Christmas Shopping

Hello Everyone,

As some of you may know, shopping isn’t exactly my cup of tea. I understand that it’s necessary, at least in the society in which we live, but I find it boring, expensive and difficult. Hell for me would involve a gigantic warehouse full of shoes and I would have to find an affordable, comfortable, and relatively decent-looking pair. Demons in the form of apathetic, minimum-wage-earning employees would swarm around me as I tried on each shoe. Completely uninterested in the answer, they’d nonetheless ask, “Can I help you find anything?” and then monitor me obviously from a short distance away as I failed repeatedly to find a pair that fit the adolescent hobbit feet attached to my legs.

Shoes are the worst, but even groceries are a challenge for me sometimes. I get completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and end up spending half an hour debating whether locally-grown organic sourdough is healthier for me and the environment than store brand whole grain, and in the end, I just buy graham crackers instead. I’ve measured, and it seems that I have about a 10-15 minute attention span once I enter a store, after which point, I become irritable and end up sitting on the floor.

Christmas shopping presents a dilemma for me, though, because as much as I hate shopping, I love giving gifts. I can’t think of anything more satisfying than giving someone something I know he or she will love. If I could be a professional gift giver, I would. So you’d think that shopping for gifts would be an exciting thing for me. The problem is that very often, I have absolutely no idea what to give someone, and at Christmastime, this intensifies exponentially, turning into an outright consumerist panic.

My parents are definitely the most difficult people for me to shop for partly because they are fortunate enough to really not want or need much other than what they already have. But part of the problem is that I can’t just do what I did in second grade and give them a drawing I’d made since their office walls are already totally occupied with my artwork (I’ve got to store it somewhere!). Gift certificates are out of the question. For a person who loves giving thoughtful and creative gifts, this is like an English teacher coming home after a long day, settling into his favorite chair with a glass of wine, and pouring over an instruction manual.

So after finals each fall term, I begin the greater test: trying to find something I can give my parents for Christmas. The first week or two is characterized by a serious attempt at rationality: “What do they really need? What might they really like?” This is followed by a period in which I valorize Scrooge and the Grinch and whine to anyone who will listen about the misplaced values that abound at Christmastime. “Who decided we have to spend, spend, spend, in order to have a meaningful Christmas? I doubt people will like me any less if I don’t get them a present,” I grumble. “Surely they’d rather I conserve my Gift Idea Energy and wait until I come up with an idea for a truly unique and personal present . . . in April . . .”

But then I remember what a gift really is. The word “present” comes from an Old French expression meaning to “put a thing into the presence of a person.” Gifts are not just mandatory accoutrements in a given cultural celebration. They are objects we choose to leave in people’s presence. When we are away, they remind people that we love them. I think back to presents I’ve been given. I love my red scarf not just because it is beautiful, but because my friend Nani gave it to me. I love my seat cushion not just because it is comfy and has a pretty design on it, but because it came from my friend Katy.

So I gather my courage and decide I want to give my parents Christmas presents after all. But the problem remains: I still have no ideas whatsoever. It’s round about this point when I begin free associating. This method works well when I experience a creative block while writing or drawing, but it’s not as helpful here. “Ok,” I say, summoning my energy, “let’s start with Daddy. What would he really like? How about . . . a bullfrog! No, that’s too noisy . . . . A trowel! No, you just like that word . . . . A billboard! No, we already have storage issues . . . . Some soy nuts! No, you’re just hungry . . .” After a bit more desperate rumination, I eventually come up with something. Sometimes I’m lucky and my parents love what I’ve given them. Sometimes, well, that’s why we invented clichés like, “It’s the thought that counts.”

Normally, I try to avoid clichés like, um, the plague, but in this case, it seems to fit. My parents hate shopping as much as I do, and they know that whatever I buy them costs more than the price of the item. (Last week, each of them independently thought of rewarding me with a session at Starbucks after successful shopping ventures). Giving is costly, and it should be.

This year, I gave my mom a book written by a woman who floated down the Nile on a fisherman’s skiff. My dad got a Car Talk daily calendar. Not the best ideas I’ve ever had, but not the worst either. At least neither of them wanted shoes.

Have a good week,

Sarah/Mouse

On the Edge of My Seat

Hello Everyone,

When I was in college, I had the following conversation with a nurse:

Me: “I think I’m growing a tail.”
Nurse: “Oh?”
Me: “Yup!”
Nurse: “Um . . .”

