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Re: ccbc-net digest: September 24, 2014
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From: Susan Guevara <susanguevara_at_jps.net>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 19:45:12 -0600
> This image seems to bring technology,
> tradition, religion, modernity, and more into one image. I'm wondering
> if these illustrations and others with technology use in the book reveal
> more of those complex dichotomies you refer to in your discussion of
> your illustrations for the book. If so, can you tell us more about this?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Emily Townsend, Librarian
Thank you for your kind comments, Emily. Without meaning to oversimplify my process, my first starting point is the script. The fact that Abue bought a security system and that Ro keeps a phone in her pocket dictated a certain "era" for this visual world. By also setting the story in a small rural town in northern New Mexico, I felt at liberty to include uses of technology I have encountered there.
When I first moved to NM (this most recent time) I lived in El Rito and quickly became involved with the public library there. In the 20 years since my very first stay in El Rito (after graduating from Art School), the library went from being in a single wide trailer at the intersection of the 3 main roads in town to owning its own building and land. It now boasts 8 or so computers for free community use, a beautiful children's room, a a large, light filled fiction room, and a wonderful non-fiction room large enough to accommodate presentations and musical events and having a modern AV set up and giant pull-down screen. We also have a community room which is used for kids summer art classes and the regular meetings of the quilting group among other things. The small kitchen in that room allows us a place to whip up batter for the annual Board of Directors pancake breakfast and is a good place to keep all the home baked chocolate goodies donated for our annual "Death by Chocolate" fundraiser during the El Rito Studio Tour.
All that said, we still have trouble bringing our local kids into the library. And those that do come, come mostly to email, use FB or play games on the computers. As a board member for several years, I co-ordinated a program between the library and the grammar school designed to promote literacy and help our kids take "ownership" of their library. We bussed the after school program children to the library once a month for an event. We awarded a "Super Reader", someone excited about reading, each month with a free book of their choice. And "Tia Sue", the Library's Auntie aka yours truly made frequent visits to the elementary school to hand out announcements, award certificates, and to just generally become a recognizable presence with gigantic spectacles and an enthusiastic attitude. The kind of cutbacks we've had in education here led to a four day school week and the school's library being open once every other week. I believe the school librarian traveled between 4 different schools in the district-- 2 grammar schools, the middle grade school and the high school. Yet, 1.5 miles away from the El Rito Grammar school is the El Rito Library ready and waiting. The Placitas Road, where the public library sits, just seems too far out of the way for some families in this town of 1700. I mention these things as a lay person, not an educator by degree, and my observations and experience are those of a volunteer, and not someone who was raised in this particular culture or small town. And actually, I have said quite a lot about this in a presentation some years back to ULA, comparing shaping a vision for a rural library much like shaping a vision for a picture book. The bottom line? A library, like a book, has a life of its own. And my task is to listen. Listen for the life of that library (or book) to speak its needs. Don't decide ahead of time what those needs are and push the river in an attempt to meet my own goals no matter how right or earnest I think I am. I learned that the hard way--as a library volunteer and a bookmaker.
It's not uncommon to see a couple of kids on an ATV putting along on the side of the Caņon Road in El Rito on a late summer afternoon. I'll never forget how surprised I was to see a local rancher, whose pasture was next to the adobe I was living in at the time, rounding up and cutting out his cattle for branding using ATVs instead of horses. Or the time I was distracted from my studio my first year living on the Caņon road by the raucous bleating of sheep and lambs passing my gate as they were driven up the road and into the Carson National forest for a summer of grazing. It can be a little tricky in fall and spring on that road if you happen to need to get out of town--or even to the post office--when ranchers are taking livestock up to graze or bringing them down from the mountains for the winter. Even if you're the state police, I reckon.
So have I made reference to these types of dichotomies in LR? I've painted what I've seen. Maybe shifting things slightly to serve the needs of my story's world. Like the enormous dish on top of Abuela's casita in the woods. That is a bit tongue in cheek but not so far from the truth. For example, I was picking up something from a well-known and respected musician for our annual library auction and entered his living room to find one large couch and across from it the most enormous flat screen TV I have ever seen in a private home. And that was all that was in that room, those two things. But the room next to it! That room seemed to have every imaginable stringed instrument known to the region from the 1700's forward. I imagine Abue's gigantic dish to be like that gigantic TV screen.
I suppose those are a few of the dichotomies I experience in this rural town, Emily, perhaps anecdotally told, but I hope it addressed your question some.
