Illustrating Maine #180

Scott Nash:

It's great to be taken to another place, a place that doesn't exist. I mean, I actually find that incredibly inspiring. But the idea of being able to transport somebody to a world that is believable but doesn't exist and is pretty heady stuff.

Melissa Sweet:

That's the key is that you can tell a story simply and honestly and when it is done that way, it has a wide appeal. So it's almost like a web. You land on this one book that makes you want to find out about all sorts of other things.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine radio show number 180 illustrating Maine, airing for the first time on Sunday, February 22, 2015. If you have ever read a children's book, no doubt you know that the illustrations play an important part of the experience. Children who are often pre literate, rely on pictures to help them learn words and develop a love of reading. Adults enjoy pictures as a means of rounding out a story. Today we speak with two award winning illustrators, Scott Nash and Melissa Sweet about their work and why Maine is the perfect place for them to practice their craft. Thank you for joining us. Here in Maine. It's hard to actually understand just exactly how much wealth of creativity we really have. It's interesting to me that I can know somebody's name and then years and years later end up meeting this person and this individual that I'm talking to, Scott Nash is that person. Scott Nash is an illustrator, graphic designer and chair of the Illustration department at the Maine College of Art. He's also the owner of Nash Box Studios and he's someone that I've known about. I don't know, it's probably got to be 15 years or so it's the way it goes. And it's the way it goes that here you are today, and I get to talk to you. And I feel really fortunate that you've been able to come in today.

Scott Nash:

It's nice to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Scott, you are doing something that I think a lot of people have the opportunity to enjoy, which is illustration and also the book that you've written, the High Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate.

Scott Nash:

I'm really into short titles.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. Yes, I can see that. Yeah. And yet it's something that I don't think people know that much about. They don't necessarily know why one becomes an illustrator. They don't know how one becomes an illustrator and how one could be an illustrator who works on national shows and with national organizations and live on Peaks island the way that you do. So I'm kind of fascinated about how you got to be where you are.

Scott Nash:

Well, let's change that. We'll let people know exactly how to become an illustrator in Portland. I moved here about. Let me give you a little history. I moved here about, gee whiz, 20 years ago. I had run a design studio down in Boston, and it got a little bit overwhelming for me. I suddenly found myself managing a staff of 80 people. I really define myself as a creative person. And what's important to me is to make things. Basically, long story is, started trolling around looking for places and had good friends who were here in Maine and found it to be not only a vital creative community, but a very welcoming creative community. It's not in the least bit stodgy. I mean, we got to know people that have become, you know, in the first few couple of years of being here that are still fast friends for us. And we felt very connected to this place. And it seemed like a place where I could have sort of the best of both worlds. I could have the sort of quiet time that's needed to write and create and also find a place where I could really engage and connect with a wealth of creative talent. In Portland, up the coast, throughout the entire state. As a matter of fact, I sort of refer to Maine as being sort of a state of hidden treasures. They're constantly revealing themselves to us. And while I find that really intriguing, I also want to find a way to have them be a little bit less hidden. And that's why I'm very appreciative of being here today to talk about illustration.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, the funny thing is, in the intro, I almost said, you can't turn over a rock without finding an artist. But I thought people might think that was really negative. But I think that what you're saying is kind of the same thing.

Scott Nash:

You do have to turn over rocks to find creative people here. Because sometimes we're hiding. We've come from another place, and we're thinking that we want that seclusion. And actually, one of the questions on the survey here that was asked was, what would I do if I could do it all over again? If I could go 10 years back, it would be engage more quickly, really connect with people right from the get go. I sort of sequestered myself for a while, but now I've sort of flourished. And as we talk, you'll see that I'm really dedicated to engaging with the community, both here in Portland and throughout the state of Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that is an interesting thing that I think we've talked with other artists about. There is this the need to sequester and the need to have solitude and the need to create, but then also the very real need to connect. And in your case, the need to interact and to teach and to mentor and to be a fabric in the creative community.

