photos from the festival

Art cars at Artscape, not exactly the height of coolness in my book. But my son was pretty stoked. Anything with wheels is cool, but stuff with wheels AND lots of stuff stuck to it... it totally made his day.

favorites from the festival

It's Artscape here in Baltimore, which usually means unbearable heat and humidity. But since this summer, Baltimore has temporarily morphed into San Francisco, it's a swell time to do the art thing. The Broken Plate Pendant company always has such lovely things. I have couple pieces. But that doesn't mean I don't want more. In the event you too would like a lovely pendant, earrings, buckle or ring, you should check out this site.

shiny happy things

Shiny Happy Things from The American Visionary Museum. I'm starting a new habit. I'm going to try to take photos of things that catch my eye to and from work. It should be a great way of breaking up my commute into more pleasant bite sized pieces. So this is the first post... from right down the road from my office. Here's to stopping to smell the proverbial roses...

The AVAM has this great class series where you can learn to make your own Shiny Happy Things taught by Shiny Happy Thing artist Bob Henson. The class is going on the to do list as well. More pics here.

a good field trip

Today we went to Larriland Farm and drank a lot of root beer and picked cherries and watched llamas take naps and then took a nap of our own on the car ride back. Next time we go, I think we'll set out earlier and bring our own ladder. I want to make it to the blueberries and raspberries before we run out of steam. More pics here.

Vintage Rosemary Wells

My mother in law was doing a little attic cleaning and ran across this favorite book from my husband's childhood: Rosemary Wells' Impossible Possum. I'm familiar with Rosemary Wells. I've seen the stout, cute guinea pig-like creatures that populate so many of her books. We're quite fond of her collection of nursery rhymes. But this book is nothing like those.

I recently read in Leonard Marcus' Minders of Make Believe; a very thorough history of childrens book publishing in the U.S., that it used to be common practice for children's book illustrators to be awarded a 1 or 2 color illustration assignments when first starting out. It was the publisher's way of testing the popularity of new talent with a less expensive print run. I think some of the most beautiful children's books are a result of these spare palettes. Rosemary Wells' use of line and texture is just amazing. The simple black and red color scheme calls to mind my son's favorite children's book: Virginia Lee Burton's Choo Choo, also entirely red and black. I'm so glad this book has made it's way out out of the attic and onto our shelves.

Discovering Errol Le Cain is a very good thing

I love his use of line and pattern. With no formal training in art, he had a very prolific and successful career as a children's book illustrator and commercial artist. You can read more about his career and peruse a complete listing of his published children's books here. These lovely illustrations are from The Sly Cormorant and the Fishes" and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". Flamenconut kindly offered to let me post these. Her flickr page is a great place to get lost for an hour or two. That is, if amazing children's book illustration happens to be your thing.