{"id":1869,"date":"2010-01-12T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-12T06:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1869"},"modified":"2010-01-12T00:01:56","modified_gmt":"2010-01-12T06:01:56","slug":"some-crazy-good-art-on-a-tuesday-jeremy-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1869","title":{"rendered":"Some Crazy-Good Art on a Tuesday: Jeremy Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\n

“THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A SPIDER that wriggled and wiggled and tiggled inside her.<\/em> SHE SWALLOWED THE SPIDER TO CATCH THE FLY. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly.<\/em> PERHAPS SHE’LL DIE.”
(Click to enlarge image.)<\/center> <\/p>\n

If I didn’t have the above image caption, would you even guess for one second that this illustration from the German-born yet U.S.-raised designer and illustrator Jeremy Holmes<\/strong><\/a> comes from the mother of all cumulative children’s folk songs, “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”? Yup, it’s one of my favorite creepiest picture book adaptations of the story\/song, released in August of ’09 by Chronicle Books. <\/p>\n

Well, you could say “book” or you could say—as Drawn!<\/em> did in October of last year<\/strong><\/a>—book-as-objet-d\u2019art. And that’s because this book is … well, let me just show you. It goes a little something like this: <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here you see the old lady, as envisioned by Holmes in quite the unusual format. The bottom part is a slip cover, which comes off (as slip covers tend to do). <\/p>\n

Then, she looks a little something like this. (Thank goodness I have these images, or I’d be stuttering and taking up way too much of your time in trying to explain it.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That’s the slip cover on the right, and her middle portion is the actual book. When you turn the final page—in which she dies from swallowing that horse, of course—her eyes close up there on her bespectacled head. How about that? <\/p>\n

So, yeah. Neat design. But the illustrations? Julie Just at the New York Times<\/em> wrote in October of last year<\/strong><\/a>, a “mysteriously popular subject for picture books, ‘the old lady who swallowed a fly’ has never looked creepier or more inviting than in this striking book shaped like a slim tie-box.” Humor and cleverness abound: In the opening illustration, the fly is a gallant explorer with a world map, out to conquer. The bird is the sheriff. The dog is a magician, who has captured the cat in one of those boxes that splits a creature in two. (Indeed, each creature the lady swallows has consumed the animal who appears on the previous page.) The cow (like no cow you’ve ever seen before) appears on a fold-out page. And—after the horse is swallowed, the old lady’s eyes close, and she’s resting in peace—we see her arms folded, as if in her final resting place, yet she’s still holding a fly swatter. (My favorite part might be the shoe fly pie recipe on the back cover.) Check out the cat, about to dine on the bird: <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

(Click to enlarge.)<\/center><\/p>\n

Holmes’ mixed-media work is striking, almost macabre in its dark-humored—yet accessible—tone. You can see more of his work here<\/strong><\/a>; perhaps he can stop by 7-Imp one day. I see that his illustrations for this title garnered him a Society of Illustrators: Original Children’s Art award from the 2009 New York Book Show. To see the fly and the dog (being swallowed by the snake), go here<\/strong><\/a> and click on the “4” you see there next to “Views.”<\/p>\n

Or, there’s always this, which I just found, to give you a sense of Holmes’ style. Clever book trailer with a soundtrack I very much like — and animation from one Paul Berkbigler: <\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/center><\/p>\n

* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

There is a lot more art from other titles\/projects featured at Holmes’ galleries there at his site for you to enjoy, if you’re so inclined. <\/p>\n

{THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A FLY. Illustrations copyright \u00a9 2009 by Jeremy Holmes. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA.}<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A SPIDER that wriggled and wiggled and tiggled inside her. SHE SWALLOWED THE SPIDER TO CATCH THE FLY. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. PERHAPS SHE’LL DIE.”(Click to enlarge image.) If I didn’t have the above image caption, would you even guess for one second that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}