#danforth museum

Danforth Museum annual juried exhibition.

I heard Wilber Blair complain about this nearly every painting class for years and I smile every time I mix “Naples Yellow” in my studio now… Quiet in demeanor. Soft spoken. Deep voice. Thin, and wiry. The wheels were always turning. Will could jump into any classroom conversation with an intellect that gave you pause. Then suddenly he was off and at a student’s side since he was always aware of…

I was honored to have two pieces chosen for Picture This! at the Danforth Museum of Art’s second annual juried exhibition showcasing new and original artwork created by picture book illustrators. Selected works will be exhibited in the Children’s Gallery, from September 9 - November 4, 2012. It is a must-see! And when you go, notice how all the art is hung eye level for our audience, the kids!

At the opening, I had the opportunity to meet my fellow illustrators and the juror, Carol Goldenberg, an award winning children's book designer. The Danforth Museum is such a special place. I was especially pleased to have been included again this year.

As it was also the Jewish New Year, the Danforth had my Rosh Hashanah book, Even Higher for sale. Because of that I was able to meet Doreen Smith, a Danforth docent and wonderful woman. Here we were talking about her 11 day old grand nephew for whom I was signing the book.

Below are the two pieces of art chosen for the show, each quite different from the other. I loved the juror's choices. There was such diversity in the whole show.

Here in The Story of Esther (Holiday House, 2011) the maidens prepare themselves to meet the King. 

From the Christmas Tree Farm, (Holiday House, 2006) families pick their trees for the holidays. 

On Friday, we went to the Danforth Museum and I enjoyed the experience. Even though there are not much art pieces in this museum, we got to see the “Behind the scenes” of entering art to a museum and how the museum communicate with artist who lives far away. The guide told us that they do this digitally meaning artist would take pictures of their art piece and send them to the person who is choosing the art pieces. If an artist’s piece is chosen, they would mail it to the museum to have it set up. We also got to an art school and the what the rooms look like. We went into a dark room, a loom room, and a room just for kilns. We did see some art pieces in the museum and lots of the acrylic and oil paintings stood out to me. I really liked children’s room where the gallery showed artist’s work that are mainly directed towards children. All of the drawings and paintings are on cardboard trees and they were all colorful and had cartoons. I was told that these drawings and paintings were all included in children’s books. There is nothing I dislike about this museum except the fact that it should be expanded.

The Danforth museum was a very small one, but they had a lot of different art. I thought it was cool how almost every picture, painting, etc., was done by a different artist. But, they all related to one another and had similar themes. One of my favorite pictures was done by the artist Pelle Cass and was called Quincy Market. I like that picture because of how the people walking match the shapes of the bricks on the patio. It looks as if it was planned that way or something. I don’t know if it was or not but I think it’d be more cool if it wasn’t. I think it’d be cooler that way because then it shows how maybe people tend to walk along the patterns in the ground or something like that. This picture also related to many others in the room with the theme of geometric shapes. There were a lot of other cool pictures along with this one, but this one struck my eye a little more than the others.