Posts on art

School is ending, which means it's summer reading club time at the library! Traditionally, an important feature of our library's club is "the booth," a little tri-fold hut where kids talk to teen volunteers about the books they've been reading.

This summer, it was once again my pleasure to decorate the booth in accordance with our theme, "Make a Splash: Read!" I don't really draw or paint much (okay, at all) these days, so the prospect of working on the booth was a mixture of thrill and stressor. Once I figured out my design, though, I had a lot of fun following through!

This weekend, the custodians will assemble the booth in time for our first book reports on Monday. In the meantime, here's my painting in triptych form.

How much do I love it that my job (and especially my boss) give me all sorts of opportunities to use my different skills—even the ones you don't necessarily associate with books and libraries? Librarianship rocks.

(Here's a link to my photos of last year's booth!)

I've never been a big fan of her music, but after reading this interview with Melissa Etheridge at AfterEllen.com, I've got a whole new level of respect for the woman. What she says about being true to yourself, making/selling art, and staying true to yourself while making/selling art is so brilliantly spot-on that I found myself cheering.

There are lots of gems, but this is one quote I particularly liked:

...I really have been on a journey of identity, of self-love, I suppose. Knowing that I'm no good for anybody else unless I'm true to myself, and love myself and truly know that I'm in this reality, I'm in this world to figure things out for myself—not to be something else for somebody else.

Here's another, on the question of whether an artist must be unhappy to be successful:

No. I think they do their best unhappy work when they're unhappy.... I think the hardest job is to mirror and reflect what is inside of them to the universe and we're mirrors of society.... I think your goal is to be happy. To think you have to be unhappy to be a successful artist, that's just suicide.

Check it out.

When I skimmed the jacket flap of Tempo Change, by Barbara Hall (Delacorte, 2009), about the teen whose “father is an indie rock icon,” two thoughts occurred to me. The first was Beige, by Cecil Castelluci (Candlewick, 2007). The second was Born to Rock, by Gordon Korman (Hyperion, 2006). Fortunately, I read past the flap and was rewarded with a story all its own—and one that really spoke to me.

This is exactly the sort of novel you would expect from Hall, who created the Emmy-nominated series Joan of Arcadia, about a modern teen who starts receiving messages from God. The dialogue is smart and snappy. The protagonist of Tempo Change is, like Joan, a snarky teen who doesn’t quite meld with her peers. But the core similarity is the shared theme of spiritual exploration—executed without a hint of preaching.

Blanche Kelly is, as I mentioned, the daughter of an indie rock icon. Duncan Kelly, however, left years ago to rekindle his muse in the South Pacific. Blanche’s only contact with him is through email, though at school she faithfully follows his advice: “Don’t be a joiner.” She’s succeeded in staying at the fringes, preferring to observe than to participate. She loves music but is hesitant to pursue it; after all, art hasn’t exactly done wonders for her family.

Then Blanche’s mother brings home a new boyfriend: Ed, not a musician but (yawn) a guitar salesman. At the same time, Blanche finds a stellar singer and drummer among her school mates. While she’s not, like her coworker and maybe-possibly crush Jeff, about to call it “a sign,” it’s enough to make Blanche do a 180. If her new band, the Fringers, makes it all the way to the big Coachella music festival, surely it will be enough to roust Duncan Kelly from his Pacific hideaway at last!

Of course, getting to Coachella isn’t quite that easy. And once the Fringers—and, yes, Duncan Kelly—actually make it there, it doesn’t go anything like Blanche planned.

Hall’s characterization stands out. All characters—both teens and adults—are three-dimensional, none wholly good or bad. Blanche’s mother has struggled with depression, alcoholism, and finances, but she’s a loving, invested parent active in her recovery program. Duncan is by turns the kindly, helpful father and the selfish, obsessed artist. Blanche is realistically naïve and critical of her mother, unable to understand how she could prefer owning a women’s clothing shop “for women who [are] tired of wearing clothes” and dating Guitar Guy Ed to the presumably glamorous life of a rocker’s wife.

What I really love about Tempo Change, though, and what keeps it from being the formulaic pop-culture-centric story you might expect, is Blanche’s relentless (though sometimes reluctant) questioning of the fuzzier aspects of existence. How do we find our path in life? Where does artistic drive come from? Is there such a thing as divine intervention, or is life just a series of very human choices?

Hall provides no concrete answers but plenty of entry points for discussion. Joan’s mother surrenders the things she can’t control to a higher power in her twelve-step program. The Fringers’ singer sees an apparently divine vision while stranded in a snow storm. The prayers Blanche and her band mates idly tossed into the box at the New Age shop seem to be coming true. Even Blanche, ever a skeptic, makes a key decision based only on a dream.

Ultimately, this thoughtful novel of spiritual exploration has more in common with Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s Leap of Faith (Dial 2007) or Pat Schmatz’s Circle the Truth (Carolrhoda 2007) than with the books conjured by the jacket flap. It will appeal to many readers of contemporary realistic fiction, especially those with a philosophical and/or artistic bent. Highly recommended for grades 6 and up.

Another cool thing about being a children's librarian? Sometimes they let you do things like this:

This is the booth we use in our Summer Reading Club. Here, kids report on their books to teen volunteers. We're using the Illinois Library Association's iRead theme this year, "Read on the Wild Side."

The booth structure is the same from year to year, but I did all the decorating this summer. It was fun to paint the animals and incorporate 3-D elements including bulgy eyes, books, leaves, flowers, and butterflies. (There is only one tissue paper flower because it turns out my talent does not lie in making tissue paper flowers.)

Usually the library staff artist decorates the booth, but she wasn't able this year. I was thrilled to step in. It ended up being a more stressful task than I'd bargained for, but I'm pretty happy with the results! I just hope everything doesn't fall off.

