pixie peeps

Here's a detail from the piece that is in the Maine Illustrators Collective's "Working Artists Show" at the Kennebunk Free Library. Man, that is a lovely library. When delivering my art, we got there a bit before it opened. We enjoyed taking in the magnificent entrance, complete with cheery cafe umbrellas outside and a bronze statue of kids reading on a bench.



There is a stellar permanent collection of Maine children's book art that includes familiar greats like Kevin Hawkes, Melissa Sweet, Charlotte Agell, Lisa Jahn-Clough, Judith Hunt, Wade Zahares, Holly Berry, Matt Tavares, and the list goes on.



The Working Artists Show is hanging in Hank's Room, a separate gallery space downstairs off the Youth section. The reception will be this Wednesday, from 4:30 - 7:30, so do stop in!

The really cool find was the fairy garden tucked into the back yard of the library. We are pixie people, so this discovery made our day.



It was chock full of every sort of pixie. Like the ones that love a good fairy tale.



And those cool blue types.



And these peeps having tiny tea....



reminded me of a fairy I drew for Maddie's Magical
Ride by island author Jeanann Alves. This one's sittin' pretty on an urchin cushion while her fairy horse flies on over. You have to read the book....



Here's our own pixie a few years ago after sewing her costume at the Peaks Island Fiber Arts Camp.



She never gets tired of drawing fairy fashions...



When you need a little sprinkle of magic in your day, swing over to the Kennebunk Free Library.



And check out the illustration show!

writers and wizards

What's on the top of my reading stack at the moment? "The Cutting" by island neighbor and debut author, James Hayman, is a graphic thriller set in Portland, Maine. I bought two copies at the Hayman's recent book launch party, one to give away. But Marty grabbed one and so we're feverishly reading the book at the same time. This pretty much never happens. He's ahead of me, and he better not spill any details. Be warned: you can't put this book down.

We knew Jim had been writing a book; who isn't these days? We rejoiced when he found an agent, then a two-book deal, and now publication. In their signature classy style, the Haymans threw a lovely party at the Bakery Building, where Jim's wife, Jeanne O'Toole Hayman, has a studio.



The crowd was quite a mix of artists, writers, and islanders, and perhaps a few surgeons. Not surprisingly, this was where I preferred to hang out, near Jeanne's gestural figure studies and encaustic tools.



The Haymans used to host life drawing sessions at their house. I give Jim credit for trying his hand at drawing the model. He said it was too distracting to have a naked female in the house while he was writing, considering it rude to walk through the session, so he simply joined in.

Perhaps it was all material for the writing. Coincidentally, the lead character's love interest is an artist.

Here's Jim signing books.



In fact, he has quite a schedule of readings and signings. He started at Longfellow Books last week. Tonight he is at the Borders in South Portland, Maine at 7 PM.

If you have a thing for thrillers, suspense, Portland, anatomy, or need a page-turner, get your own copy.

It would be no surprise if this book became a script. Congratulations, Jim!

Is it not amazing that stories are spun out of thin air? Mere words on a page filtered from the mind's eye. After many, many grueling drafts, of course.

Stories can have such power. In a leaping segue, consider what a certain story about wizard school has launched right here on Peaks Island. The Peaks Island Fiber Arts Camp began another season with a week of Wizard Camp. Our daughter came home with tales of finding magical rocks at the beach, hand-sewing a black robe, and making motion retardant slime. Here is a cabinet of curious potions, labeled such things as "pepol blood" and "fairy tears" and "orc blood."



They made brooms, stitched leather journals (for recording potion recipes and spells), made felted owls, crocheted amulets, and fashioned wands. All this concentrated handiwork happened in the morning, while afternoons were for rousing games of quidditch on the front lawn. Here campers are hunting for the snitch.



Our resident wizard brought home this pile of handmade things.



She's ready for a summer full of inventing magic, and we're hoping not to become toads.

working artists show

This original illustration will be part of an upcoming show:

The WORKING ARTISTS SHOW, organized by the Maine Illustrators' Collective, will be featuring art by many nationally known and internationally published artists at Kennebunk Free Library in Hank's Room, a gallery space, in Kennebunk, ME.

