Pirates of the City of Brotherly Love

"Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah From Slave Ship to Pirate Ship" opened at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute last night. Greg Manchess created eight paintings in ten weeks for this National Geographic exhibit, most of which had one to two dozen figures in it. Crazy. I wrote a bit about the exhibit when it's opened in Cincinnati last year, but this was the first time I got to see it in the flesh. It recounts a life of a pirate ship salvaged off the shore of Cape Cod a few years back. Yes I am biased, but I have to say, the paintings go to a long way tell the story of the ship and it's crew in a way that the artifacts alone could not. Cutlasses are cool, but, you know, a bit tough to relate to. Quite a number of these paintings have made their way into the Communication Arts, Society of Illustrators, and Spectrum.

Throughout the opening we spent a bit of time talking to unreal pirates. A stage fighting group, Shadow Combat, was hired to add some color to the event. It took no time at all to realize that we had been to a number of the same conventions and had some friends in common. A fun bunch. I'm sorry I'll miss their show at tonight's public opening. (Damn this job o' mine!)

Next stop for the exhibit is Chicago's Field Museum. I am officially psyched, I've never been to the Field.