Scott Nash:

I'm sorry. One of the things that I do is in my teaching is I teach my students discipline. And that discipline is actually a good thing. And the way I am finding this is more and more true of creative people is that we have to find a way to sort of compartmentalize our lives. So I have, you know, depending on how you count it, three jobs that I do, three passions. In the morning, I get up on a good day, make a cup of coffee, you know, shuffle across our deck, which we call our commute. My wife and I call our commute to my studio, where I write for most of the morning. Then in the afternoon, come into the studio at Nashbox, or I head into Maine College of Art to work with the students. And then I trundle back to Peaks island, take a boat back to Peaks, and spend ridiculous amount of hours at night illustrating. It seems to be a terrific time to create what I call ridiculous ideas. And I also embrace the idea of creating ridiculous ideas. Well, it's the main impetus and main catalyst for a lot of stuff, especially in kids media. But I think it's important for creative people and just people in general, our lives are pretty frenetic to find ways to give yourself time throughout the day to do specific tasks. And it's worked for me, and I think it works pretty well for my students as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was reading the High Skies Adventures of Blue Jay, the pirate Last night.

Scott Nash:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I know you're working on the next book.

Scott Nash:

I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Which I don't. When will that come out?

Scott Nash:

It's called the Earthly Exploits, and that is the question. Especially on Peaks island, where the kids come up to me and ask me, if I'm on the boat, why I'm not back home writing the sequel to this. But, in fact, it's a longer process. I stepped into something that was far more epic than I had anticipated. I have to say, I'm fairly surprised that I've actually written a fantasy, something that could be categorized as a fantasy adventure. And now I'm well on, pretty much through the second version of the second edition of Blue Jay the Pirate. And I have a third one in mind as well. So there's going to be, I think, three in this series.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So we don't know when the next one will come out. But you're working on it.

Scott Nash:

I am. Right. I was just evading the question.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Okay.

Scott Nash:

Yeah, no, no, it's coming out. It has to be finished. I have to really finish this up in the next couple of months, so I'm well on the way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, the thing that I like about this book, it is very rich in illustration. And that, to me, is wonderful because it reminds me of the books that I read when I was younger where there was a whole world that was created and created using illustration. And I think one of your earlier illustrations is of the boat that they are on, and they are lifting the. I believe it's the egg. And you label the various parts of the boat. And this was one of the things that I so enjoyed when I was growing up, was that there would be this world and an illustrator, an author illustrator, would take the time to actually configure the entire world and label it. And it just. It makes it so rich and layered.

Scott Nash:

Well, you're speaking to what I see as one of the primary sort of virtues of an illustrated book. I just recently read a book, what We See when we Read by Peter Mendelsohn, who was suggesting that actually novels should not be illustrated with a writer. What we should be doing is engaging in a collaborative process where we are imagining what basically the general ideas that are laid out by the author. That's fine if you have a frame of reference, if you're an adult, if you have some sort of life experience. But for kids, it's really useful to have an illustrated world, especially if it's a fantasy realm. I mean, I'm sure that as an adult, you could imagine what pirate birds would look like, but I'm guessing most people can't. And so I think having illustrated books helps to provide a context, especially to kids, for what this world is about. I used to love going through. You know, I mentioned Treasure island earlier. I used to love those books. Those are the books that I grew up with. And one of the things I especially appreciated about them is that the reading, the illustrations were sort of a reward to. Not that the reading wasn't pleasurable, but it's a reward to the reading or it enhanced the reading in very specific ways. And this is a form that. These are discussions that we have all the time at Maine College of Art. It's one of the things that I really enjoy about working in this program. We're all really passionate about narrative, about thinking about narrative, thinking about plot, thinking about character design. Not only, though, in the writing realm, but in illustration as well, in drawing. And as a matter of fact, I teach a sort of an iterative or progressive sort of process where the students will use drawing as an inspiration for writing and writing as an inspiration for drawing. It really makes the whole world a little bit more real and tangible, especially when you're working again within a fantasy realm or with subjects like. I've worked on books like Flat Stanley, about a little boy who's flattened to an eighth of an inch thick. And I would contend that that has to be illustrated because the thought, the realistic thought of a kid being flattened to an eighth of an inch thick is not a pleasant one. And so we actually do want to control that and make sure that he looks like a gingerbread boy as opposed to something else.

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Scott Nash:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

i love reading books of all different sorts and I get a lot of good information and I'm entertained. But I also, I just love a good novel. I mean, it's just something that I could sit down and I will do exactly what I used to do when I was 10 and I will just forget everything and just sit there and read this book until I am done for no particular reason. And I think there is something very enriching about that.

