Opening a World of Picture Books

Last Saturday morning, Becky Hurlburt pulled up to the Cornwall Free Library on Pine Street in a very large, tan Suburban bearing dozens of illustrations for Art Works, a month-long exhibit and sale of drawings and paintings created for children’s books, which runs at the library through June 30.

 

For Hurlburt, this idea is a natural. The woods in these hills, and in the hills beyond, have been thick with illustrators for generations — James Thurber, Mark Simont, Maurice Sendak, Sandra Boynton, Carl Chaiet, Etienne Delessert and many more. Why not organize the library’s annual exhibition and fundraiser around such gifted artists?

And Hurlburt, who worked with children’s book illustrators in New York for more than a decade, helped the library committee reel them in.

She is a pleasant, no-nonsense sort, turning up for the morning’s work in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals.

She has chosen country life and family life. But in that other world of New York publishing, she was an art director for Penguin Putnam. Her job, put simply, was to take the book chosen by editors and pair it with the right illustrator.

"It was the best job ever. But I knew it was the job or family, and I wanted a family." So she returned to Cornwall, where she grew up, and to her roots, "I’m a Scoville," she says, married, had children, volunteers now and considers public office some distant day after a bruising loss in the race for first selectman against Gordon Ridgway a while back.

Right now, though, she is reliving some of her heady past, calling people she used to work with and others whom she knows by their names and by their work to exhibit at the library.

Some of the work is riveting, like the spiraling yellow ghost in Dirk Zimmer’s "A Dark, Dark Room." Some is clever, like Sandra Boynton’s cat drawing itself, and some of it is just plain hilarious, like Elwood Smith’s drawings of animals and their leavings in the ever-popular "The Truth About Poop."

All of the illustrations are for sale (with half the amount going to the library), with prices ranging from $50 to $4,000 — that last for James Ransome’s "Red Barn," a large, frigid, scene in black and red and white.

"What I want people to see is the tremendous variation in children’s book illustrations," Hurlburt says.

This exhibit says it all.

 

 

style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial"saturday morning, becky hurlburt pulled up to the cornwall free library on pine street in a very large, tan suburban bearing dozens of illustrations for art works, a month-long exhibit and sale of drawings and paintings created for children’s books, which runs at the library through june 30.>

 June 2 is Art Works’ Festival Day, which includes the exhibit, sale of books by participating artists and book signings. A panel discussion titled "Connecting Art and Story in Children’s Books," led by Davyne Verstandig, is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; lunch, prepared by Girl Scout Troup #418, is scheduled from noon to 1:30 p.m.; storytelling at Town Hall and at the United Congregational Church Parish House runs from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.; and a workshop led by illustrator Michael Chesworth, aimed at children aged 5 to 10 years old, runs at the the Parish House from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

 

Authors Mary Pope Osborne and Will Osborne will speak from 4 to 5 p.m. — for tickets and information, call 860-672-6874; and, finally, a reception for the artists is scheduled at the library from 5 to 6 p.m. The exhibit runs through June 30.