I have since learned that my initial diagnosis wasn’t quite right. I didn’t have a tail. I had a cyst near my tailbone. It wasn’t serious enough to treat, so I’ve lived with it for several years. I decided, however, that while I had time over my break, and while I still have insurance, I would get it removed. This required surgery, which I had last Wednesday.

For this surgery, I needed a general anesthetic, an IV and hospital socks with trendy rubber grips on the bottom. I wasn’t wearing my contacts, making the gurney ride to the operating room feel much faster than I’m sure it really was. All of this made me pretend I was on ER. I’ve never actually seen the show, but that’s what our imaginations are for, right? I don’t remember anything else until after the surgery, when I woke up for a moment. I thought vaguely, “I should show someone I’m awake so that they can have this bed for someone else.” THUNK. I plopped back asleep for an hour. I later asked a nurse if I was glaring at her. She said I wasn’t, but I’m sure I was. I always glare when I wake up.

And then I got to go home. At some point in my life (probably round about the time I had my first tooth pulled), I managed to convince myself that all surgery merits a milkshake upon completion, so my mom kindly obliged and got me one on the way home. For the first few days, I couldn’t do much beside sleep, read and eat. I couldn’t sit or lie on my back, so I reclined Roman-style all over the house and when I got tired of that, did several thousand laps around our kitchen/living room in small steps. I found to my surprise that I was bored for the first time in years. It turns out that much of what I enjoy doing involves sitting!

Over the next few days, my progress was a somewhat accelerated and more maladroit version of those evolution diagrams you see in which a monkey with serious back problems gradually transforms into a fully upright functioning human pedestrian. By Sunday morning, I was doing well enough that I was able to leave the house for the first time in four days and go to church. I was fine, but I had to sit forward in my chair the whole time. During the sermon, I chuckled to myself because I probably looked like the most attentive person in the congregation.

It was the third Sunday of Advent, the period in the church calendar leading up to Christmas. And as I sat listening to our pastor talk about the arrival of Jesus, I realized that perhaps my posture was more appropriate than I’d intended.

“Are you ready for Christmas?” People (usually cashiers in grocery stores) are always asking me this question this time of year, but I never know precisely what they mean. I suppose some mean, “Are you ready to be at home with your family?” Lots of people mean “Have you finished your Christmas shopping?” I’m sure some mean nothing, and it’s just a way to make conversation. But if Advent is all about that -- getting ready -- then how do we prepare ourselves for Christmas? I think that part of it is by being on the edge of your seat. It’s certainly not the most comfortable position. For one thing, it makes you stand out, like the eager student who gets to class fifteen minutes early to make sure he can sit front and center. In addition, it’s tiring and takes more energy than slumping back in our chairs. But all of that couldn’t be further from our mind when something we hear makes us sit up straight. Consider two situations:

First, you are watching TV at home one night when you hear an unfamiliar noise in another room. You sit up straight, mute the TV and whisper, “What was that?”

Second, you are at your son’s school play, for which he has been rehearsing for weeks. He comes on stage to say his two lines. You sit up straight and pay attention to every detail, straining to hear his voice.

Part of what happens in Advent is a strange, paradoxical combination of these two scenarios. Jesus’ birth is sudden but also long-anticipated, alarming but also fervently desired, unknown but also thoroughly intimate, loud enough to get our attention but also quiet enough that we have to silence all other distractions to truly hear it. In both cases, we sit up, we pay attention. God breaks into our world not with a clatter and a bang, but with a baby’s first bellow and a firmament full of hallelujahs. This is an event which the Old Testament prophets have been rehearsing for centuries, only this time it’s the real thing.

If I actually believe that Christmas is what it claims to be, I should be on the edge of my seat as I wait for it to come. Kids understand this part of Advent better than adults do, I think. Even when their eagerness is more about presents and Santa than about the Incarnation, I suspect it comes closer to true worship than the dread with which many adults approach this season.

So how do we foster an unabashed excitement for Christmas? How do we sit on the edge of our seats? We mute some of the distractions in our lives, even if it means standing out uncomfortably. We pay attention to details, the important ones. We spend some time with kids and borrow their enthusiasm. Advent marks the beginning of the church calendar, a time for starting out, for waking up. And if we’re lucky, we really do wake up, we shed our anesthetic fog and approach the morning glare-free.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Kid Version -- Picture Books Part II

Hi guys!