Scott Nash:

Oh sure, it's great to be taken to another place, a place that doesn't exist. I mean, I actually find that incredibly sort of inspiring. I love the idea of As I told you, I was surprised that I created a fantasy novel. In some ways it shouldn't have surprised me because I've been working on picture books for years. But the idea of being able to transport somebody to a world that is believable but doesn't exist is pretty heady stuff.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Scott, you've talked a lot about being productive and scheduling yourself and the things that you do and the things that get done. And these are very important, especially as an artist and someone who is self employed to some great extent. What about the times when things aren't flowing, when you don't have the great idea, when the illustration isn't readily coming to mind? And is that something that you struggle with or is that something that.

Scott Nash:

Yes, of course. I mean there's a tendency with artists, I think there's two different impulses. I talked about the divergent thinker. That's one sort of creativity. Another type of creativity is more myopic. It's called convergent thinking. You know, that's move in on one assignment and it is really, it's great to have both of those aptitudes. But sometimes when we get too much into the convergent side, you get into like going deep in something, you come up against a block because you have a narrower focus, narrower range of options. And what I suggest to any of my students or any creative person is go to your divergent side. Go to the side that is about inspiration. Start gathering, find things, walk away, sculpt something, Connect with one of the other aspects of your creative life. Sculpt, draw, sew something. Of course you can go for a walk or dance or play some music. I often will. If I'm sort of in a rut, I will pick up any one of the number of instruments that are sitting around my space and plonk away on something. And again, it gets you out of that sort of myopic sort of approach, the convergent sort of approach, and gets you thinking more expansively. I think it's important to touch that side of your creative soul, make sure that you're constantly connecting and pulling things in. That inevitably is a great way to sort of break in what we call any form of creative block. The other one, for me, that again, I referred to this earlier, and I think it really does work, especially for visual artists, is to write, draw, write, draw, write, draw. Let one inform the other. So if you're coming up against it, if you're not able to draw something, there is such thing as illustrator's block as well. You just can't get this thing, try as you might, you can't get this picture right. Then I suggest that you walk away and you start writing. Especially if you're working on something that is a narrative where the two are connected. If it's one project, switch from one to the other. Otherwise, my advice is get out and sort of. And do something else. Sometimes you can have the greatest epiphanies when you get out of, say, trying to draw something, if you move away and then start to sculpt it, the sculpture will actually inform the drawing and add, this is not meant as upon dimension to what you do as an illustrator as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I also wonder about times of transition. You describe being the head of an 80 person design organization and then making the decision to come to Peaks Island. And I think that all of us go through times where something big has happened. Elizabeth Peavey, I think, was one of our first guests on the show. Her mother died and for a long time, and she's an author for a long time, she couldn't write anything, she just needed to. She described it as letting things lie fallow. And I'm wondering if in these big times of transition, there's just some permission you have to give yourself to let things I Guess percolate away without your direct intention.

Scott Nash:

When I was in grad school, which is, I came in my first year of grad school. I'd studied graphic design at Cranbrook. The second year students were going through developing their thesis. And so it was a time of high emotion and neuroses and all sorts of things were sort of exploding throughout the department. One day I walked in and I saw my studio mate, and she was basically having a breakdown. I mean, she said, I am not worthy. I'm terrible. The work that I'm doing is awful. This is meaningless stuff sobbing away. And I just didn't know what to do. One, I had two minds. One was, there's a flighter, you know, flight response on that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Get out of there.

Scott Nash:

I gotta get out of there. I also thought, what the heck am I doing in this grad program? Because it's making people crazy. But what I ended up doing was because I couldn't think of anything else is here. Here's a book. Read it. And I gave her, believe it or not, it was the World According to Garp. It just happened to be on my shelf. And she sat there, she took it, and she read it for the next, whatever, 18 hours, 20 hours, obsessively. And I walked in, whatever, the next day, and she was crying again. I said, what's the matter? What's the matter? And she says, oh, this book was just so good. And what was great, though, it was tears of joy. But what was great is then after that, you know, she couldn't afford to get away or anything. But the book took her to another place, and she was able to sort of get it together. And she ended up creating a beautiful thesis. But it's like, here, pull yourself away from yourself for a while. That's what art does. Get away from yourself sometimes. And in this case, you know, John Irving did the trick. Thank you, John Irving. It got me through my graduate experience as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Scott, you're the chair of the illustration department at the Maine College of Art. And that, to me means that Mecca has made a commitment to illustration as an art form. Maine has had illustrators for forever and will have illustrators coming up forever. So talk to me about the legacy of illustration.

