I had mentioned the last time we talked that a publisher had
contacted me and asked that I illustrate a
poem in their upcoming book called “Power Poems for Small Humans".
I enthusiastically agreed, and eventually, I was paired with poet Liz Morgan, whose poem is
entitled “When Someone Asks About My Drawing of My Family”
I won’t share the poem here, but Liz's poem is about the many iterations of non-nuclear families.
My original idea was inspired by the videos you may have seen
that run on the theme of a blind dog who has a seeing eye goat bff, a donkey
and a pig who are best friends, animals who adopt animals from other species,
and my long time favourite: Roy and Silo, the two male penguins at NYC’s Central
Park Zoo, who first fell in love, and then year after year, tried to raise a
clutch of rocks, until the zookeepers finally gave them an egg to hatch and
raise. She grew up to mate and have adopted babies of her own. <3
The sketch I shared
with you six weeks ago of the little pig, was part of a larger piece that was
going to be a farmyard composed of many iterations of different types of animal
families.
But then I was thinking about the brief I was given:
“… something between an illustration and an environment…the important
thing is that the artwork meet and embellish the emotional place of the poem.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that gave me pause! It
reminded me of when I was in second year at Uni, and a professor asked for “an
intelligent, emotional response” to a text we had been given to read, and no
further instruction. And it was worth 40% of our mark! Boy, that struck terror into my heart. Lol
Anyway, as I considered this “between an illustration and an
environment” I thought that perhaps I was being too literal. That a more
abstract idea was called for.
I slept on it overnight, and realized that Roy and Silo ought to be my inspiration. When I thought about it the next
day, I could “see” this two page spread as you see it here, and realized that
was they way to go. My "Roy and Silo" are two stylized male birds (an eastern towhee and a black capped chickadee) who have a clutch of baby chickadees to nurture to adulthood.
So I called it, "After Roy & Silo”.
Now that the publisher has the images for use in the book, I
will unmount (dismount?) this piece and put a group of hares or perhaps a fox
family in that blank space where the poem will be in the book.
When that’s
done, I’ll show you that version too. J
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