Enchanted Drawings: A Pensacola Caricature Artist Meets Animation History at the Pensacola Museum of Art
- Kathy Buskett
- Aug 10
- 10 min read
This was no ordinary art exhibit.
It was such a cool exhibit that I invited my 17-year-old son and his friend to come with me…
and they actually did. What on earth could possibly convince two teenage boys to willingly come to an art museum opening?
It wasn’t my cartoon-style caricatures that I was there to draw, I’ll tell you that. My son has been drawn by me approximately a million times already.
Let me give you a hint:
The exhibition was called Enchanted Drawings: The Magic of Animation.
So let’s back up.
I was really excited when I got an email from Caitlin Rhea, Curator of Education and Programming for the Pensacola Museum of Art, asking if I was available to draw caricatures at the opening of an exhibit.
I love museums. In addition to being a live caricature artist for weddings, parties and corporate events, I’m also an art educator and homeschooler, so we go to a LOT of museums. I’ve been to the Pensacola Museum of Art many times with my kids, so I was really looking forward to working with them.
When I got there, Caitlin greeted me, along with Nick Croghan, the museum director. They were running around doing all the important behind-the-scenes, last-minute setup stuff.
But honestly, I could barely keep my eyes off the walls.
An Animation Collection 40 Years in the Making
Once I got set up, I went exploring.
The Pensacola Museum of Art is a two-story museum housed in a historic building that used to be a jail. You can still see some of the old cell windows as you tour the building and browse through the art! These days, fortunately, the artwork is the only thing getting framed.
(Oof. So sorry)
It’s a smallish building, but it’s packed with interesting exhibits and absolutely worth a look-see. (If you go, don’t forget there’s an upstairs!)
And this particular exhibit was right up my alley. There were walls full of original animation drawings and production cels from classic cartoons. Bugs Bunny. Betty Boop. Pinocchio. There were sketches showing the process of creating animation, cartoons playing on screens, and even historic devices that showed how artists created the illusion of movement long before computers came along.
But then I found an entire section devoted to Chuck Jones. That was my favorite part.
And that’s when I met Vicki Adcox.
Vicki and her husband, Gerald, are the collectors who generously loaned part of their collection for the exhibit.
According to an article in Pensacola’s Downtown Crowd, Gerald and Vicki have been collecting animation art for more than 40 years. Their collection has grown to roughly 70 original drawings, production cels and lithographs. And apparently it all started almost by accident.
Gerald and Vicki were visiting Chicago in 1985 when they came across animation art in a shopping mall. Gerald bought a couple of pieces. And, well… he got hooked.
Forty years later, part of their collection was hanging in an art museum. (Vicki told me it was really difficult to choose which pieces to include as they had at least twice as many pieces at home!)
As an artist who has been known to get a little carried away with art supplies, I completely understand (we observe and we don't judge).
Then Vicki Told Me About Chuck Jones
This was the part that was the most interesting to me. Gerald didn’t just collect the work of legendary animator Chuck Jones. He actually knew him.
If you grew up watching Looney Tunes, you know Chuck Jones’s work even if you don’t recognize his name. He was behind some of the most iconic characters and cartoons of the era, including Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Marvin the Martian and Pepé Le Pew. He also directed the animated classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a wonderfully weird run of Tom and Jerry cartoons in the ’60s, and later films and specials like The Phantom Tollbooth and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
In fact, I remember watching some of those cartoons when I couldn’t have been more than about six years old and recognizing that they had been drawn by the same person just from the art style.
I didn't know anything about animation or art direction. I was six.
I just knew.
Apparently the art nerd thing started early. 😂
I have been a Chuck Jones fangirl for about half a century now. (OMG 💀 me now.)
Vicki told me about Gerald’s friendship with him and about one particular series of Chuck Jones artwork that Gerald loved. Jones had created these wonderfully ridiculous Looney Tunes parodies of famous works of art.
For example, there was a parody of Edvard Munch’s The Scream featuring Elmer Fudd.
Its title? The Scweam.
It was a scream. 😂 (Sorry again)
There were Looney Tunes takes on Van Gogh, and even The Persistence of Carrots, inspired by Salvador Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory.
Gerald told Chuck that he hoped to someday own one of each piece in that particular series.
Chuck apparently laughed and told him it might take years for him to complete them all.
But Gerald was patient. And eventually, Chuck made it happen.
