Happy April Fools Day!
April 1, 2015
“The Chase” came to me after a walk around Lake Merced. No, there is not some evolutionary happenings at the lake that I know of, but I saw a cormorant dive into the water a had a mind picture of primordial times when a bird dove in to the water and chased a fish, who sensing danger, had it fins turn into wings just in time to take flight.
A bird chases a fish underwater and looking back the fish’s fins morph into wings so he can take flight. Design by Meredith Eliassen
This image captures an imagined moment of transformation.
Dodge and Stilwell collaborate on “Rhymes and Jingles”
December 9, 2014
The 1904 edition of Rhymes and Jingles by Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) was an exciting little volume with illustrated binding in gold embossed hunter green that features a little girl wearing a big decorated hat that attracts some whimsical butterflies. Beginning in 1874, Dodge served as editor of St. Nicholas magazine; she was credited with turning it into an American classic that spotlighted quality children’s authors and illustrators. Rhymes and Jingles was generously illustrated in black and white by Sarah S. Stilwell who employed a variety of artistic styling that reflected Howard Pyle’s illustrative sensibilities, but created a cohesive youthful take on Art Nouveau featuring a cast of fairy ladies, several working mice, and one awesome bubble-gum-popping girl:
Little Polly, always clever,
Takes a leaf of live-forever;
Before you know it
You see her blow it,
A gossamer sack
With a velvet back
How big it grows
As he puffs and blows!
But have a care,
It is full of air
Unless Polly should stop
It will crack and pop;
And that’s the end of the live-forever;
But little Polly is very clever.
Dodge described Stilwell as a “well-known artist” in 1904.
Source: Mary Mapes Dodge, Rhymes and Jingles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904).
The Child Garden where Dreams are Distilled
December 7, 2014
Beyond continuing Howard Pyle’s American tradition of illustration, Sarah S. Stilwell (1878-1939) employed elements of symbolism, naturalism, and decorative ornamentation from Art Nouveau. A series of vignettes called “A Garden of Childhood,” appeared in the December 1900 issue of Harper’s Magazine, and in it Sarah defined gardens as places where doll and fairies come to life. The first illustration, “The Spirit of the Fairy,” appears with the caption, “There is a garden where the dream thoughts of children go, and whither they carry none of their troubles with them…” Sarah’s illustration depicts a lady, “the Mother of Wisdom,” who tells the children “wonderful things,” she can be found in gardens where nature is subdued, ordered, selected, and enclosed. Here, the spirit of the child was thought to emerge. Here, Sarah’s imagery suggests symbolic objects or spirits in the garden are forever on the threshold of becoming or being whatever the child breathes into them. They are private vessels (similar to dolls) into which hopes, fears, sorrow, and magic make-believe dreams are distilled.
In many cultures play serves a functional purpose in learning adult roles and life skills. Sarah may have grown up in rural Delaware County, Pennsylvania, but as an adult she enjoyed apartment living in Philadelphia. Her caption for “The Pine-tree” reveals a pragmatic philosophy of play: “Children played amid the branches in the pine-tree house… It seemed to the children that their play was very real, and they were inclined as seriously to it as grown-up people are serious about things in their life.”
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