Voracious Reader

Thanks to everyone who turns out for these signings. It is an interesting irony that many artists are naturally shy and our tendency is to best express ourselves through our work. Usually the work speaks best, and is the reason why many of us gravitate to visual art in the first place. As a presenter, it can be unsettling, but it is delightful to have such warm and generous audiences. The audience at Voracious Reader was very engaging and receptive. We began at 2 and I did not leave until 5 or so, a few children and parents hung out for a demonstration in pastel drawing.

We invited the children to participate in an art event to create their impression of Where the Sunrise Begins for them. Francine Lucidon, the proprietress, and I collaborated and gave out prizes to these entries. The children range in age between 5 and 11. Congratulations to the young artists. The art of the children and prints of my own will be exhibited for the next week at:

Voracious Reader
1997 Palmer Avenue,
Larchmont, NY 10538
Phone: (914) 630-4581

Warmly, Wendy

In October of 09, my son found a huge, beautiful bright green caterpillar. It was the longest and thickest caterpillar I have ever seen. He had 'rescued' it from some over zealous leaf blowers in a park nearby. With the help of the internet, we identified the caterpillar as a polymephus moth. We then put it in a container with some gauze and a maple leaf which is what we determined this type of caterpillar eats and waited to show it to his father, only to find that in a few short hours it had begun to spin itself a cocoon in the leaf we provided.

We had only planned to show it to his father and then let it go! When we researched further, a site that specializes in hand-raised butterflies and moths suggested that it might not emerge until the following spring, so we left it on the windowsill in south light for 6 months. To be honest, I had checked it often in the beginning months but after a while I almost forgot about it entirely except to dust around it! I was working at my desk one March morning when some movement caught my eye from the sill and a magnificent creature was clinging to the gauze, upside down and it's wings nearly touched the bottom of the container! It was, in fact, a Polymephus moth. When her wings unfolded, her span was about 7" wide and it had the most beautiful markings. I knew my son was going to be thrilled.

Why is this so poignant and touching to us? Well, beyond that fact that she is a magnificent creature, in the book that I had illustrated a year prior, I pictured a young boy holding a beautifully winged creature with markings of the sun rising. In those wings you can find the image of a family watching a sunrise if you look closely enough. When I photographed my son holding the moth prior to letting her go it struck me how similar this was to what I had already illustrated in our recent book. The image was from my imagination then. Here it was in living color. It seemed curious to me that the story had been written ahead of the event. It seemed like an omen of sorts.

In my mind, the book and the words of Doug Wood are about finding the miraculous and the spiritual in our lives and in the world around us. The sunrise is a metaphor of course. Here, my son was experiencing the very narrative that we described in the book. We were thrilled by witnessing the transformation in this tiny creature so intimately.

My son placed the moth with great care on the tree above where he found the caterpillar and we left her to call for a mate. Mid-March seemed early for her to be hatched as there were no leaves on the trees and we were even expecting snow, but she was expected to live only a week at most so we put her on the tree, waited, and visited! She survived, and moved only inches from where she was placed for 5 days. My son visited every morning and evening and we found her motionless on the fifth day on the ground at the bottom of the tree. It was quite a cold four days and we had hoped that she was able to complete her cycle. We were happy to find her little body, her wings were a bit battered but she was still in tact.

We had become quite fond of her so we brought her back home and placed her in a terrarium of organic things that we have collected over the years, abandoned nests and such, and to our astonishment she revived and laid about 125 eggs and then died. We have placed the eggs back on the grounds by the tree and continue to wait for the 14 days or so that the first instar caterpillars emerge. We will wait to see.

Books of Wonder signing

Yesterday I was invited to sign at Books of Wonder a 'Mecca' for children's literature. There were eight of us signing and for awhile there I thought we would outnumber the audience. It was a beautiful day in Manhattan. I had a chance to meet some lovely woman authors and illustrators. I had the pleasure to be placed between DIANE GOODE and GAIL SILVER . Diane has the a great sense of humor and the drawings she created for But I Wanted a Baby Brother manage to capture the humorous angst of a young boy who eagerly anticipates the idea of the arrival of a baby brother, but gets a sister instead. The ink drawings are whimsical and charming. KATE FEIFFER manages to capture the vernacular of a young boy so well.

It was a pleasant surprise to understand that CHRISTIANE KROMER is a Parsons Alum and I loved the treatment of the character she portrays as Anh's anger in the story that she and Gail Silver collaborated on by the same name; Anh’s Anger. She uses textured paper and mixed media to create the visceral feelings and emotion of anger. Gail is able to convey calm from her experience of techniques based on her yoga practice. Time went very quickly and I did not get to peruse all the books as well as I would have liked but from the general look of things and the descriptions presented I was in very good company: MAYA GOTTFRIED - Our Farm KELLY MURPHY - Over at the Castle SHERRY NORTH - Because I am Your and-Daddy .

It would have been wonderful to have Doug Wood in to partner in this. I am hoping I represented him well enough.

I was pleased to see a number of friends who I haven't seen in such a long time. I can't tell you what that means. It is a very unsettling feeling to think that you might be sitting behind a stack of books that no one would want to see or purchase. It is an awkward feeling, particularly since most of us, artists, have gone into this business because we express ourselves BEST on paper. To present takes a special set of skills that I am still honing. It is an out of body experience to be sure.

Thanks to the staff there, who were patient and generous with their help and encouraging smiles. Thank you Bill and Wynn for yet again, being there to support and chat.

The art of Where the Sunrise Begins

Last week I had a wonderful experience with a dual language kindergarten class of 5 year olds at
P.S. 48 in Manhattan. I led a workshop with Madame Rogue and some generous class mothers and we created accordion books based on the idea of Where the Sunrise Begins.

The children wrote poems with words that described where the sunrise began for them, everything from the warmth of family to the actual color of the sun as it peeks over the landscape. We worked in pastel and pencil and by the end of the session we were walking sunrises, all of us!

I really wanted to share a little guy's face on this blog that had very festive marks deliberately painted on it. He was a real celebration! Sadly, I did not shoot a picture, at the risk of anarchy and unwitting encouragement of a rumpus ...a lesson I learned from leading a class on Pollack painting "technique" to a second grade class, but I digress...

The children explored new materials; kneaded erasers and pastel dust, pastel paper, pastel sticks, and sanding blocks. They learned about the idea of sequence and what a horizon line is. Most importantly they keyed into the fact that the sunrise began in many ways, "in our hearts" and in their imagination.