Scott Nash:

Well, you know, Maine has the distinction of attracting some incredible artists. I mean, we all know this. We know that it attracts a lot of fine artists. There's the legacy of Monhegan island and the painters there and such. But I think probably something that's lesser known is the incredible wealth both from a legacy. Standpoint but also, this continues to this day. There's incredible wealth of illustrators and writers, specifically in the children's book realm throughout Maine. And we all know part of. I think part of my attraction to Maine was Robert McCloskey's books about Maine. It's like, I want to jump off the docks. I want to do this. I want to be part of that world. So Robert McCluskey was a big inspiration. Again, everybody should know that Robert McCluskey resided in Maine. Make way for Ducklings, all of that stuff. There's Dalefip Carr, Rockwell Kent, who's known for his painting, but is also an exquisite graphic artist and illustrator. And then, of course, NC Wyeth and the Wyeth family. But NC Wyeth in particular, who's one of the great masters of illustration. Again, it won't surprise anyone that. That we've quietly built over the years quite a group, quite a cohort of illustrators here in Maine. I mean, we've got, you know, just at Maine College of Art, we have people like Stephen Costanza, Jamie Hogan, Douglas Smith. Douglas isn't working at Maine College of Art, but these are some of the illustrators, you know, sort of renowned illustrators, Marianne Lloyd, that are residing here and. And making. Not only are they making their artwork here, but they're creating. We're starting to create a very cohesive community. And part of what I'm trying to do at Maine College of Art is to increase. Not only build a very strong illustration department, but also increase awareness about illustration and the value of illustration. I mean, I think in some ways, Maine could. We could sort of claim that we are one of the centers of illustration. I mean, really, there are that many illustrators in this area. And so what we're trying to do at Maine College of Art is to create more sort of awareness, advocate for illustration as an art form. We're doing that in a number of ways. We've initiated a series of exhibitions that are at the Portland Public Library. Two years ago, we brought the Edward Gorey exhibition here, which was a wild success. We. We attracted about 50,000 people. I'm sorry, that one was 33,000 people, actually. Then it was followed by a Maurice Sendak show, which actually did attract about 50,000 people. And then the most recent one was actually one of my personal favorites, was sort of a comprehensive exhibition of the art of pulp fiction from the 30s and 40s. Next year, we're planning to do a show on its 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland. And so we're going to do a show called Wake Up, Alice, which is a contemporary illustrator's view on Alice in Wonderland. But we not only have created a strong department at Maine College of Art, we're also creating exhibitions, creating film series and starting to. I'm also creating a resource, sort of a repping site, so that people, companies like Maine Magazine or any number of media companies could connect with very easily with the creative talent in illustration that exists here throughout Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it sounds like you're doing exciting things personally, professionally, educationally. It sounds like you really have just a lot of richness to your life as a person.

Scott Nash:

I'm very grateful for it. And this place actually affords me the opportunity to be that sort of, you know, to have sort of to step into all of these realms.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Your wife, Nancy Gibson Nash, is a collage artist and illustrator. Does it help to be married to a fellow artist or.

Scott Nash:

It does. I mean, I've seen it, I've heard it go sort of both ways. And that realm. I think the fact of the matter, I think what really works for Nancy and I is that we've been dear friends for years. We've known each other for many, many years, but our disciplines are very different. I draw, she gathers things, she makes pictures by gathering things together. I joke that we used to call her a collage artist, but since she's moved to Peaks island and gathers most of her materials from the shoreline, we call her instead of assemblage artist, we call her a flotsamblage artist. And she gathers a lot of inspiration from the place. The truth is, with Nancy's connection to artwork is that I think that she has sort of a pure sense of creation in that she really is not really as interested in the business side of making art. I think if she had her way, everything would be given to people. And she's got an incredibly generous spirit. That said, she's also, you know, she has her creative practice, you know, her collage work, her flots and blage work. But then we also work together at Nashbox. She does most of the client work and a lot of the creative work as well there. So we've managed to, I think, because I think we're a case of. Of definitely opposites complementing one another. I think we've got different perspectives, but have a great and deep appreciation for each other's perspectives on the world. I'm more idea based, she's more intuitive and exceedingly giving.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Scott, how can people find out about the work that you're doing and your 30 children's books and your novel for children, I guess.