Show runs July 2nd-July 31st.

Artist's Reception is July 8th 4:30-7:30pm. The public is welcome.

This show, featuring professional, commercial artists was created to promote public awareness of an art form usually seen for a few fleeting moments in print or film. Most consumers are unaware of the background behind producing commercial art: the time, thought, and skill. Advertising art, design, and illustration, once considered less than fine art, is now highly collectible in print and original form, with some of the best commercial artists' work, such as Andy Warhol's, Norman Rockwell's, and N. C. Wyeth's, found in art museum collections around the world.

Commercial artists are disciplined and highly skilled artists doing the business of art; producing their contracted art while accommodating their own family's needs, dealing with tight budgets, constantly creating “new” and inspired work, learning new skills as digital demands and software continue to change, negotiating with clients, all the while meeting often impossible deadlines. These " invisible artists" rarely, if ever, show their work in original form to the public. Hidden by the limitations of reproduction the many tiny pen, pencil, and pastel strokes, brushwork, beautiful color blends on acid-free papers and boards are usually “hidden” away in flat files right after being scanned and printed.

I am in the marvelous company of these talented colleagues:

Andy J Smith
Gabe McPhail
Joel Zain Rivers
Nicole Fazio
Nancy Cooper Funk
Jessica Lynn Clark
Judith Hunt
Patricia Sharp SHARP DESIGN’S STUDIO & GALLERY Milbridge, Maine
Pat Wooldridge
Leticia Plate
Christia Siravo
Katie Diamond
Michael Boardman
Roz Davis
Helen Stevens
Wade Zahares

Come see a truly unique art show! Original art and prints will be for sale.
The Maine Illustrators' Collective (MEIC) is an informal collective of illustrators and designers meeting in Portland once a month to brain storm, critique new work, give support, share ideas, and offer advice on promoting each other's work. They also organize events, talks and shows.

Thanks to Judith Hunt for all the organizing!

summah at last

The daisies are in bloom, along with my daughter, who took this photo en route to my nephew's high school graduation. Tis the season of culminating events, completion, honors and awards. I was commissioned by the Peaks Island Elementary School's PTO to create a piece for Gayl Vail, retiring after 30 years of teaching, promoting literacy, and fostering good will and excellence at Portland's oldest school. Guided by fellow staffer and cousin Kathy Newell, I drew a portrait of the family's summer cottage. Named the Marion, it is an antique dwelling typical of Peaks Island's summer architecture. Peaks has a wonderful history of gathering families and these cottages hold dear memories of days gone by.

I worked from a few vintage photos provided by Kathy and also walked down and took a few of my own. Here it is in progress.



My daughter suggested I include Gayl's dog, Brady. Brady happens to be the sibling of our dog, both island mutts from the same litter. Here's the final piece before framing.



The piece was presented to Gayl at the fifth grade graduation, a truly special event for the island. The Peaks Island School spends a full 90 minutes graduating the fifth grade class, no matter how small. From piano recitals to students' offering essays on what it means to be an American to willing favorite erasers to younger classmates, this rite of passage makes everyone feel proud.



Hot on the heels of this event was Peaksfest, the annual celebration of island community. Now in it's eighth year, Marty is piling up
t-shirt collectibles. He somehow has become the de facto Peaksfest designer.



This year's design was influenced by Mexican cut paper art, Javanese shadow puppets, and the swell work of cousin-in-law Hugh, who we hope will visit this week!

I made a new pastel for the last group show at the Gem Gallery before the start of weekly summer shows. I titled this one, "Glow" and it features a favorite spot near Trefethen Beach, a delta of sea grass that captures my fascination.



On my way to the gallery for my shift, I spotted a few of the new recycle bins decorated by fellow artists. This one, by Tim Nihoff, graced the entrance to the Peaks Island Branch Library where an exhibit of laundry photos wafted in the breeze. Here we are happy hanging it all out to dry.




This one by Nancy Nash is a celebration of salvaging from all those walks on the beach. Lovely!