Susan
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Received on Thu 25 Sep 2014 08:46:13 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 19:45:12 -0600
> This image seems to bring technology,
> tradition, religion, modernity, and more into one image. I'm wondering
> if these illustrations and others with technology use in the book reveal
> more of those complex dichotomies you refer to in your discussion of
> your illustrations for the book. If so, can you tell us more about this?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Emily Townsend, Librarian
Thank you for your kind comments, Emily. Without meaning to oversimplify my process, my first starting point is the script. The fact that Abue bought a security system and that Ro keeps a phone in her pocket dictated a certain "era" for this visual world. By also setting the story in a small rural town in northern New Mexico, I felt at liberty to include uses of technology I have encountered there.
When I first moved to NM (this most recent time) I lived in El Rito and quickly became involved with the public library there. In the 20 years since my very first stay in El Rito (after graduating from Art School), the library went from being in a single wide trailer at the intersection of the 3 main roads in town to owning its own building and land. It now boasts 8 or so computers for free community use, a beautiful children's room, a a large, light filled fiction room, and a wonderful non-fiction room large enough to accommodate presentations and musical events and having a modern AV set up and giant pull-down screen. We also have a community room which is used for kids summer art classes and the regular meetings of the quilting group among other things. The small kitchen in that room allows us a place to whip up batter for the annual Board of Directors pancake breakfast and is a good place to keep all the home baked chocolate goodies donated for our annual "Death by Chocolate" fundraiser during the El Rito Studio Tour.
All that said, we still have trouble bringing our local kids into the library. And those that do come, come mostly to email, use FB or play games on the computers. As a board member for several years, I co-ordinated a program between the library and the grammar school designed to promote literacy and help our kids take "ownership" of their library. We bussed the after school program children to the library once a month for an event. We awarded a "Super Reader", someone excited about reading, each month with a free book of their choice. And "Tia Sue", the Library's Auntie aka yours truly made frequent visits to the elementary school to hand out announcements, award certificates, and to just generally become a recognizable presence with gigantic spectacles and an enthusiastic attitude. The kind of cutbacks we've had in education here led to a four day school week and the school's library being open once every other week. I believe the school librarian traveled between 4 different schools in the district-- 2 grammar schools, the middle grade school and the high school. Yet, 1.5 miles away from the El Rito Grammar school is the El Rito Library ready and waiting. The Placitas Road, where the public library sits, just seems too far out of the way for some families in this town of 1700. I mention these things as a lay person, not an educator by degree, and my observations and experience are those of a volunteer, and not someone who was raised in this particular culture or small town. And actually, I have said quite a lot about this in a presentation some years back to ULA, comparing shaping a vision for a rural library much like shaping a vision for a picture book. The bottom line? A library, like a book, has a life of its own. And my task is to listen. Listen for the life of that library (or book) to speak its needs. Don't decide ahead of time what those needs are and push the river in an attempt to meet my own goals no matter how right or earnest I think I am. I learned that the hard way--as a library volunteer and a bookmaker.
It's not uncommon to see a couple of kids on an ATV putting along on the side of the Caņon Road in El Rito on a late summer afternoon. I'll never forget how surprised I was to see a local rancher, whose pasture was next to the adobe I was living in at the time, rounding up and cutting out his cattle for branding using ATVs instead of horses. Or the time I was distracted from my studio my first year living on the Caņon road by the raucous bleating of sheep and lambs passing my gate as they were driven up the road and into the Carson National forest for a summer of grazing. It can be a little tricky in fall and spring on that road if you happen to need to get out of town--or even to the post office--when ranchers are taking livestock up to graze or bringing them down from the mountains for the winter. Even if you're the state police, I reckon.
So have I made reference to these types of dichotomies in LR? I've painted what I've seen. Maybe shifting things slightly to serve the needs of my story's world. Like the enormous dish on top of Abuela's casita in the woods. That is a bit tongue in cheek but not so far from the truth. For example, I was picking up something from a well-known and respected musician for our annual library auction and entered his living room to find one large couch and across from it the most enormous flat screen TV I have ever seen in a private home. And that was all that was in that room, those two things. But the room next to it! That room seemed to have every imaginable stringed instrument known to the region from the 1700's forward. I imagine Abue's gigantic dish to be like that gigantic TV screen.
I suppose those are a few of the dichotomies I experience in this rural town, Emily, perhaps anecdotally told, but I hope it addressed your question some.
Susan
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Received on Thu 25 Sep 2014 08:46:13 PM CDT