Scott Nash:

Fantasy, fantasy genre.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Fantasy genre. And the next two that are coming and all the work that you're doing.

Scott Nash:

I've got probably too many websites. There's a Blue Jay the Pirate website, which I would encourage people to go to, not only for the artwork and the story that I've created, but most. I actually think it's worth it to go to see the artwork that kids have created around Blue Jay the pirate. And then there's our studio, which is Nashbox, which can be found@nashbox.com and then my website is scottnash.com and Nancy's is nancygibsonnash.com we got all those URLs very early on. And then I would also encourage people to check out the Facebook page for Maine College of Art Illustration. We call it Illustration Mecca. And of course, take a look at the Maine College of Art website as well, which is Mecca. Edu. Is that too many?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that just about covers it. At the very least, if people have an interest in knowing more about you, they can Google you. You're Scott Nash. It sounds like any number of things will come up for them, too, if they want to find out more.

Scott Nash:

A rabbit hole.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

A rabbit hole. Just like Alison Wonderland.

Scott Nash:

Exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's really been great to talk with you.

Scott Nash:

Likewise.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's such a fascinating thing to know that there are so many people with very different sorts of creative spirits that are in the state of Maine. And I think that it's appropriate that we finally have Scott Nash on Love Maine Radio. Having now picked up this book, it must be three years ago. I knew you'd eventually make it here. We've called you here in spirit and you are here. Thank you. We've been speaking with Scott Nash. He's an illustrator, graphic designer, and chair of the illustration department at Maine College of Art. Thanks so much for coming in.

Scott Nash:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and as a small business owner, I rely on Marcie Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy. When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe. But when I do, I feel energized. Because in those moments I'm able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow. Sometimes those are the aha moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we were doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can, in fact, come true. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

as radio show listeners know, I am a huge fan of children's books, not just because I have children, but also for my own personal entertainment. Today we have with us Melissa Sweet, who has illustrated more than 100 children's books, from board books to picture books and nonfiction titles. Her collages and paintings have appeared in the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Madison Park Greetings, smilebox, and EWU Toys. She's written and illustrated three books, Balloons Over Broadway, the True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade, Tupelo Rides the Rails and Carmine a Little More Red, a New York Times best illustrated in 2005. Melissa lives with her husband in Rockport. Thank you so much for being here today.

Melissa Sweet:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You don't look that old to me. So the fact that you've illustrated more than 100 books and written three of them and working on a fourth, you're a very productive individual.

Melissa Sweet:

Well, I've been doing it for 35 years, so if we spread it out, it's a busy schedule, but not undoable, right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, you must like it, though. I think that's the thing that strikes me, is that nobody can be that productive unless it's something that you really enjoy doing.

Melissa Sweet:

I really love it. I always loved the book as an art form, so I have such freedom that I can't imagine doing anything else. I really get to stretch out and create creatively and do exactly the kind of art I want to do. And think about the size of the book. The whole nine yards is really mine and the designers after I'm finished, but it's pretty fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When we were preparing for this show, we looked in our local paper and lo and behold, there's a picture of you and you recently won a Caldecott Award is that. That's kind of a big deal.

Melissa Sweet:

It's a really big deal in the children's book world. It's definitely the Oscars for the children's book world. So the American Library association has what they call the Youth Media Awards, and those are announced in January every year. And that's when we find out who it's. The biggies, the Newbery for the text and the Caldecott for the art. And so there's an award and several honor books. And this year, my book the Right Word was garnered a Caldecott honor. So there were six books in that category. And there's the. The award went to a man named Dan Santat for a book called Beagle. It was a really great book. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also won the Robert Siebert Medal for the Right Word.

Melissa Sweet:

Yeah. So the Right Word is a biography of Peter Mark Roget, the man who invented the thesaurus. And the Cyber award is for informational books or nonfiction, but it can be a little hazy in that category. So it was incredible, really. It means that we got the material down, basically, that it garnered the cyber. It means that as far as nonfiction goes, we got it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

A River of Words, which is another book that you illustrated, got the Caldecott honor previously.

Melissa Sweet:

Yes, that was in 2009. And a river of Words is the story of William Carlos Williams, the poet. And that was. It's always incredible when the award, the call comes in and you find out you've gotten this award. But with each of these books, they've, you know, you put a lot into them, not just. Not just in creating them artistically, but there's a lot of research behind it all. For me and for the author and the publisher. I mean, we're all in on getting it as accurate as possible, yet telling a story that's appealing to kids. I mean, to be honest, I knew William Carlos Williams poems, but it had never occurred to me that you could do a children's book for kids. And that's, I think, a really exciting part of the industry now is that there's almost no subject that we can't, if it's properly crafted, become a children's biography. Children's story. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Of all the books that you have illustrated, you forwarded some books for me to look at, which I thought it was interesting that two of them were actually about doctors. Doctors who were known for not only being doctors, but one was William Carlos Williams, who was known as Dr. Williams, and the other was Roget, who we think of as the thesaurus guy. But he was Dr. Roget.

Melissa Sweet:

Right. I think that's amazing, too. And what I love about it is both of those men had to make a living, and they chose the profession of medical doctor. I mean, really different eras. So Roget was 15 when he went to med school. Med school in the early 1800s was a totally different picture than it is today. Today. So. And then, yes, William Carlos Williams was a general practitioner, so he would be the doctor that you might have grown up, you know, walking to his house where his office was, and he delivered something like 3,000 babies. So I think that's amazing. But yet William Carlos Williams would constantly wrote poems. So he would be driving to someone's house for a house call, pull off on the side of the road and work on a poem. Roget was really, I think the word I want is polymath. He invented the slide rule. He was a doctor. He invented a chess set that could travel. He had his hands in a lot of pies. And all this time he's collecting these words, classifying them. And then eventually he was fairly late in life when he created his thesaurus that eventually got published. So I love that they had all these creative endeavors, yet they also made their mark creatively with Roget.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Also, he was a list maker. It was fun to read about that because I think those of us who like making lists, you know, it's some way of kind of ordering maybe a possibly disorderly world that we live in. This guy did that. And he also seemed to like timelines.

Melissa Sweet:

Yeah. So when Roget was growing up a young man, he'd become a doctor, and he was making all these lists. This was around the time of Darwin making all his discoveries. I believe Roget knew Darwin's father, Erasmus Darwin, and also Linnaeus predates him, but also a famous classifier. And at that time, I think it's so interesting to think about, we look out, we walk outside our door and we look at the world. These people, scientists and others were looking at the world and really categorizing it. So nature for them had all this interconnectedness to small, small details that we just take for granted. We can open a book and find this information, but they were really creating the information for these books. It's pretty exciting time, the time of enlightenment. I mean, I think I would have loved to been a fly on the wall.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's fun for me to read the books that you've illustrated because the words are one thing, but then there's almost like a side story that goes along with the illustrations that you create and it really just. It just creates a much bigger picture of the story itself.

Melissa Sweet:

Thank you. I do start out with the intention of creating depth. So there's the depth of the pictures and also the words, but there's also substories. So for instance, you're holding a spread right now and you see the London in the background, peppered throughout the background. We don't have to say they're in London and what time of year it is. That can all happen through the art. There's a small map at the beginning to show a short journey after Roget's father dies and they go back to the London area. And so we don't. So what's fun in a children's book is you can do this layering where not everything has to be spelled out. In fact, it's probably more potent if it's not. If we keep the text fairly svelte and we look at other ways to tell the story, I think that we have that freedom in a book like this is amazing.

Melissa Sweet:

youm

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

wrote a book about the guy who invented essentially the Macy's Day Parade.

Melissa Sweet:

Mm mm.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you did it at least in part because you had your own interests in puppetry and marionettes and that media. That's a little unusual, isn't it?

Melissa Sweet:

Yeah, I possibly I have always been interested in three dimensional pieces that look like toys or Rube Goldberg esque sculptures, that kind of idea of movement. And I had marionettes when I was a kid. My cousins gave them to me in a theater and I remember holding them and all I Couldn't wait to take them apart and put them back together again. I had really no interest in the theater of puppetry, but I wanted to figure out how they were made and how they moved. So I was actually. The story is that I work for a toy company called Eboo. And the art director there told me about this man, Tony Sarg, and she said, oh, he's a great puppeteer and he was a brilliant illustrator. And, oh, kind of, by the way, he's the man that invented the Macy's Parade balloons. And I just couldn't believe it. I thought. I'd never thought about who invented those parade balloons. And the fact that he was a marionette maker as well just seemed so incongruous, from this very small, detailed, movable puppet to these gigantic iconic balloons. So when I began to research him, there wasn't a whole lot of information about him. I had to really piece together his story, which is kind of exciting. I felt like somebody had put an uncut diamond in my lap, that I was really careful about not talking about him too much, but still trying to find out information about him. I just felt it was sort of precious information, just that I thought, there's really a book here, but I have no idea what it is. And in the end, I had really fallen for not only him as an artist, but the volume of work he created, the housewares, the. The work he did for Macy's, you know, dishes and all the design, really. He was a designer. I loved his illustrations, I loved his puppets. But then the idea of the Macy's Parade, I had to find out what was the inception of that, what was that? Where. Where did that start? And he had his hand in it from the beginning. So the story in my book, and the story we thought would appeal to kids most is that idea of who was he as a kid. A kid who loved motion and was always rigging up things, making puppets. He had a lot of toys. His grandmother had a toy collection. So we start there and then it just seems so natural that this would be the person that would come up with these iconic balloons. And really he was. He was solving a design problem, which I loved. So that was. It was incredibly exciting. I still am quite smitten with him. Yeah. And that love of movement and three dimensions I used in my collages. The idea of you kind of are walking into his studio. So the collages were very three dimensional and they were photographed to give the feeling of what it might be like to be amongst this paraphernalia his work

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

also was influenced by the blimp.

Melissa Sweet:

Absolutely. So we're going back to the early 1920s now. And the Goodyear blimp was filled with helium. And that gave him the idea for the Macy's parade balloons. The first balloons were filled with air, and they were paraded down the street, propped up with sticks, kind of like an Indonesian shadow puppet. It would remind you of that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So.

Melissa Sweet:

So there were handlers dressed in costumes, and these balloons were gigantic, really, nothing like anybody had ever seen before. But then they wanted to get the balloons higher. So no one had ever made a helium balloon. No one had ever thought of it. He goes back to Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, who made the Goodyear blimp, and they say, yeah, we think we can do this. So what I love about this story is there was no dry run. And, you know, at a time when no one knew, were they going to, like, take off, were they going to collapse? How much helium did they need? There was none of that. They just were winging it. And that's such a refreshing thought. I think in this time with this litigious world of ours, that they just went for it. It was like the ultimate performance art, really, you know, And. Yeah. So forevermore, there were those parade balloons.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're not originally from Maine?

Melissa Sweet:

No, I am a New Jersey native, and I came here for a summer job to work at the Jordan Pond House. And I cooked there just a year or two and stayed back and forth a little bit from Boston. But really from. From then on, my toe was in Maine. So I've lived here full time a long time. And how you judge it, because sometimes it was summers and sometimes it was all the time. But, yeah, for the better part of the last 30 years, for sure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what was it about the Jordan Pond House or Acadia or Maine or what brought you up here? What kept bringing you up here until you finally settled in?

Melissa Sweet:

Well, I grew up in suburbia, so there was a little bit of. There was some woods and there was places to go on our bikes. But I remember getting north of Boston and into Maine, and it just seemed to go on forever, the woods. And it was breathtakingly beautiful. I had spent time at the Jersey shore, but never seen the ocean from that granite, craggy coastline. And Acadia is just magical. And to have the freedom to spend a summer there and have all that downtime to take a hike between lunch and dinner, or after dinner, you go up a mountain. I think that it's really wonderful. It's a really really wonderful place to land in your early 20s. And I never get tired of the landscape.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're working on a piece about E.B. white.

Melissa Sweet:

I am. I am. I am incredibly lucky. So talk about landscape. If there was anybody that recreated a sense of place, I think it's E.B. white. His writings of Maine, especially One Man's Me, I just. I never get tired of them. They take my breath away. With every reading, I hear something new. And I think that I have absolutely seen. Seen Maine through his eyes. I've seen it differently. I've seen it more acutely. Not that I didn't appreciate it before, but it's almost impossible to read EB White and not come away altered in some way. So this book that I'm working on is an illustrated biography. It's heavily illustrated with my artwork, archival photos, and a lot of quotes by E.B. white. So it's chronological and it's in chapters. So I'm thinking it's about starting age 7 or 8. Up it goes from his youth to Cornell University and how he began, you know, how he. You know, the genesis of him as a writer and the New Yorker and on. And his love of Maine and New York. And I think we've peppered it with his quotes to give kids, first of all, an opportunity to read him. Read his more adult work, which I think is completely accessible for lots of ages. And we've picked pieces that are appropriate to wherever he was in his life. Some are, in hindsight, some are right. When he was a certain age, he wrote them, and that's the quote we've used. But I think that that gives it. We were talking about depth in the right word. I think it's giving this book the depth we were hoping for. So it's not really a simple biography. It's really. It has a lot of layers.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's really wonderful that I, as an adult, can sit down and spend, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes with a children's book and learn something that I didn't know anything about before. I mean, obviously, I. I've heard of the poet William Carlos Williams and heard of Roget and his thesaurus. I know about the Macy's Day Parade, but it's something so simple, yet it just expands one's mind in such an interesting way. And the fact that it's so accessible, not just to children, but to adults.

