The Katonah Museum of Art has been hosting a fabulous exhibit of children’s book art in conjunction with a number of Westchester county programs highlighting children’s books. I keep meaning to blog about the great exhibit I was honored to be in this summer called Seeing Stories: How Picture Book Artists Imagine, which highlighted Westchester artists and was curated by KMA Trustees Yvonne Pollack and Jerry Pinkney, and I WILL blog about it…but right now I’m too excited because yesterday I had the enormous pleasure of hearing a presentation by the brilliant Brian Selznick at the KMA. As I listened to him, and watched his slideshow I felt part of a special club, since I do what he does and how cool is THAT? At the same time, I was completely in awe, and wondered if I deserved to consider myself in the same business! I kept reminding myself we all have our own talents, blah blah blah. I just kept wishing I could draw like him…until Brian expressed the same sentiment, telling us that he’s like to be able to draw more loosely. But, as I said, we all have our talents, and Brian’s is prodigious.
He talked about the amazing journey of writing and illustrating The Invention of Huge Cabret. I loved hearing about how it took him 2.5 years, and by the time he was doing the final art, he had nine or so months to complete it, which is speedy, considering the minute details of the work. It was also amaaaaazing to me that Brian worked at a reduced size, under a magnifying glass.
If you get a chance to hear Brian speak, do it!
See you soon,
Katie
