Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 141

D18 FanFare Everyday Hero Everyday Hero is a weekly promotional feature that celebrates our good neighbors 2002 and the "extraordinary" things that 30, "ordinary" people do! JUNE This Sunday in the Main Section 'AVONNS A Supported By: ADELPHI NEWSDAY, MK4712X182 Everyday Hero is a promotional feature www.adelphi.edu produced UNIVERSITY by Newsday Marketing and Public Affairs Departments. MK-XXI MEETING MITCHELL ART from D17 locate the action at the center of the canvas, where it would gradually taper off into mostly white outer edges. Despite the artist's restraint and contemplation, they look organic, not consciously composed. But in 1969 Mitchell relocated from Paris to the lushly verdant village of Claude Monet's home from 1878 to 1881. The change of scene played itself out in increasingly structured paintings that were also considerably more French.

A gallery full of brilliant pictures documents the breakthrough she achieved that year in terms of both color and composition. "Sunflower III," for instance, is an idiosyncratic take on one of Pierre Bonnard's views out a window: A sky-blue rectangle marks the painting's upper left hand corner like a patch of daylight. Mitchell appropriated the French master's exquisite surfaces and rich colors creamy enough to lick right off the canvas. The right half of the picture is a curtain of white, drawn over a bed of fleshy colors that strain against the veil. The effect is seductive, a play of mystery and suggestion that breaks down in the center, where a riot of purple colors reveals the painting's hot core.

At the other end of this spectacular gallery, "Salut Sally" (1970) records a more somber time of day, as the POWERPUFF GIRLS POWERPUFF from D13 tionally hip, pop phenomena, the Girls gay audience. The June 2002 issue of The lists the new Powerpuff Girls movie in a movie preview article titled "Where the Series creator Craig McCracken never that his Girls would become so big. As an student at California Institute for the Arts, ed a seven-minute film that formed the draft of "The Powerpuff "I was just having fun trying to make the cartoon I wish that I had watched as a kid," said in a telephone interview. He mentioned and Bullwinkle" and "Underdog" as precursors animated series. "But the live-action 1960s 'Batman' series is my No.

1 influence." Like "The Powerpuff Girls," he says, 'Batman' worked for kids on an action and story level and worked for adults on a humor level." Cartoon Network senior vice president Mike Lazzo recalls some problems with the cartoon when it was first shown to test audiences. "Craig's student film was drenched in irony, and kids didn't get it." Some people also complained that the girls didn't have fingers. "That was a very big hang-up," Lazzo says. Based on feedback from Lazzo and others, McCracken put more emphasis on the Girls' three distinctive personalities. Blossom became the sensible leader, Buttercup the quick-to-anger fighting tomboy and Bubbles the sweet, simple blonde.

"Craig did a wonderful job emphasizing the characters and developing compelling stories," says Lazzo. But the Girls still don't have fin- have found a Advocate summer Gays Are." imagined animation he creatfirst rough kind of McCracken "Rocky to his sky still window lamplight is feathered The "Grande homage to nied the liked Monet," impossible when looking backgrounds drops of tary, is to tional intensity surfaces. She painted 1982, and they of emotions: we can't. The Mitchell's harmonizes view through Art, 945 Madison exhibition hours visit www.whitney.org. Plato aside, empowering the world.

She fighting "Heroes and to it about 17 Given the some worries Powerpuff movie is often erty. I don't say, 'I am don't need to tell a real you may not 'Over and over I hear people describe themselves, "I'm like Blossom," or "My wife is just like Buttercup." The characters have become truly Craig McCracken, "Powerpuff Girls" creator gers. McCracken agrees that the Girls' characters are the engine that drives the show and its popularity. "Over and over I hear people describe themselves, 'I'm like or 'My wife is just like The characters have become truly iconic." To some, the Powerpuff Girls' archetypal powers transcend mere popular culture. Author and Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis enjoys watching the cartoon with his 5-year-old daughter, Melody.

He also has developed a profoundly outlandish theory about the series. "It's all based on 'Plato's DeRogatis explained in a phone interview. "Blossom is the leader, the aristocrat class. Buttercup represents the warrior class and Bubbles is the put-upon shopkeeper role. Plato said you need a balance between these three to have a functioning society." contained by the geometric confines of a darkens to a midnight hue and golden refracted around the room in a series of strokes.

Suite" (1983) pays direct Monet, though Mitchell obstinately deImpressionist's importance. "I never much she said in the mid-1980s. But it's not to think of the master's water lilies at Mitchell's floral hues, verdant and six-inch strokes like magnified moisture. The reference, however involunMonet in his old age, and a hushed emolies behind Mitchell's decorative them soon after her sister's death in invite us to try teasing apart the tangle rage, exuberance, hope and misery. But essence of abstraction is ambiguity.

In work, contradictions quiver and depression with joy. "The Paintings of Joan Mitchell" is on Sept. 29 at the Whitney Museum of American Ave. at 75th Street, Manhattan. For and admission prices, call 800-WHITNEY, or DeRogatis appreciates the cartoon's effect on his daughter.

"She wants to save runs around the house shouting, I'm And both dad and daughter love the Villains" CD. "It's brilliant. We've listened million times." marketing onslaught, McCracken has about the new film's contributing to overexposure. "I have always felt that a the nail in the coffin of a major propwant people to watch this movie and done with the Powerpuff Girls, and I watch them ever We want to story and explore different emotions that have experienced in the series, so people will say, 'Hey, I didn't expect 29 McCracken sees the movie as a prequel. "It's the story of how the realized their pow- 8 girls came to be, ers and the events that motivated them to become superheroes and to use their powers for good." It's also very much the story of the archvillain, Mojo Jojo.

For the uninitiated, he's an absurdly articulate lab monkey gone very bad, a creature with a brain so large it has to be hidden under a turban. Lazzo admits that the movie is darker in tone than the typical "Powerpuff Girls" episode, but not more violent. In fact, folks from the Cartoon Network avoid the word. They prefer the term "action." "It doesn't go beyond anything on the television show, where you see something destroyed every 11 Lazzo quips. McCracken doesn't think the movie is "too scary" for kids.

"But I wanted to make the villain seem like a real threat. A lot of film villains just get watered down. You need to realize heroism and realize that they have done good and stopped evil. You need that edge to make the story work." The Motion Picture Association of America has given "The Powerpuff Girl Movie" a PG rating, citing its "nonstop frenetic animated action." Armed with test data indicating that 56 percent of Powerpuff viewers are male, Lazzo says he felt comfortable predicting that a "surprising number of boys will go see a movie with the word 'girls' in it." All the same, he can understand how some young viewers may have trepidation. "We need to find young girls to accompany those boys to the movie," he says jokingly.

"We have to sell this as the perfect date movie for 7-year-olds!" Kevin McDonough is a freelance writer..