One Very Possible Art-Filled Visit
with Barbara McClintock Before Thanksgiving
November 21st, 2012 by jules
Cantering over the sawdust course.”
— From Leave Your Sleep
Last week at Kirkus, I chatted briefly with the very talented Barbara McClintock about her illustrations for Ellen Bryan Obed’s Twelve Kinds of Ice (Houghton Mifflin, November 2012), as well as her artwork for Leave Your Sleep, a selection of classic children’s poetry first adapted to music in 2010 by Natalie Merchant. (This, I must add, is a CD my children and I have enjoyed immensely. To say that Merchant’s meticulously-researched adaptations of these poems to music are impressive would be 2010’s biggest understatement.) This beautiful new picture book collection was released by Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux earlier this month.
Today, I follow up with some artwork and images from Barbara, mostly from Leave Your Sleep. Barbara shares here her inspirations for some of the artwork, as well as some sketches and even some home and studio shots. I thank her for sharing.
I hope all my American blog readers have a great Thanksgiving … Eat nine kinds of pie.
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for some distant Olympics. …”
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“From breakfast on all through the day / At home among my friends I stay; /
But every night I go abroad / Afar into the land of Nod.”
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ready to poke a bear in the tummy with a fork.”
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Barbara: [Below are] pics of spreads on my studio wall, research and studies for “The Equestrienne” (copying horse anatomical drawings by George Stubbs, plastic horses from the Tractor Supply Co., and me riding Paddy), and a photo of Rachel Field, the American poet who wrote “The Equestrienne.”
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Barbara: Here’s my son, Larson DiFiori, at University College, Oxford, where he was studying for his Master’s degree in Classical Chinese Language Studies. I used Oxford, where Robert Graves lived, taught, and wrote as the setting for “Vain and Careless.”
[her partner’s] rose garden.”
a major mentor for me.”
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TWELVE KINDS OF ICE. Copyright © 2012 by Ellen Bryan Obed. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Barbara McClintock. Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston.
LEAVE YOUR SLEEP: A COLLECTION OF CLASSIC CHILDREN’S POETRY. Copyright © 2012 by Natalie Merchant. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Barbara McClintock. Published by Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus Giroux, New York.
All images here reproduced by permission of Barbara McClintock.
What a beautiful collection of sharing!
Thank you. Love, Aunt Phyl
Wow – thank you. Really enjoyed all of it. I must get the CD/Book. I’ve been putting it off… Love the drawings, the photos, the roses.
Happy Thanksgiving. Didn’t manage 9 kinds of pie sadly, but did have some lumpy lemon merangue (much to the mortification of my mother-in-law who doubled the cornstarch and left out the lemom) and some fantastic pumpkin pie.
Hello to Barbara, the horses (real and sketches), Natalie, and the studio cat! Every dwelling needs a cat. 🙂
[…] See some art and an interview with the artist at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. […]
[…] Soon, Barbara will also see the release of another 2014 illustrated title, Jim Aylesworth’s My Grandfather’s Coat (Scholastic), which has already received two starred reviews. (Barbara also discusses below some other new projects. Fans of Adèle & Simon will be happy.) I haven’t seen My Grandfather’s Coat yet, but maybe she can come back to talk about it, especially since she’s also interested in talking further about the March Leave Your Sleep exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, as well as the Leave Your Sleep Carnegie Hall concert (back in April), which had, in Barbara’s words, “images from the book projected big as a barn behind the stage. Maybe [we can have] a discussion about ways picture books extend beyond their printed avatars.” (If you’re not familiar with Leave Your Sleep—with Natalie Merchant—you can visit this 2012 7-Imp post.) […]