Have you ever made a book? Maybe your teacher asked you to in school, or maybe you just had a good idea for one and you did it on your own. Most people stop making books as they get older, but I never saw a good reason to stop, so I didn’t. And now, as you might know, I am in graduate school (where you go after college if you want to keep studying), learning about children’s books and about illustration.

This fall, I took a class all about illustrating books for children. It was so much fun! I wanted to share some of what I learned about what goes into making a picture book. This is the process that most illustrators use:

1.) We started with a written story. Some people chose a song or a well-known story like a fairy tale. Some people wrote their own stories. I wrote one about a boy in South Africa who discovers that painting with mud is lots of fun (imagine where I got that idea!).


2.) We divided the text so that it would spread across 32 pages. Did you know that most picture books are 32 pages long? That is because the printers that print the pages for books can do them in big sheets of 8 pages each. How many of these big sheets would be needed for a 32 page book?

Before I even thought about what pictures I wanted to draw,
I figured out what words would go on which page.

3.) We made a map of what our book would look like using tiny, simple pictures. This is called a storyboard. I tried several of them. The good thing about a storyboard is that you can see the whole book all at once.

In this storyboard, I was experimenting with a vertical book.

I decided I didn't like it as much as a horizontal one.



Here is the final storyboard that I turned in.

4.) We then made a practice book, called a dummy. This doesn’t mean it was made by dumb people. “Dummy” just means a substitute or a replacement. In this case, it is a substitute for the final book. The good thing about a dummy book is that you can tell what it will feel like to read the story with the text divided the way it is, and with the images the way they are. But the pictures are still simple enough that it’s not a big deal if you need to make changes. Illustrators often make many dummies to get the book looking just the way they want before they start the final art.

5.) Our teacher looked at our dummies and gave us suggestions or feedback. Most of the time, professional authors and illustrators will get this kind of advice from editors.

6.) We made the changes our teacher had suggested, and we got to work on the art for our final dummies. These are sample books that we could send to an editor to see if he or she wanted to publish it. We needed to make a book that had finished drawings (in black and white) and included three finished illustrations. The three finished illustrations would give anyone who looks at the book an idea of what the other drawings will look like when they are finished.

Now you might be thinking, “Sarah Jackson, why don’t illustrators just finish all the pictures in a dummy? After all, when my teacher tells me to do my homework, I have to do all of it.” Good question. There are two reasons why an illustrator might not send a completely finished book to an editor. The first is that she might not want to put all the effort and time into finishing the book until she knows it actually will be published. The second is that, as I mentioned earlier, part of an editor’s job is to make suggestions. They want to know that the illustrator is still open to changing her pictures. By having only a few finished illustrations in the dummy, an illustrator shows her ideas of what the book could look like, but also that the book is still in process, and so is open to change.

Here is an example of a black and white picture.

I painted it in ink because it is similar to mud in the kinds of textures it can create.
If the book were to be published, I would paint all of the pictures,
including this one, in mud.

Here is one of the finished illustrations. I painted it in mud
that I collected from lots of different places in South Africa.
The text reads: "The cows shuffled slowly through the tall, yellow grass. 'Uhsso, uhsso,' whispered the bushes as the herd went by."

"He tried painting on the cow."



"All day long, Sipho painted and painted. He stopped only
when the sky fell asleep and it was too dark to see."

7.) Our class ended with the final dummies, but the next step if we want to get our books published is to send our dummies to people who we think might want to help us publish our books. We could try sending them to editors, but most of the time, unless you’ve already had a book published, they won’t look at your work because they have too much to do. Another option is to try to get an agent, someone you pay to find a publisher for you. I haven’t done either of these things yet, but I will after I make some more changes to my final dummy.

So I get back to my first question: have you ever made a book? The steps I just described may sound difficult and complicated. They are. But you don’t have to go through all of them to make a good book. The most important thing in any picture book is to have a good idea. And I know from experience that you all have hundreds of good ideas every day! So why not put a few of them down on paper and make a book? And when you do, be sure to show me!

Have a good week,
Sarah Jackson

ps: I did some other work this fall and if you’re interested in seeing it, check out my website at www.clearasmudillustration.com.