I enjoyed my shift at the Gem, as always a chance to meet new folks passing through, reconnect with summer art lovers back in their cottages, and SELL some art for anybody in the collective. I sold pieces by Norm Proulx and Jane Banquer, both participating in the first of this summer's Art Walks.
Unlike the well-established and city-funded Art Walks in Portland, the Peaks Art Walks are ad hoc happenings of a magical sort. Each one involves a different number of artists who open up their homes and studios as slices of their lives, not their gallery facades.

I stopped in at Norm and Jane's studio to tell them the news. They were open, but away at the Trek Across Maine, building biceps and raising funds for the American Lung Association. Friends were manning the space. This is Jane's area downstairs. It's no coincidence that as a printmaker and gardener, she works in a light-flooded studio overlooking flowers and draws them with a meticulous eye and delicate touch.



Norm paints upstairs, and is drawn to still lifes, architecture, and places of the imagination.



I ventured down the rain-slicked hill to the home of Jessica George and Cole Caswell. Jessica painted these signs as whimsical markers for establishments near and far.



In brave fashion, they hung their work on the side of the house, making the boldest statement about place and placement.



On the back porch, Cole had set up a handy outdoor darkroom for shooting tin type portraits.



Besides art, Peaksfest means bingo, skateboarding, pie-eating, golfcart and bike parades, fire boat tours, kayak races, and jumping off the dock. Even when the sun don't shine.



This is the kind of scene that inspired an illustration done recently for an imaginary book cover.



It is reminiscent of another book I made, egads, seven years ago. Seven Days of Daisy was done after taking a picture book class taught by Judy LaBrasca at Maine College of Art in 2002.



I took a simple idea, documenting a week of my daughter's playful moments, and fleshed out a picture book. Although I had two decades of editorial and corporate illustration under my belt, tackling the picture book format was all new. As Judy advised, it was like telling War and Peace in 32 pages. Visual complexity and only a few well-chosen sentences to carry a story. I made a little pencil dummy during the week-long class and went on in the next six months to do the entire book. I published 10 copies on my own printer, had them bound by a local bookmaker, and sent some out to publishers while giving the rest away.

After 10 rejections over the next year, I decided to strengthen my writing skills, completing a correspondence course with the Institute for Children's Literature.
I got busy teaching at MECA myself, and illustrating other books. The time is now to publish this one on a larger scale, with encouragement from Eleanor Morse and John Wetterau, who have both written and self-published with acclaim.

In between illustration assignments, I am revising some of the spreads and editing the text even more. Stay tuned! Summer release is imminent, I promise.

busy bookish bee

It's been a hectic couple of weeks, all revolving around books and bookmaking. There's moaning about the death of print, but the tangible satisfactions evoked by the simple turning of a page will not perish. Not in my world!

I had good news about Rickshaw Girl, a book that has brought me many connections and inspirations. The publisher sold translation rights in India! This doesn't mean much in the way of money for me, but more importantly, way more readers will become familiar with the story. Very cool.

This is the title page from the book.



I was also interviewed by the New York State Reading Association for the Charlotte Award, again about Rickshaw Girl. Stay tuned for the posting on their excellent blog about book creators.

Last week I was at King Middle School for a book making session with Marcia Salem's ELL class. These English Language Learner students have been studying marine life in Casco Bay. I helped them create accordion books featuring their drawings with pertinent questions and answers about their given sea critter. First session: construction. Cutting, folding, no blood, please! Here Marcia supervises some slicing.



Second session: making potato prints of their creature. This was an inky, chaotic, but fun mess. The idea was to make a repeatable image that could decorate the cover of the book, along with rubber stamping letters. Here are the ones that were done in session three:

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They made great use of design, stamping, collage, hand-lettering, and patterning. Great work!