I love hearing behind-the-scenes stories like that, especially when they’re about one of my own artistic heroes. Add fine art to the mix, and it’s the most screwball combination I’ve ever heard of. Right up my alley.
I have an AA in fine art AND I’m a professional caricaturist. Who knew?!?
I Almost Became an Animator
I personally LOVE animation. In fact, before I became a live caricature artist, I wanted to be an animator. Eventually, however, I came to a rather important realization:
I couldn’t sit alone in a little room drawing all day without interacting with people.
I tried it in school. It was like jail.
I have ADHD. I need to move. I need to talk to people. And above all, I need to have FUN while I work. That was not going to work. So instead, I became a live caricature artist.
And here I was, all these years later, sitting in a jail cell drawing cartoons.
I think we’ve come full circle, folks. 😂
So no I didn’t become an animator, though I’ve met more than a few in my travels.
But artists like Chuck Jones absolutely shaped me growing up. Saturday morning cartoons were a huge part of my childhood. That expressive, funny style of drawing helped influence what I eventually became as an artist myself. (You might even get lucky and hear me do an impression or two.)
So there was something pretty special about standing inside the Pensacola Museum of Art, surrounded by original animation artwork from artists I had admired since childhood, while being there because someone had hired me to draw.
And then I got an idea.
What If I Drew Everyone as a Cartoon Character?
I was already there to draw caricatures, but with all of this animation surrounding me, drawing people normally seemed like a wasted opportunity.
So I started asking people:
What cartoon character do you want to be?
People got REALLY creative with it.
I drew people as Elmer Fudd, Betty Boop and all kinds of classic characters.
My own son and his friend chose Waluigi and Wario from the Nintendo universe.
Yes, my son — the one who has already been drawn approximately a million times.
Apparently it still doesn’t get old.
Drawing cartoon bodies for themed events is one of my specialties and one of the things that keeps this job fresh for me. Give me a theme and I’ll run with it.
And at an animation exhibit? Come on. How could I not?
It was one of those genuinely fun, creative nights where everybody got into the theme. The person sitting in my chair got to choose what they wanted to become, while everyone standing around got to watch it happen. It was a perfect fit for the exhibit.
And when the evening was over, I went home thinking that was the end of
the story.
And Then the Museum Called Me Again
I actually wrote most of this article after the opening amd then I never published it.
Which, for once, turned out to be a good thing. Because a few weeks before the exhibit was scheduled to end, the Pensacola Museum of Art emailed me again.
They were planning Animation Celebration: After Hours at the Pensacola Museum of Art, a special finale celebration and fundraiser.
And they wanted me to come back and draw caricatures again.
But of course!
The exhibit itself doesn’t close until September 6, but with Labor Day and the beginning of the school year approaching, the museum decided to hold its big finale celebration a little early.
I didn’t know when I walked into the museum for opening night that I would eventually get to be part of both ends of the celebration. I drew caricatures at the opening. And then I got to come back and draw them again at the finale.
The Second Time Was Different
Coming back the second time felt different.
I knew some of the people now. I met more of the people involved with the museum, including several board members and supporters, and had a chance to actually talk to people instead of simply coming in, doing my job and leaving.
The finale was also a fundraiser for the museum, and from what I understand, they did very well.
There were some pretty nice prizes donated for the fundraiser, too. I actually ended up drawing one of the people who had contributed a weekend getaway as one of the prizes.
That’s one of my favorite things about drawing live caricatures.
I get people in my chair for a few minutes at a time, and while I’m drawing them, we talk.
You learn some interesting things about people that way.
Spirited Away
As I was setting up, I heard a familiar refrain. Melancholy, but also incredibly beautiful.
Wait a minute. I know that music.
(Click to hear it)
I poked my head around the corner and said, “Studio Ghibli?”
The startled young man at the piano looked up and smiled.
“You recognized it!” he said, clearly pleased.
It was a piece from Spirited Away. We talked for a few minutes, and I asked for his business card. He didn’t have one, so naturally I fussed at him about that—completely in fun—before going back to finish setting up.
A little later, after I started drawing, a gentleman sat down in my chair and told me he was the person who had brought the pianist in for the event. We ended up having a long conversation about music, and I learned that he runs a band himself.
I told him that I’m also a pianist and singer and asked if he happened to need a female vocalist. Unfortunately, he already had one.
Darn it.
