Andy Virgil

Andy Virgil was my uncle... unfortunately, he died in 1980." Andrea Luciano, Andy Virgil's niece, wrote those words to me in an email message last August 31. Just three weeks earlier, on August 0...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/introduction.html

When Anita Dorne first laid eyes on a young man who came looking for a rep at Phil Rahl Studios, she had no idea that she was looking at love. The talented, determined young man before her was An...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-1-autumn-in-new-york.html

Andy Virgil was born Andrew Virgil Calafatello in January 1925 in New York City to Sicilian immigrant parents. He was the middle child of three. His mother, Josephine, a highly skilled seamstress...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-2-dreamer.html

What was some of the preparation Andy entered the illustration world with? In those days when he was copying Rembrandts at the Met, he went about it as closely as he could to approximate the tec...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-3-studios.html

Andy was "weaned" on so many of the great names in illustration -- and even beyond. He admired the work of Ben Shahn who offered a kind of bridge from the fine arts to the commercial. I see that...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-4-name-droppings.html

The rhythm of our lives altered just as we were ready to move late that spring to our New Jersey home. Though we had smoothly managed all the financing by using our carefully collected savings, t...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-5-something-wrong.html

His name was Al Landau. He, along with his wife Sheila, and his mother ran Trans-World Features Syndicate with offices in New York, London and Paris. He invited Andy and me to join him one Friday...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-6-to-london-to-london.html

Those 3 weeks in London 1964 (with the prospect of work for Andy) were the one respite in years that let us live and be joyful as we had always expected our life together to be -- even though we ...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/part-7-pyrrhic-victory.html

Photos I took of Andy in Kinnelon in the early 1960s. Jenny took this last photograph of Andy in September 1980, two months before his death. Studying it now, after all I have just writte...

http://todaysinspiration-andyvirgil.blogspot.com/2007/02/andy-virgil-epilogue.html