Children's Books -- Part 1

Hi Everyone,

A while ago, I came across a quote that connects a lot of the things I am most interested in. Picture book author and illustrator Karla Kuskin said, “There are great advantages to being a stranger because as a stranger you pay attention to everything, and that’s what children do. And that is also what you want to do as a writer or as an artist drawing: to see what is different and what is important.” Kuskin connects being in a new place to being a child. Often what is old hat to an adult is a fascinating adventure to a child. Going to the post office is as interesting as going to Timbuktu. Tying your shoe for the first time is as much a triumph as slaying a dragon or climbing Everest.

The Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards wrote in his journals, “the world exists anew every moment . . . we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen if we had seen Him create the world at first.” If we are to remain childlike -- an essential characteristic if you are wanting to write and illustrate for children -- we need to ensure that we continue to see the world as Edwards described, as perpetually and wonderfully new.

This is one of the main reasons why I love picture books for children. Though not aware of it, child readers demand an equal balance between consistency and surprise. Without some stability in a story, the setting, characters and plot would be not only unbelievable, but incomprehensible. If an astronaut on the moon on page twelve turns into a teacher in a classroom on page thirteen with no explanation, the reader will be as lost as the characters. Furthermore, patterns and repetition play a huge role in learning to read, and being aware of this as an author or illustrator can enhance the book as a learning tool.

And yet if there weren’t new developments on every page, you wouldn’t have a story, you’d have a series of photocopies. And it’s the delicate dance between consistency and surprise that produces the best parts of picture books, whether verbally or visually. In the following sequence, the break in the pattern has punch only because the pattern is there in the first place:

On Monday, Jacob danced with the dog.
On Tuesday, he danced with the cat.
On Wednesday, he danced with the rabbit.
On Thursday, he danced with the goat.
On Friday, the llama danced with Jacob.

Without the first four sentences, the llama dancing with Jacob would not be as interesting because we wouldn’t have the back-story, as it were. However, without the last sentence, the story would be too flat, a joke without a punchline.

In my art criticism class this term, we had a discussion about Activist Art, art that attempts to change some aspect or viewpoint in society, be it patriarchal assumptions about the role of women or the stigma of AIDS. We noted how Activist Art often relies heavily on specific cultural vocabularies, using symbols, words and ideas that are well known to people of a certain culture.

"Health Coverage" (2008) -- Luba Lukova

For example, Luba Lukova’s image about the health care system depends on our familiarity with the image of an umbrella and with the caduceus, the symbol for medicine (though traditionally, the rod of Asclepius, with one snake and no wings, represented medicine, while the caduceus represented commerce, among other concepts). In capitalizing on these communal symbols, the art is often considered more “democratic” because it is accessible to a wide variety of people. Activist Art can lose some of the subtlety found in other kinds of art, however, and some people criticize it, saying that it deserves a quick read only, and nothing more. Other kinds of fine art, on the other hand, and painting in particular, can sometimes seem exclusive because artists often use their own private vocabularies initially unknown to the viewer.

"The Persistence of Memory" (1931) -- Salvador Dali

For example, the ants we can see in the lower left corner of this Salvador Dali piece represent decay and rot, which we know because he has established this as a personal symbol in the context of his other work. Apart from its sheer aesthetic value, Dali’s work is full of layers and hidden meanings, and as such, merits a more sustained viewing than, say, a poster protesting cutbacks in government services.

Is there a middle ground between accessible and understandable work on the one hand and work that has a richness in the visual vocabulary it employs? Of course. And one solution to this dichotomy comes in the form of picture books precisely because of the relationship between pattern and variation, between consistency and surprise. Picture books are essentially tiny worlds, usually created in a mere 32 pages. The author and illustrator must establish their own system of symbols and rules for their world. At first, it is unfamiliar to the readers, as strange as traveling to a foreign country; initially, picture books are like Dali’s painting. However, the author and illustrator are responsible for teaching the reader these symbols and rules. They not only create the world, they guide us through it. Because picture books are comprised of a series of words and images, we grow accustomed to the books’ individual vocabularies as we read. By the time we close a picture book, we should be naturalized citizens of the world it contains.

If, as Edwards wrote, the world really is created anew every moment, it could follow that there are an infinite number of worlds. This is a thrilling prospect, and I’m not yet sure what I think about it. At any rate, a picture book is a chance to enter into one moment’s world, to get to know its inhabitants and its culture, and to leave better able to distinguish “what is different and what is important.”

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse