Roanoke, VA 24012  USA

Hi All,

    First let me thank everyone for the B’Day wishes.  I would never remember a birthday if my sister didn’t remind me so I’m impressed that anyone thought of mine.  Of course Facebook helps.

Tuesday Jane and I attended the re-opening of the main branch of the Roanoke Public Library.  She and I had worked together for years at the Roanoke County Public Library.  Jane left to work in the Roanoke City Schools as a school librarian and, though now retired she is involved with almost every reading project that takes place here.  Many of the library buildings in  Roanoke County and Roanoke City are being renovated and expanded which says a lot for the people who live here who have to pay the bill. 

Yay Libraries!!!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNIUWv9_ZH0  is the Newbery Winner Neil Gaiman telling why reading and libraries are so important.

Ru

We arrived downtown 30 minutes early so walked the few blocks to Bread Craft Bakery and  Café which Jane insists has baked goods to rival those she and Peter have eaten during their many visits to Paris.

106 S. Jefferson St. Roanoke, VA  540-562-4112 Monday- Saturday   7am-2pm http://www.breadcraftbakery.com/Bread_Craft/Cafe_Menu.html

Everything looked tempting but I’d had a giant bowl of Grapenuts for breakfast so settled just for coffee which really was good too.

The weather forecast had been for storms but thankfully the rain held off until Tuesday evening and the library ribbon-cutting could go as planned.  Mayor Bowers and Library Director Sheila Umberger were able to get in their remarks and the ribbon was cut before the bits of drizzle began.

Jane outside the library waiting for the ribbon cutting.

Sheila is in blue and Mayor Bowers is to her right.  I don’t know the lady in black but then I’ve been away for years and Randal and I lived in Roanoke County with its own officials. Two school sent their little people for the opening and a talk by children’s book author Rosemary Wells

Filming it all for Roanoke Valley Television is our bike buddy/friend Hank Ebert.

$3.27 million renovation,  an additional 2,500 square feet,  $150,000 worth of books added

Jane walking over towards the Children’s Area

A city scape acts as a stairway wall

Of course more computers

To help celebrate the re-opening of the library, Rosemary Wells was invited to explain to the children in the audience and those of us interested adults how she creates her characters and her illustrations. I found it quite interesting and the children were really well behaved so maybe they enjoyed it as much as I did.  When Rosemary Wells told the children there was only one correct way to hold a pencil to draw or referred to sandpaper as something their father’ would have I was a bit taken aback. Women use sandpaper and I’ve seen lots of ways to hold implements for drawing.   But Wells is a famous illustrator and I’m not and she did have some wonderful art tips I’ll try to explain later.

“Born in New York City, Rosemary Wells grew up in a house "filled with books, dogs, and nineteenth-century music." Her childhood years were spent between her parents’ home near Red Bank, New Jersey, and her grandmother’s rambling stucco house on the Jersey Shore. Most of her sentimental memories, both good and bad, stem from that place and time. Her mother was a dancer in the Russian Ballet, and her father a playwright and actor. Ms. Wells says, "Both my parents flooded me with books and stories. My grandmother took me on special trips to the theater and museums in New York."

"When I was two years old I began to draw and they saw right away the career that lay ahead of me and encouraged me every day of my life. As far back as I can remember, I did nothing but draw."

A self-proclaimed "poor student," Wells attended the Museum School in Boston after finishing high school. It was, she recalls, "a bastion of abstract expressionism an art form that brought to my mind things I don’t like to eat, fabrics that itch against the skin, divorce, paper cuts, and metallic noises."

Without her degree, she left school at 19, married, and began a fledgling career as a book designer with a Boston textbook publisher. When her husband, Tom, applied to the Columbia School of Architecture two years later, the couple moved to New York, where she began her career in children’s books working as a designer at Macmillan. It was there that she published her first book, an illustrated edition of Gilbert & Sullivan’s I Have a Song to Sing-O.

Rosemary Wells’s career as an author and illustrator spans more than 30 years and 60 books. She has won numerous awards, and has given readers such unforgettable characters as Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora, and Yoko. She has also given Mother Goose new life in two enormous, definitive editions, published by Candlewick. Wells wrote and illustrated Unfortunately Harriet, her first book with Dial, in 1972. One year later she wrote the popular Noisy Nora. "The children and our home life have inspired, in part, many of my books. Our West Highland white terrier, Angus, had the shape and expressions to become Benjamin and Tulip, Timothy, and all the other animals I have made up for my stories." Her daughters Victoria and Beezoo were constant inspirations, especially for the now famousMax board book series. "Simple incidents from childhood are universal," Wells says. "The dynamics between older and younger siblings are common to all families."