Rie at Shangri-L.A. has a magical round-up of art in the round—for lack of a better term on my part. Rie writes:

Art isn't just paint on a canvas or clay on a pottery wheel. Anything that makes you stop and think and see the world in a slightly tilted way? That's art too. In my travels around the net, I've discovered quite a few artists who are making the places they live a bit more surreal, whimsical, and wondrous.

They really are wondrous. Take a look and brighten your day!

If you're under the impression that introverts are shy, antisocial, or socially retarded, get thee to "Caring for Your Introvert" in The Atlantic. This article validates the introverted personality as well as informing readers of the inherent differences between introverts and extroverts.

Jarrett Krosoczka, creator of such picture book gems as Punk Farm, delivered a keynote at the SCBWI winter conference in NYC last weekend, posing the following scenario: what's an author-illustrator to do when he's got a total creative block? Find out in his hilarious video, Book by Book: The Making of a Monkey Man. The scenes with Tomie DePaola are priceless. You don't need to be a children's book geek to enjoy it (but it helps).

BOOK BY BOOK: the making of a monkey man from Jarrett Krosoczka on Vimeo.

I didn't have to work yesterday, which was great for several reasons. First, I'd been working since Sunday, so I was more than ready for a break. Second, I didn't have to come up with a Halloween costume. I'm still recovering from the Halloween I wore blue jeans, a Western shirt, and a cowboy hat to work. All day, people of all ages asked me, "Oh, you're a cowgirl! Or are you a cowboy?" Um... let's not make this harder than it needs to be, folks!

Anyway, third: the weather was absolutely gorgeous, so I went down to the beach and sketched for a couple of hours. I do love to draw and wish I did it more often. I wish I played music more, too. Actually, there's a lot of things I wish I did more. But the way I look at it, I've only got time for one obsession right now. And writing has won.

Here's the least embarrassing of my sketches. I'm still learning how to use colored pencils. Seriously, it's harder than it sounds! I've got more experience with acrylics and pastels, where you layer from dark to light. Colored pencils and watercolors, you have to go light to dark. Conclusion: Prismacolors on black paper cannot look anything but awesome.

One last thing before I pedal off to work: no National Novel Writing Month for me this year. After a lot of thought, I decided I need to focus on my newish project so I don't lose all momentum. I'm still in that rocky transition period between projects, where my mind is still half on the last one. I need to concentrate my focus.

But I know quite a few of you are tackling Nano, and I wish you the best of luck! In the words of César Chávez, "Sí, se puede!" Yes, it can be done.

(Speaking of which, has anyone else noticed the similarity between Chávez's slogan and Obama's "Yes, we can"? No wonder the rich bosses are worried!

"Sí, se puede!" was also the motto of the Chicago elementary school I spent the most days subbing, back in my crazy subbing days. What a great motto, huh? They said it every day, right after the Pledge of Allegiance. Made me smile every time.)

There are many things I love about my job. One is the great variety of tasks I face from day to day. Another is the opportunity for creativity. I mean, when I worked as a law office assistant, did I ever once have the chance to paint a signboard with cartoon anthropomorphized insects? No!

If I had to do it over, I would make the caterpillar orange or purple for the sake of contrast. C'est la vie.

The ladybug's my favorite. It reminds me of a puppy.

I keep telling myself I'm going to start drawing again more. It keeps not happening. At least I'm doing the writing thing, right?

The other day, I looked at my library's New Junior High Books shelf for poetry books and noticed everything on-shelf was based on historical figures or events! An interesting trend. The younger set gets kitties, doggies, and dragons. The older kids get Birmingham, 1963, The Brothers' War: Civil War Voices in Verse, and Frida: ¡Viva la Vida! = Long Live Life!

Which is, it turns out, a really lovely book. Carmen T. Bernier-Grand draws on Frida Kahlo's life story and highly autobiographical paintings to give a personal, poetic voice to Kahlo's timultuous life. Kahlo told her story through her art, over and over, but the symbolism is lost on the average spectator. Bernier-Grand selects details from the paintings--which are printed along-side the poems--to elucidate, putting them in the context of Kahlo's strained family life, life-altering bus accident, rocky marriage with muralist, Diego Rivera, and burgeoning career as a painter.

In my college Intro to Psychology class, I wrote a term paper about artists Frida Kahlo's, Vincent Van Gogh's, and Egon Schiele's concentration on self-portraiture. I'm sure it was terrible. As I recall, the literature I found had very Freudian explanations for this. In Kahlo's case, Bernier-Grand puts forth a much simpler explanation: because Kahlo was so-often bed-ridden, her self was a natural subject for painting. All she needed was a mirror.

I'm not a huge reader of poetry to judge, but to me the verse by itself seems competent but not stick-in-your-brain-and-heart. However, between the poems, the paintings, and the biographical sketch and timeline in the end notes, Frida: ¡Viva la Vida! = Long Live Life! could nearly stand on its own as a "biography book" for junior high readers. As it is, it's a handsome, well-researched introduction to a fascinating and sympathetic figure from 20th century art history.

Meanwhile, in the online world, PBS has a spectacular online exhibit on Kahlo's life and work, including interviews and educational guides. The site was put together in conjuction with the airing of Amy Stechler's film The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo. Definitely worth checking out!

This week's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Sarah Reinhard at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering. Go take a gander!

Bringing a smile to my face this morning was this clip from Creature Comforts USA. I love Aardman Animations, and this "man on the street" montage of animals/people discussing the meaning of art is especially funny and clever. I'd start listing highlights, but the list would be far too long; better just to watch it! (Via ShelfTalker.)