Making Books

Telling Tales and Still Searching

Today I am having a delicious day. I slept in . I sorted art materials and looked over images I like…I sat in the sun and felt its warmth. I pet the cat that likes to hang out here when it isn’t destroying the song bird population. It’s a lovely cat… unintended consequences.

I am drawing surfers today. All kinds of them… I’ve spent many years in that fascinating world and don’t feel like that I have ever seen it illustrated in an authentic way. I also have been cooking up a graphic novel biography (so much work!) about a water woman hero of mine that I think everyone should know about because she was amazing.

Waves are not easy to draw…at least I don’t see that many well rendered waves out there. Waves are, for the most part, storms that were born elsewhere and arrive at the shores of a place, bounce off the sea floor and break. I love that idea of a storm making its way across the surface of the water, traveling hundreds or thousands of miles and then being ridden before disappearing….a celebration of the storm.

I was thinking about this idea of riding storms- the energy of the storm and how we do that in life. The storms keep coming…so are you going to ride them or let them or let them take you down?

Yesterday I went to a local bookshop here to introduce myself. One of the owners, Cleo (love that name), was there. We chatted about books and I think it is so wonderful that this passionate person who loves books so much is sharing that passion. Here is a link to her shop Spare Time Books. I’ll do a book event there in the not to distance future.

Speaking of book people…I have a book coming out that I illustrated. It’s releasing on tax day- why tax day?? But, ok, that’s when it’s coming out. There has been one review so far from Publisher’s Weekly- a good one.

“Gehl and Roth Sisson offer a winning library portrait in this evenhanded picture book with rough-edged, digitally colored pencil-drawn illustrations. Book lover Orson’s favorite places are quiet spots, so the child initially struggles to adapt when the local library’s reopening represents less hush than before. He urges the librarian to shush a child laughing at a comic book and a talkative book club, and when the librarian refuses, Orson, portrayed with brown skin, effectively takes on the job. As everyone falls silent, the result proves less pleasing than expected—“he remembers how happy the other kids seemed before, when they were talking, laughing, and reading.” Luckily, un-shushing proves an easy and joy-filled solution that leads to connection. Characters are shown with various abilities and skin tones.”

It’s a story about how books/libraries are a way to connect with others and self. It’s a lovely story of human connection. And, yes, mentioning “skin colors” is a part of the picture book world as far as reviews go case you are not used to reading them…

Here is a link to the book.

This was a sketch for an alternate cover for Orson and the World’s Loudest Library.

Carl Sagan said of books: “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

They really are amazing…

I illustrated Orson and the World’s Loudest Library during one of the most trying times in my life. I learned a great deal in the process and it gave me something to be progressing with in the liminal place I was in. I have always created art pretty much no matter what…whether the place I was living in was wet with DDT (I was on the little island when I wrote and illustrated SPRING AFTER SPRING: How Rachel Carson inspired the Environmental Movement). Or whether I was grappling with how to help my (step) son wonder at the beauty and possibility in the world even as some pretty scary things were happening in his world- STAR STUFF: Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos came out of that… (Looks like it’s on sale btw) … Art seems to be born out a need to say something, to express something or explain….I used to talk with a friend about how it seems like great music comes out of challenging times.

I’m cooking up some other projects- things that I want to give a voice to. Not all serious things, some just fun things…I am craving fun. I treated myself to a month of Netflix and have been watching Cunk on Life. There is just something about that show...I just love the irreverence. It’s good to laugh.

Anxiety has been visiting me in the last week- not really knowing how all of this is going to go- I know we never actually “know”, but being on this journey on my own adds a little more of an uncertain feeling.

So…I’m here in Paso. And I’ve given myself a deadline to choose a “next” sometime at the end of this month or in the first week in the next. At some point I have to find a place and unpack the contents of my car and actually start making myself a home and settle into a community get to know the neighbors get involved. I’m checking out some places today closer to the ocean.

This post has taken me much longer than most to write…lots of deleting and rewriting…maybe I’m working out something internally that hasn’t made it up to the level of me dealing with it? I’m torn between being so far away from family and wanting to pave a new path…but maybe I’m doing it in the wrong place because I have been here before…maybe it is an old path. Or maybe I resuming the path I should have been on but that little island tore me off of?

I went to this website called Astro.com . It’s an astrology site that offers a map of where you might want to live because of how the stars and planets line up…not too many great clues there either. Apparently Western Europe is a good choice for me as well as Massachusetts, North Carolina and Maine…the stars don’t seem to know about my not wanting to live in a cold climate… It also thinks the little is is a good place for me (funny!)…It’s an entertaining site though.

Until next time.

xo,
Steph