But not all of Wells’ ideas come from within the family circle. Many times when speaking, Ms. Wells is asked where her ideas come from. She usually answers, "It’s a writer’s job to have ideas." Sometimes an idea comes from something she reads or hears about, as in the case of her recent book, Mary on Horseback, a story based on the life of Mary Breckenridge, who founded the Frontier Nursing Service. Timothy Goes to School was based on an incident in which her daughter was teased for wearing the wrong clothes to a Christmas concert. Her West Highland terriers, Lucy and Snowy, work their way into her drawings in expression and body position. She admits, "I put into my books all of the things I remember. I am an accomplished eavesdropper in restaurants, trains, and gatherings of any kind. These remembrances are jumbled up and changed because fiction is always more palatable than truth. Memories become more true as they are honed and whittled into characters and stories."

Her writing career has been a "pure delight," she says. "I regret only that I cannot live other lives parallel to my own. Writing is a lonely profession and I am a gregarious sort of person. I would like someday to work for the FBI. A part of me was never satisfied with years of tennis. I still yearned to play basketball."

Rosemary Wells has a keen understanding of what matters to young children. The author and illustrator of more than sixty books, she has created unforgettable characters such as Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora, and Yoko. Her appealing stories capture the emotional charge of a child’s world.

While her stories are primarily directed towards children, Ms. Wells knows that they are not her only audience. As a writer and illustrator, she strives to "appeal enough to the sense of humor in the mother and father or teacher or older brother or grandmother who is reading so the child will feel the laughter and the enjoyment in the reader’s voice and want the book again and again and again."

http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/wells

Rosemary Wells

Drawing and signing a drawing for each of the two schools that had brought their students

Her characters behaviors were based on her children’s behaviors

Origami paper is one of her tricks for patterns and added textures, and perhaps were used for the clothes on the characters above.

Paint pigment is mixed with gum arabic to make the exact color that she wants

Her daily warm up is to paint this house drawing  though I don’t know if it’s the same colors each time

Rubber stamps are used for background or when she needs patterns.      It’s so cool!  She takes some rice, cheerios, lentils or even straw and fills the screen of a photo copier making it a fairly even square.  (One ingredient per square though you could mix I would think)  She takes the copy of the image and has a rubber stamp made.  After drawing the image of her characters she covers them with a plastic protective layer.  Next she paints or inks the stamp and then stamps the background        The green is from the straw stamp.  I think the other is a nail brush dipped in paint.  She runs her finger over the brush and splatters the background.   When the background is complete she lifts the plastic and the character is still clean.

I was fascinated by the colorful beads or accessories adorning the children’s hair.  The kids were all so photogenic that I’d have taken lots more pictures but I wasn’t sure how the teachers or parents would feel about that so I just sort of shot quickly and cropped.

Or you can take the elevator or stairs!

I loved her wistful expression; probably wishing she was going down the slide too.

New reading porch at the front of the library and the sculpture by Betty Branch Once Upon A Time bronze, life size Ronaoke Public Library, Main Branch, Roanoke, Virginia has one as does the Chapel Hill Public Library, Chapel Hill, North Carloina  and Phieffer College, Meisenheimer, South Carolina http://bettybranch.com/public-works/a-friend-for-life/ is a link to the sculpture of a boy reading that’s at the South County location of the County Library System    I have been lucky enough to have met Betty Branch and visited her beautiful home thanks to my pal Martha who knows Betty through shared art experiences. “Betty Branch earned both her BA and MA in Studio Art from Hollins University. Proficient in both Painting and Sculpture, served as an apprentice to acquire technical skills (Miles and Generalis Sculpture Services in Philadelphia), and embarked on periods of independent study to expand and reinforce her knowledge of art history and art techniques in Greece, Italy, and The Bahamas. She has spent a portion of many years working at Nicoli Studios in Carrara, Italy. And notably, she was the only American Exhibitor invited to the first Salon International de la Sculpture Contemporaine in Paris, 1990. Over a thirty-year period, she has focused on the female form and has defined female rites of passage in both traditional and unorthodox media-bronze, stone, fiber, ceramic, terra cotta, earthenware, and straw. Branch’s award winning art has been exhibited internationally and has been the subject of television documentaries. Her works, from small to monumental, are in many private, corporate, university, and museum collections. She has produced a number of commissioned works, has had solo and group exhibitions, operates her own studio and gallery, has been included in many national and international publications including most recently ‘Sculpture Review’ and ‘National Sculpture Society’ and has exhibited in prestigious exhibitions including New York’s Annual International Art Exposition, and the Brookgreen Gardens Invitational, SC.”    http://bettybranch.com/biography/

My hair I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty Oily, greasy, fleecy Shining, gleaming, steaming Flaxen, waxen Knotted, polka-dotted Twisted, beaded, braided Powdered, flowered, and confettied Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghettied! Lyrics from the musical Hair So of all the people at the library re-opening including the library director, mayor, city manager, library board members, staff…. Look who ends up in the newspaper, Jane and me.  My friend Sarah said she thought she recognized my hair but then when she saw the camera, she knew for sure.    Sometimes my hair is a bit calmer but it had been muggy that morning.  I think it’s ironic that I shot all the hair photos and then it’s my hair that ends up in the newspaper!  When I worked in my library people would come in and ask for the “woman with the hair.”  And the teens called me poodles.  When I learned that from a “grown up teen” I was pleased as she and her friends had been a handful so I expected a nickname much worse.