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Posts Tagged ‘picture book’

At the Eric Carle Museum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 20, 2017| 4 Comments »

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Art: Hilary Knight
Eloise was a favorite of mine back in the day. Art and artifacts related to her history are on display until June 4, 2017, at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass.

I drove out to Amherst yesterday to meet up with Asakiyume at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and have lunch in town. The museum is modern and attractive and features several nice displays, a gift shop, and a studio where kids can do arts and crafts.

If you don’t have another reason to be in the area, as I did, it’s a little far from the Boston suburbs. However, I got a kick out of my tour with Asakiyume, especially because one exhibit was on Hilary Knight, the artist behind the mischievous girl who lives in New York’s Plaza Hotel with her nanny, her pet dog, and her turtle. The display even featured copies of the doll I still have and my Eloise Hotel Emergency Kit.

We saw art by Brinton Turkle and, of course, by Eric Carle. It’s the 50th anniversary of Carle’s book Brown Bear, and it was fun to see all the ways it had been translated. Asakiyume knew how to read the Japanese.

She also picked up a flyer for me about the museum’s “Making Art” blog, which turns out to be loaded with ideas about crafts for kids. Something to check out in addition to Pinterest when brainstorming. In one project example, here, we see how a student intern went about creating a delightful day for both children and adults using feathers in art.

Photo: Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art
The Art Studio’s J-Term Intern, Tory Fiske, a senior at UMass Amherst, designed a Special Sunday project for museum guests.  She planned the event, sorted and prepared the materials, and introduced visitors to the project throughout the day.

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Picture Book for Grownups

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 16, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I have enjoyed Maria Popova’s reviews of children’s books at Brain Pickings and have been moved to buy quite a few.

This is the first picture book for grown-ups I’ve seen at her site, a kind of meditation on living life, with watercolors of an Everyman thinking about things.

Popova writes, “French-born, Baltimore-based artist Jean-Pierre Weill explores in The Well of Being (public library) — an extraordinary ‘children’s book for adults,’ three years in the making, that peers into the depths of the human experience and the meaning of our existence, tracing how the stories we tell ourselves to construct our personae obscure the truth of our personhood, and how we can untell them in order to just be. …

“Weill dances across the Big Bang, the teachings of the 18th-century Italian philosopher and mystic Ramchal, evolution, 9/11, and life’s most poetic and philosophical dimensions. He tells the lyrical story of a man — an androgynous being who ‘represents Everyman and also Everywoman,’ as Weill explains in the endnotes — moving from the origin of the universe to the perplexities of growing up to the mystery of being alive.”

Here’s a passage:

Is the world not whole? Is it not beautiful?

For now, let’s consider well-being a choice, something you can try on and wear. When we put on the hat and coat of well-being we incline towards joy without special occasion.

More at Brain Pickings, here.

Art: Jean-Pierre Weill 

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The Petershams, Illustrators

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I love children’s illustrated books like those of the Petershams. Eve M. Kahn wrote an article about the couple in the NY Times “Antiques” column prior to the opening of a retrospective at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum.

“Maud and Miska Petersham, married book illustrators in Woodstock, N.Y., sat across from each other as they worked. From the 1920s to the ’50s, they ran a prolific studio at their handmade stone house. They took on classic stories like ‘Heidi’ and ‘Rip van Winkle,’ along with nonfiction about rayon and wool that is now obscure, and Queen Marie of Romania’s fairy tale starring a magic doll.

“Children and teachers sent fan mail. ‘It has gone through the school like wildfire,’ a Utah schoolteacher wrote to the Petershams in 1941, praising the couple’s alphabet book with patriotic pictures.

“The Petersham archive survives in the hands of family members and the University of Southern Mississippi’s library. The historian Lawrence Webster mined the material for a book, “Under the North Light: The Life and Work of Maud and Miska Petersham” (WoodstockArts). …

“Miska Petersham grew up in Hungary. Around 1912, shortly before he moved to New York, he Americanized his original name, Mihaly Petrezselyem. …

“The Petershams’ house on Glasco Turnpike [in Woodstock], with floor-to-ceiling windows that illuminated their drafting tables, is largely unchanged and has been on the market for about $440,000,” a short sale.

More. (Scroll down.) The show, “Inspired by the North Light,” runs through December 31.

Photograph from Lawrence Webster shows one of Maud and Miska Petersham’s illustrations for the children’s book “The Poppy Seed Cakes.”

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