My first book
Recently I was cleaning out my paper storage bins and came across the final art for my first illustrated book, Come Home Before Dark, published in 1993. I had been working in the schools as an artist-in-resident for a couple of years, rolling art supplies on a cart from classroom to classroom, teaching drawing and painting skills to grades K-12. I was listed as a visual artist on the roster for COMPAS Writers & Artists in the Schools; a program that helped bring professional artists and writers into the schools to share their experience and enthusiasm with the students. Every year the students who had worked with the poets, playwrights, and storytellers were asked to submit their work for possible inclusion in an anthology of works selected by one of the writers in the COMPAS program. And every year COMPAS selected a visual artist from their roster to illustrate the cover and six interior sections or themes. In 1993 I was selected as the illustrator and the sublime author, Sheila O’Connor was the editor. The title of the book Come Home Before Dark, was quoted from one of the student’s writings. There were six themed sections, also named from the student’s writings: I. Childhood Was Like This, II. If You Want To Know Me, III. A Key That Can Open My Heart, IV. So I Tell You Right Now, Good-Bye V. Where Magic Can Secretly Happen, VI. My Place In The World.
When I created the illustrations for this beautiful anthology, I was a new mother and a sculptor, as well as an artist in the schools. I had no idea that a year later I would illustrate my first picture book, Mud, published with Harcourt, Brace & Co. in 1994. Nor did I imagine the experience of creating pictures to illustrate the words of others and eventually my own words would become what I loved to do most in the world. And it all began with this first book.
Thank you to COMPAS and to to the editor, Sheila O’Connor and most of all, to those brilliant and inspired young writers!