Meanwhile, the zine workshop I did with some sixth grade teachers produced very inspired results. Many went into this with some trepidation: "I'm not an artist," several said. I am deaf to this excuse. I believe everybody has a creative well ready for tapping. We just need the time and space to do it. Sure enough, each of them produced a unique and compelling zine. Here's the collection:



Topics ranged from censorship to adoption, lyrical to poetic, graphic to subtle. They documented talent, domestic narratives, and field work. I came away completely thrilled. I hope they will find some purpose for zine-making in the classroom while identifying with students who are finding their voices.

I dashed back to the island for a spirited session of book making at my own table. I hosted Peaks Island's Girl Scout Troop 1977 as they made two books for their scout leaders. More glue sticks, rubber stamps, and fun papers.





No stoppin' girl power.

This binge of bookish creativity was capped by the news that Nicole d'Entremont's book has been published! Nicole taught the recent session of Sudden Fiction here on Peaks Island and I was privileged to be part of her class. Even better, she asked me to illustrate the jacket of a book she has been writing for many years.




Can't wait to read the book! Congratulations, Nicole!

meca in may

The spring semester at MECA came to it's perennially manic culmination. Even though I didn't teach this past semester, I participated in a critique panel, a workshop for incoming students, and reviews, keeping half an eye on things. It's a frantic time for students, finishing projects, papers, flipping out. It's a feast for viewers. The halls are alive with fresh work. I'm partial to wordplay, and this piece by Regis Biron says the most about being creative.



And I applaud direct methods, like this graphic mural by Drew Romeo.



Students are adept at playing with cliche and parody. It's a natural side effect of too many art history lectures. This painting by senior Mary Blaxland is a funny mash-up of cartoon and art icon.



Senior Michelle Testa exhibited a cunning take on gender branding in product design.



Senior Brendan Croasdale created a splashy wall of silk-screened posters. Ninjas meet vixens. Could be the next brand.



I'm drawn to anything that plays with the vision metaphor, like this buckle.



And how about this belt? Artists get too often cast as cerebral, when in fact we are hands-on workers. We pack many, many tools in our skill set, forging new ideas with any material you can imagine.



The MFA thesis exhibit is up now at the ICA gallery, always a must-see. I found this installation like an uncomfortable visit to anxiety. Darkened, with bottles and clear bags of fluid, it was saying something, not sure what. Water resources? Pollution? Viral samples? I like art that is non-direct, too.



Another installation hulked squarely in the middle of Portland's most spacious gallery. A dwelling made of stacked trunks, it conjured conflicting notions about travel and home. Titled "Themselves has been a gathering" by Tina Zagyva, it's an odd parallel to the installation currently at the PMA biennial, the "Hermit House" by Ethan Hayes-Chute. Both have constructed elaborate spaces meant to engage the viewer and Zagyva's felt more perplexing and less an obvious homage to something else like Hayes-Chute's piece.



The biennial and MECA's MFA program share the installation craze, definitely.

Island neighbor Jessica George has an impressive installation of paintings, photographs, and crates in a mapped arrangement of content and form.



Each painting is a glistening surface of masked topography. Every one a marvel.



Last week the illustration department welcomed a new colleague, Rob Sullivan. Here he is with his recent show, Minumentals, at Art House.



Welcome to the world of MECA, with it's ever-fluid body of creators. Congratulations, class of 2009!

puzzling together history

Memorial Day seems like a good time to mention that I recently worked on a puzzle activity for the Fifth Maine. Built as a reunion spot for Civil War veterans, now it is a museum and community hall, site of countless weddings, concerts, and educational outings. I've visited the Fifth Maine on Peaks Island many times for events over the years, but learned plenty during the research for this assignment. Marty designed this sharp logo awhile back that captures the clean lines of this antique structure.



I browsed around the cases of artifacts, all of them locked and in the actual arrangement by the original Fifth Maine Regiment veterans. Who knows what this is?



It's hard tack, a common food staple for Civil War soldiers. Looks like a prehistoric Saltine. As a line drawing, it could also be a mattress. Sort of.



And what's a war without bullets? It's a curious display, thinking about saving bullets, possibly removed from the wounded.



My drawing is large, a metaphor of how big a part they play in carnage.



I also found a small-scale cannon. A toy? For all those generations who play war.



And my drawing. You see how I rely on my photos for reference.



I was mainly interested in artifacts with a variety of sizes and shapes, knowing that I would be jumbling them, juxtaposing it all to disguise the elements.

I liked this canteen for it's number. Two who?



Ovals are a good drawing challenge.



I photographed and drew 13 objects. Then I made a rough sketch, throwing them together.



I scanned my separate drawings, then made a layered composition in Photoshop, where I could play around with the size and scale of each artifact. Since the watch seemed like an obvious thing, I buried that beneath other items. I made the bullet big, while the cannon is tucked into the corner.



Together, this puzzles engages young visitors to the museum to find and think about these items. Maybe ask what they were for, how they were made, who was it that used them, who placed them here on display. And why? All good questions, not just for children or Memorial Day, but every day we think about our national heritage, and about the men who built this place to commemorate their battles and the struggle for an end to slavery. Today's island volunteers and docents who keep the Fifth Maine open and maintained are the stewards of that precious legacy.

And the view can't be beat!

comic art fans unite

Not even a rainy morning could keep us comic fans from heading over to the first ever Maine Comics Arts Festival in Portland on Sunday. The fact that kids 12 and under, PLUS librarians and educators, were FREE was undoubtedly a draw. My daughter is a fan of Kean Soo's Jellaby and was dying to get her hands on the next story. He obliged her with not just a signature, but a little sketch, too. Sweet.



She found out from her teacher the next day that she was on TV, in the brief bit on a local channel.

I was happy to see several MECA students in attendance, and exhibiting. Here's Liz Heller doing great things.



And here is fellow MEIC member Cristina Siravo showing her lovely products.



While the rest of my family was browsing, I attended an informative presentation by Peter Gutierrez, who talked about the unique qualities of sequential art to engage young readers. There are multi-modal benefits of reading text and image in juxtaposition, in terms of parallel narratives, subtexts, and semiotics. He showed excellent examples of comic and graphic novel art, demonstrating all the unseen reading that takes place between images, and the fluency, vocabulary-building, and visualization that occurs in visual literacy. Artists have no clue the powerful things they can do, invisibly, with their bare hands! POW!

This comes as no surprise to savvy librarians like Kelley McDaniel of King Middle School who has rounded up a group of unsuspecting teachers for a zine workshop with me. I typically give my sophomore illustration students a zine assignment, as a good early exercise in sequential visualization and mechanical production. But why wait til college? Middle school is the source of angst and the emerging self. As a zine fan, Kelley found incredible treasures at MECAF, like Coping with Death, a zine with heart-breaking deadpan wisdom.

Jay Piscopo is as suave a spokesperson for comics as we could possibly invent. He deserves a hand for giving visibility to the event, and to artists. Laura Richter, an award-winning technology integrationist presented a new curriculum for Jay's Undersea Adventures of Capt'n Eli, an ingenious coupling of brand and character coming soon to a school near you. POW!

I purchased some hand-made editions, rather than the notable and fantastic authors that headlined the event, since I stupidly didn't bring enough cash.



Peaks Islander Annie O'Brien was there with her Korean folk tale in graphic novel form, Hong Kil Dong.



It was such an amazing crowd of talent, overwhelming, in fact. I could have bought one thing from everybody there, if I wasn't a skimpy artist myself. It was also a familiar and endearing group, many of them probably dreading the public interface, and keeping their heads down over their sketchbooks. I've been behind a few tables myself, and it's a knotty feeling in the gut to sit there while people pass you over. I made some selections based entirely on impulse and title. Like "it's sexy when people know your name" by Lisa Hanawalt. She's the girl in the striped sweater lovingly drawing a singing pony inside the zine I bought.



Here's fellow islander and illustrator Doug Smith, chatting up Marek Bennett who did a fun presentation on the 24 hour comic frenzy.



Doug's been to comic cons all over, in pursuit of classic collectible art, and found the art at MECAF disappointing. He's more into traditional heroic realism and painterly sci-fi. This crowd of artists is not your mainstream superhero flock. In fact, they are often aw shucks geeky, like this beauty I saw heading into the presentation by the Center for Cartoon Studies.