His picture is below. Wish I could remember his name, if you know it let me know!
Once again, things were coming full circle in the most unexpected way.
MEETING IN-TERESTING PEOPLE
I also got to spend some time talking with Anna, who works at the museum’s front desk.
She showed me some caricatures she’d had drawn years ago at Busch Gardens.
And they were pretty good! Naturally, I told her it was about time she got an update. She agreed.
There’s just one problem. She wants her whole family to get caricatures together, and she hasn’t managed to make that happen yet. So she still hasn’t sat in my chair. Fair enough, Anna. Next time. And hopefully bring the family.
See? Now they HAVE to have me back 😂 Sorry I didnt get a shot of you Anna!
I also Met many other fine folks including Steve Barber, publisher of local magazines Faces and Scarlett, and who admitted he was stalking me online! But he just wanted to hire me for an event, so it's all good. 😉
Sometimes the Best Part of an Event
Isn’t the Event
This is one of the things I’ve come to appreciate more and more about what I do.
Yes, I draw people. But I also meet people. A LOT of people.
I may be hired because someone wants entertainment for an event, but by the time I leave, I’ve usually heard stories, learned something I didn’t know, made new connections and occasionally made some new friends.
This event was especially good for that.
I met artists, museum supporters, donors and people serving on the board. I talked to people who genuinely care about keeping art and cultural experiences like this available in Pensacola.
In fact, I enjoyed meeting everyone so much that I’m seriously considering getting more involved with the museum myself. That wasn’t something I was thinking about when Caitlin first emailed me and asked if I was available to draw caricatures.
Funny how one opportunity can lead to another one you never expected.
Everything in It Makes You Smile
Gerald Adcox said something in his interview with Pensacola’s Downtown Crowd that pretty much sums up the entire exhibit:
“It’s just a happy exhibit. It brings people back to their childhood. Everything in it makes you smile.”
Yep. That’s exactly what it does.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that’s probably why caricatures fit so naturally into this particular exhibit.
Animation and caricature share some of the same DNA.
Both exaggerate. Both simplify. Both take something recognizable and push it just far enough to make it funnier, more expressive and somehow even more itself.
That’s certainly what Chuck Jones did.
His characters weren’t subtle.
A coyote can fall off a cliff, get flattened by a boulder, blow himself up with his own Acme product and come right back five seconds later to try again.
And somehow we recognize a little bit of ourselves in him.
Maybe more than we’d like to admit.
Artists like Chuck Jones created characters people are still laughing at generations later.
Gerald and Vicki Adcox spent more than four decades collecting and preserving pieces of that history.
The Pensacola Museum of Art gave the rest of us an opportunity to see it.
And for two nights — at the opening and at the finale celebration — I got to sit right in the middle of it and draw people live.
For an artist who grew up loving cartoons and once thought she might become an animator herself, that’s a pretty sweet gig.
You Can Still See Enchanted Drawings
And if you’re reading this before September 6, there’s still time to see it for yourself.
Even though the big Animation Celebration fundraiser has already happened, Enchanted Drawings: The Magic of Animation remains on display at the Pensacola Museum of Art through September 6, 2026.
So if you grew up with Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop and Looney Tunes — or you’re interested in animation, art history, Chuck Jones, Disney or just really cool original artwork — go see it while you still can.
And yes.
You can absolutely bring your teenager.
Apparently this is one art exhibit they’ll willingly attend.
That’s all, Folks!
Learn More
You can learn more about Enchanted Drawings: The Magic of Animation through the Pensacola Museum of Art, and you can also see the museum’s original opening reception announcement featuring me as the live caricature artist.
Official Enchanted Drawings exhibition page: https://pensacolamuseum.org/art/enchanted-drawings-themagicofanimation/
Pensacola Museum of Art opening reception page: https://pensacolamuseum.org/event/opening-reception-enchanted-drawings/
Source: Morgan Cole, “Enchanted Drawings: Where Animation History Comes to Life,” Pensacola’s Downtown Crowd, August 2026.
About Kathy Buskett, Pensacola Caricature Artist
Kathy Buskett is a professional live caricature artist with 27 years of experience drawing at museums, weddings, corporate events, festivals and celebrations. Known for fast, flattering caricatures and her love of a good theme, Kathy turns live drawing into part of the entertainment.
Planning an event where ordinary entertainment just won’t do?
Let’s draw a crowd.
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