that is custom-made and tailored to a client’s imagination?

This is what we have done successfully for very discriminating corporate clients for many years; individuals as well. Anything can be accomplished within reasonable deadline situations.

What is your interest in Tiki/ Polynesian Pop culture?

We have an admiration for many design elements of a broad range of “retro”-art, and have a special interest in the striking illustrations, carvings and legends of the tiki, which we adapt to all sorts of situations both in and out of the Polynesian culture. We love to research and render the infinite varieties of tikis.

How does the religion you practice inspire/affect your art?

For many years, we have created, written, designed and illustrated all the curriculum we present in our Children’s Church program. Much of it, including several volumes of The Alphabet Bible, are being marketed for publication. All our curriculum is gender balanced and inclusive; everyone has a role model with whom to identify. Along with the famous David and Moses stories, children also learn about Huldah, Miriam, Joanna and dozens of other characters other Bible curriculum and story books ignore.

As the climate in America changes, both politically and economically, how does your art evolve to meet the interests and needs of our culture?

We primarily want to explore ways for all people of all economic levels to be able to afford the highest quality art for their children, art that will inspire them to adapt positive outlooks and make some cultural changes themselves in the future. The irony about children’s art is that no matter how original we like to be, children’s themes such as outer space and dinosaurs, cats, dogs and rag dolls seem to have been around a long time. The best children’s illustrations are about exploration and adventure; which is really all about learning.

Go over to Space Monkey to see what’s available now!

Bookmark It