Having toured the amazing CCS awhile back, I was sorry to miss their Self-Publishing 101. But I was too bleary from the Surviving as a Print Cartoonist. Got to see my daughter's hero, Lincoln Pierce, speak. And find myself a new hero, Corey Pandolph. His self-deprecating sarcasm was most authentic. Check out the video of Leopard Man on his blog. That guy is a peculiar phantom of Portland and may be the one thing to lure Corey back into Maine's evil clutches. If we're lucky.

So I ambled off, skipping the afternoon's line-up of new stars, and headed back to the island. Heard the contestants were lodged at the Inn, but I hope at least one of them saw more of Peaks Island than that. I challenged my visual recall by drawing more of the cast I encountered.

This is Sofi, heading onto the boat with her jaunty beret over her mohawk.



Here is a girl whose shirt I admired. I noticed she was drawing her 24 minute comic during the Surviving as a Print Cartoonist panel.



This is Otto, the lucky son of the fabulous Jessica and Henry, with a very sober air, holding his plush puffin toy like a precious avatar.



I did these drawings from memory, so pardon the lack of likeness.
Here is Mike and daughter, in a stunning example of parenting with care. I'm of the opinion that cultivating a sense of humor, love of comics (and zombies), and art comes way before anything else. To expose kids to observing the world, drawing with imagination, and believing in super powers is a great calling.




Big applause for Rick Lowell at Casablanca Comics, for conceiving the event. As my favorite book babe, Kirsten Cappy said, "It's a sweet little monster to pull together."

open house hoopla

Three cheers for Charlesbridge! I buzzed down to Boston on Wednesday with fellow island illustrator and diva, Annie O'Brien, to celebrate our favorite publisher's 20th anniversary. We shared good parking karma all day, and schmoozed with a bevy of creators, staff, and bookhounds.

I'm not new to illustration (egads, almost 30 years!) but am relatively new to this children's book world. It was a surprise to encounter some familiar faces from my distant early days, such as Leslie Evans, Robin Brickman, David Biedrzycki, and former student (from my brief chapter teaching at the Art Institute of Boston) Shennen Bersani.

Here I am butting into chat between David and Shennan.



Annie O'Brien is excited about her latest book, After Ghandi, which Charlesbridge published this spring. She gave a reading recently with her son and co-author, Perry.



We both brought original art for display, and there was an amazing show of art all over the office. I was thrilled to see the proofs for my latest project,
Nest, Nook, and Cranny by Susan Blackaby.



Coincidentally, I received this delightful surprise from Susan Blackaby recently.



It is THE MOST adorable little book, and is my first-ever handmade thank you from an author. Everybody assumes that authors pick illustrators. In fact, publishers pick the manuscript, then they pick the illustrator, and rarely do the two meet during the production process. Sometimes after publication. Sometimes never.

Kudos go out to Susan Sherman, who as a Charlesbridge art director, knows how to pick 'em. The trust she bestows on her illustrators is a wonderful thing. I'm grateful to have been matched with Mitali Perkins for Rickshaw Girl, which keeps winning awards.
Here she is, chatting with illustrator, Anna Alter.



Congratulations, Charlesbridge, for matching talents, making great books, connecting stories, art, and readers with inspiration and dedication. And for making the best cupcakes!



Thanks to Susan Blackaby for this sweet keepsake of our book, which comes out in February 2010. Yay!

mum's the word

"Compassion for our parents is the true sign of maturity" said Anais Nin.

I've been learning this a lot lately. My mum has been through some scary emergencies this year, and that she's here for another Mother's Day is nothing short of a miracle.

I found some old pix from my first photo album, apparently the result of getting my first camera for Christmas in 1969. With one of these, I've made this card for my mum, in recognition of her style. I had a notion that my sense of style was all mine, but when I came across a picture of my mother in a polka dot scarf and bright red lipstick, it sinks in that she had it long before I knew what it was.

Here's to all mothers, who pass on more than they know and children rarely recognize.

Happy Mother's Day!