{"id":15807,"date":"2020-03-30T21:34:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T01:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=15807"},"modified":"2020-03-31T08:40:16","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T12:40:16","slug":"tomie-depaola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2020\/03\/30\/tomie-depaola\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview With \u2018Strega Nona\u2019 Artist Tomie dePaola, Who Died Monday At Age 85"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomie dePaola<\/a>\u2014the New Hampshire artist and children\u2019s book creator who won the Caldecott Honor for his 1975 book \u201cStrega Nona\u201d about a kindly witch\u2014died today at age 85.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Associated Press reported<\/a>: \u201cDePaola died at the Dartmouth-Hancock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, according to his literary agent, Doug Whiteman. He was badly injured in a fall last week and died of complications following surgery.\u201d Coronavirus was not a factor,\u00a0according to R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, where dePaola exhibited his artworks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tomie dePaola was born in Meridien, Connecticut, in 1934. His stories often drew on his own life\u2014his childhood and family, his Catholic faith, his family\u2019s roots in Italy. Since illustrating his first children\u2019s book in 1965, he authored and illustrated more than 270 books including his 2000 Newbery Honor Award book \u201c26 Fairmount Avenue\u201d and his pioneering 1979 book about a young gay child, \u201cOliver Button Is a Sissy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I telephoned dePaola at his home in New London, New Hampshire, in fall 2009 to interview him<\/a> on the occasion of his career-survey exhibition, \u201cDrawings from the Heart: Tomie dePaola Turns 75,\u201d at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts.<\/em><\/p>\n

He was then recuperating from carpal tunnel surgery on his drawing hand and various other ailments that forced him to very reluctantly cancel his fall book tour. We spoke about his process; about his fascination with folk tales and legends of Europe, Mexico, Native America, and the Catholic church; about his faith; about what it\u2019s like to be a gay children\u2019s book author and illustrator; and about his love of New England. Below are some excerpts:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, c. 2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Tomie dePaola: \u201cIn those early days, picture books, we weren\u2019t able to use full colors. It was just too expensive. So the books were printed in what was called pre-separation. It would be a black base plate and then overlays. The color would be chosen in either line application or half-tone application. If you were lucky you got three colors. The average was two colors \u2013 black and one color. On many of the books, there was black and white on one page and on the following page black and the color. So I was getting messages from little kids saying, \u2018You forgot to color in the whole book.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI use acrylic. Years ago I was doing watercolor. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve done anything in watercolor since after the first \u2018Strega Nona\u2019 [1975]. Because \u2018Clown of God\u2019 [1978] is in acrylic. They developed an acrylic that was strong enough that you didn\u2019t have to put it on thickly. You could water it way down and it would still hold its integrity. And it was light fast. That became very important because back in the \u201870s there was a beginning of the growing market\u2013 which is still growing \u2013 of original children\u2019s book illustration as art. And people buying it as art. Like the Michelson Gallery in Northampton<\/a>, and the Cove Gallery in Wellfleet and certain other galleries across the country that actually sell original children\u2019s book illustration. So that\u2019s when I switched to acrylic \u2026 On top of that I do paintings and drawings that are non-books. A lot of people don\u2019t even know I do that except the people who go to see my gallery shows at various places. I\u2019ve always shown in art galleries as well as through the book publications.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, autographed title page of “Strega Nona,” 1975.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any secrets of working. I get an idea. I discuss the idea with my editor. It goes around and around. Then I sit down and write the text. Sometimes the text comes very easy. And sometimes it\u2019s a real struggle. There are different kinds of texts that just are cranky and others that just flow out onto paper. And then always the editorial process, which is a very interesting process for me, discussing it with the various editors that I work with. In the meantime, we kind of are settled on the size. That, of course, is all agreed upon by sales and marketing these days. And bookstores, because bookstores don\u2019t like books that are too big, that they can\u2019t shelve. So there are sort of standard sizes. And I discuss that with my art director. Then I start to fool around and see how I want to express the art in this particular book coming up and what technique I\u2019m going to use and what materials I\u2019m going to use. Quite often, if the book is one of my autobiographical picture books or a \u2018Strega Nona\u2019 the style is pretty well set. The \u2018Strega Nona\u2019 books all look alike, and they should. The same with the books about myself as a little kid. Then I have a chance to branch off into things like \u2018Adelita\u2019 [2002], the Mexican Cinderella story that I created. Then I branched out recently into some little forays into collage. There\u2019s a book called \u2018Song of Francis\u2019 [2009] and I did that all in collage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYears ago the great artist Ben Shahn, I heard him give a lecture called \u2018The Shape of Content.\u2019 He strongly felt that the old masters and the pre-Medieval painters, like Giotto and Fra Angelico, their shapes and their style were really in sync with the content of their images. Fra Angelico used the Romanesque rounded arch over and over again to set up a rhythm of calmness. And he only painted calm scenes. There\u2019s very few Fra Angelico crucifixions. They\u2019re mostly annunciation or birth of Christ, etcetera. For me that\u2019s part of my personal training. \u2026 Certainly if I\u2019m going to do a New England group of folk tales or folk sayings I\u2019m going to make the landscape and people look as New Englandy as possible, and the same with Mexican or Italian.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to do sketches. So I go from little tiny thumbnails on toilet paper to pencil drawing on my expensive watercolor paper and go right to finishes. I give them the option, I say, \u2018I\u2019ll do it over if you insist.\u2019 But, of course, they don\u2019t ask me to do it over very much. Every once in a while. Not too often. I found out there\u2019s some people that thrive on doing these elaborate sketches, layered sketches. I find that my art dies. I lose the spontaneity of the spirit of my hand, my signature, my calligraphic line.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the most important things for the visual artist is to have self-criticism. Most artists I know know when they do something really lousy. And if they don\u2019t know they\u2019ve done something lousy the kids will tell them. They\u2019re not shy about it at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from “The Clown of God,” 1978.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the 1950s, you considered becoming a monk? \u201cYes, at the Benedictine community and Western Priory in Weston, Vermont. The monastery is still there. There\u2019s 12 men. They\u2019re very good friends of mine. As well as the Benedictine nuns at Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut. I think it was more that there were other things for me to do with my life, and one of them was to really and truly be a full-fledged artist. If you\u2019re a monk artist, you\u2019re really divided in your priorities. But I\u2019ll never regret any of the minutes I spent in the monastery, or my wanting to explore it, because it certainly added to my own personal spiritual life. I consider myself a good Benedictine in my soul. As I say, I\u2019m still very friendly with the Benedictines. I was only there about six months the first time. I tried three times \u2013 1956, 1966 and then a very brief couple weekends in \u201970, \u201971. I gave it the good old school try.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sister Corita Kent: \u201cWe showed at the same gallery [Botolph Gallery in Boston]. We became friends. We were kind of in the same Catholic liberal [group]. This was during the Vietnam War, and there was a whole group of us, and a lot of contemporary liturgical artists. From the time I was in art school I was always interested in contemporary liturgical art, because I always thought the art of the contemporary Catholic church was horrible, sentimental. And when you compared it with the beautiful pre-Renaissance, the beautiful Gothic cathedrals and the Romanesque carvings, spirituality had gone out of the buildings and the artwork. I\u2019m talking about the kind of church I went to as a child. It was all the glass-eyed statues and all this over-decorated stuff and these sappy stained glass windows. You go compare a window at Chartres or Notre Dame de Paris to Boston Cathedral, one is schlock and one is art. That is not to say there aren\u2019t some beautiful contemporary [churches]. In fact if you want to see some incredible contemporary stained glass windows go to St. John\u2019s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Their abbey church was built by Marcel Breuer. And several of his friends, including Josef Albers, did the windows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from “The Legend of Old Befana” 1980.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThat was a very interesting time to be a liberal Catholic. The Berrigan brothers were alive and well. I was teaching at Newton College of the Sacred Heart at that time, the early \u201860s. I was actually teaching in the Boston area and living in New York. So I was commuting. It was a quite interesting time because of the Berrigan brothers and the Immaculate Heart Sisters in Los Angeles and Corita and a wonderful man named Norman Lalibert\u00e9, who still lives in the Boston area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lalibert\u00e9 \u201cdid these incredible banners. The bunch of us were all excited because suddenly the church \u2013 whatever that meant \u2013 had the opportunity to be a patron of the arts again. But it was short lived. It got very confusing. And I think what happened is there was stuff going on in the Vatican, they saw power slipping away and suddenly this whole thing came to a grinding halt.\u201d<\/p>\n

DePaola left the Catholic Church around this time. \u201cThe writing was on the wall that the political forces that were going to control the church were more conservative and more party line and not interested in maybe more social justice, etcetera. I think a lot of people did get very disillusioned. \u2026 Then the Vietnam War started and we kind of took our energies from trying to make our sacred spaces more sacred and less sentimental.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from “Strega Nona,” 1975.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c\u2018Strega Nona\u2019 was based on an old folktale called \u2018The Porridge Pot Story.\u2019 That was kind of de rigueur. Illustrators were doing a lot of folk tales because librarians loved them. I was brought up with my mother reading me folk tales and legends. I loved folk tales and legends. I think it\u2019s just that it touches part of the soul of man.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve done big public lives of saints. \u201cThis is an interesting thing to me. I\u2019ve gotten sort of pegged doing, you just said, \u2018big lives of the saints.\u2019 Now I\u2019ve done four small picture books on the lives of certain saints. And they\u2019re certain saints that are kind of appealing to non-Catholics as well as Catholics. And not a one of them has any proselytization in it. I did it because they were good stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see the legend of St. Christopher as a very beautiful legend. St. Christopher was thrown out of the calendar of saints during Pope Paul VI. When that happened I said, \u2018Oh, come on, that\u2019s ridiculous.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t matter whether he truly lived or not. The legend has a message to it and it\u2019s a beautiful legend, and I\u2019m going to rewrite it and re-illustrate it. \u2026 I\u2019m interested in these saintly figures or Biblical figures or traditional figures that are gentle like this gentle giant [Christopher], like Benedict and Scholastica, who actually lived, and formed Western monasticism. And who knows whether Pascual lived or not. That\u2019s another little legend, a Spanish saint, the patron saint of cooking. And the way these people become saints of whatever they\u2019re doing is sometimes really interesting, kind of childlike, and it\u2019s a good story. There was a great English spiritual writer of the late \u201830s, early \u201840s, her name was Caryll Houselander. I loved her writing very much. She was a very, very deep spiritual writer. She made the statement once that people should publish these wonderful legends and stories about the saints because they read like fairy tales. I said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s a very interesting idea. I think I\u2019m going to try that.\u2019 And it\u2019s part of my growing up. I heard those stories as a child. \u2026 And nobody seemed to care whether Christopher really lived or not. I loved it when he was thrown out of the calendar of the saints and several Jewish friends of mine said, \u2018Well, I\u2019m not getting rid of my St. Christopher medals.\u2019 Everybody I knew had St. Christopher medals because he was the patron saint of travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from “Oliver Button Is a Sissy,” 1979.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What is it like to be a gay children\u2019s book artist? \u201cIt\u2019s probably one of the best fields to be gay in frankly. I found out right from the get-go it made absolutely no difference amongst the editors and the professionals. I imagine there\u2019s some danger if some born-again Christian school out in Midwest finds out. \u2018Oh my God, get him out of here.\u2019 But I\u2019ve never had any problems with it. And, of course, there\u2019s so many gay and lesbian people in the field that it\u2019s sort of a moot point. I think it allowed me the opportunity when I was a child not to waste my time batting my head against other people on the football team but to sit and draw. And to take tap dancing lessons and find out about the great world of the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which comes up in your book \u201cOliver Button is a Sissy\u201d (1979): \u201cThat book is still in print. But I have to say that personally I\u2019ve never had anything really horrendous happen to me, that I\u2019ve had to \u2018face.\u2019 And now I really do think it\u2019s a moot point. Barbara Lucas, who was my editor for \u2018Oliver Button,\u2019 I think she was pretty brave to publish it back when it was published. It\u2019s had a long life. And I don\u2019t think it got pulled off shelves as much as the more politically-oriented books like \u2018Heather Has Two Mommies.\u2019 Because of the age of the character of the book, sexuality doesn\u2019t play a part in it at all. \u2026 It was about being different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from \u201cFront Porch Tales & North Country Whoppers,” 2007.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How did you come to the New England tales in \u201cFront Porch Tales & North Country Whoppers\u201d (2007)? \u201cI live here. It\u2019s about time that some of these old New England shaggy dog stories are resurrected and put in a collection, at least the beginning of a collection. And, who knows, there may be another volume of those. I moved to New England in 1956. Right out of art school, I entered the monastery. Then left, and came back almost immediately to live in the town of Weston, Vermont, in the middle of the Green Mountains. It was a little mountain village. We were pretty isolated every winter. You\u2019d have to drive all the way over to Bromley and Route 7 to get to Rutland from Weston. We really did have mud season. There was no such thing as paved roads. There were a lot of these wonderful Yankee stories. And a lot of them are getting lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSince I\u2019ve lived in New London from \u201972 I\u2019ve seen a huge change. A lot of the old timers have died off. There are a lot of people moving in from Massachusetts and Connecticut. The kids don\u2019t have farm work to do after school anymore. It\u2019s a totally changed community from what it was when I first moved here. It was a very agricultural community. We do have a nice farm stand. We do have some sort of nice farms. It\u2019s mostly a retirement community for people who have moved to the country for \u2018the good life.\u2019 And, of course, what they want is the good life that they used to have in Massachusetts. So I wanted to preserve some of those very funny stories. And I hadn\u2019t seen anybody doing it in a way that I felt I could do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from “Little Grunt and the Big Egg,” 1990.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re part of the fabric of the culture, of the place. If I express some of those things that are in \u2018Front Porch Tales\u2019: \u2018Have you lived here all your life?\u2019 \u2018Not yet.\u2019 I\u2019ve never heard that joke from somebody in the Midwest. They have different jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s that story in \u2018Front Porch Tales\u2019 of my friend Jack and I being invited to sit with Maude and Frank Stevens one Saturday night. And that\u2019s an absolutely true story. We sat there. We didn\u2019t say a word. Maude made fried doughnuts. We sat there. The clock ticked. Finally, Lonnie Fuller said, \u2018Well, I\u2019ve got to be going. Really nice sittin\u2019 with you, Frank.\u2019 We got in the car and I was like, \u2018What the hell was that all about.\u2019 We didn\u2019t say a word. Nobody said a word. And I wasn\u2019t about to because I was the youngest one there. I was 21. And I was an artist. And I had been with those monk fellows for a while. It was like going to the moon. But it was fascinating and it was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were really were these old timers that would sit on the front porch of the country store and just have comments about everything. I really did hear, my own ears, I heard an old farmer on the front porch of a store, when a tourist stopped and said, \u2018Excuse me. Do you know the way to Rutland?\u2019 he said, \u2018Aiyah.\u2019 And that was his answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

What keeps you in New England? \u201cIt\u2019s that independence. It\u2019s that hard working. It\u2019s the change of the season. It\u2019s the fact that we still have town meeting here. It\u2019s the urban quality but it doesn\u2019t have this frightening Plains huge expanse of prairie that I find a little disturbing. Whereas people that come from the Plains and come to a small New England town feel hemmed in. I said once to some school children, they said, \u2018New Hampshire\u2019s very small on the map.\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, no. It maybe looks small on the map, but there are a lot of mountains in New Hampshire and if you ironed it all flat it would be just as big as Minnesota.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from \u201cThe Art Lesson,” 1989.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from \u201cThe Art Lesson,” 1989.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, “Strega Nona’s Harvest.” (Courtesy R. Michelson Galleries, Northampton, Mass.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, “An Apple for Strega Nona.” (Courtesy R. Michelson Galleries, Northampton, Mass.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, cover of “Strega Nona,” 1975.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, from “Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs,” 1973.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, cover of “The Clown of God,” 1978.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tomie<\/a>
Tomie DePaola, “Artist at Work.” (Courtesy R. Michelson Galleries, Northampton, Mass.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomie dePaola\u2014the New Hampshire artist and children\u2019s book creator who won the Caldecott Honor for his 1975 book \u201cStrega Nona\u201d about a kindly witch\u2014died today at age 85. The Associated Press reported: \u201cDePaola died at the Dartmouth-Hancock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, according to his literary agent, Doug Whiteman. He was badly injured in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15812,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,107],"tags":[725,727,302,211,726,728,723,544,303,724,722],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15807"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15807"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15848,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15807\/revisions\/15848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}