Melissa Sweet:

Yes, thank you. That's a huge compliment. And I think that my editor and my publisher would love to hear you say that. We work, you know, E.B. white said something. I'm not going to get this quote exact, but it's something that children are a demanding audience and they're the hardest audience. You can't talk down to children. You have to talk up, really. And I think that that's the key, is that you can tell a story simply and honestly. And it does have. And when it is done that way, it has a wide appeal. So somebody can now say, you were 13 and you read a river of words about William Carlos Williams. That's an invitation to go see more of his poems or read an adult biography. For a kid, it's a young child, maybe six or seven, to read that biography. Then an opportunity to find other poets, other doctors who did other things. So I think they have this wonderful. It's almost like a web that you land on this one book that makes you want to find out about all sorts of other things. So thank you for saying that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's also so important as an adult reading with a child to be able to capture both of them. I mean, before a child can read himself, to be able to sit down and have a book that you both enjoy. And maybe for different reasons, but it's something that we don't think about. We think, okay, our audience is kids. Somehow you've managed to pull both of those in with these books.

Melissa Sweet:

Thank you. It's sort of intuitive. I don't think about that when I'm creating the art. I'm thinking, what do I like? Here's another E.B. white quote. He wrote for an audience of one. I would like to. I would like to think that when I really am sure how to approach a book, I am doing it for my. It is for me knowing that if I nail it, everyone will love it. But I have to be, you know, I'm the ultimate critic. So I shoot for making art that pleases me to no end, that I am really engaged with and that I will go to any length for. It's really. There's no. It's not a job that way. It's kind of a lifestyle. So, for instance, if I just an aside with the right word, I knew on the COVID I needed it to look like a book. I needed it to look like a thesaurus. But I didn't have the. I didn't have the ability to work to make a leather binding that might look like an 18th century binding. So I went to great lengths to find the right bookbinder to create that for me and other pieces in the book. And now that just, you know, that small detail is everything. You just never. You just don't cut any corners. So I think in the end all those details come together to make the book sing in a way that might not if you just were under deadline and not too and just going to get it out. I'm not really saying that very well. Why do I want to say that? I think it just shows up that you take that kind of care in crafting the book.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As I was reading about you, learning more about you, I was very glad to hear that you enjoyed doing spirographs and color forms and paint by number kits when you were younger. These are all things that I remember doing myself. And actually I went and bought a spirograph just the other day so I could do it again as a something year old older lady here. I think that the nice thing about things like that is that they make art accessible to all of us. Even those of us who maybe don't feel like we have an artistic bone in our bodies.

Melissa Sweet:

That's a great way to say it actually, because each of those things that you just. All those, they're toys and we're playing and it doesn't matter what the outcome is. The fun of it is learning how to use the tool or play with those shapes. And really you're designing, you're creating a design in spite of yourself and that's a fantastic thing. So you're learning two dimension, design, pattern, texture. That's all there is to do to become an artist. I mean, you have to play with those concepts. I think those toys are amazing. I hope kids are still playing with them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, they are at my house. It's not just me. Even though my children are all older now, they all look at my spirograph and they all want to take out their pens when they come over. Well, it's really been a pleasure to speak with you today.

Melissa Sweet:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been speaking with Melissa Sweet who has illustrated more than 100 children's books. Melissa, how can people find out about the work that you're doing?

Melissa Sweet:

You can find me@melissasweet.net and when you're on my site you'll find my books and it's easy to find me on Amazon as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, congratulations on your well deserved Caldecott award and thank you so much for coming in and talking to us today.

Melissa Sweet:

Thank you, Lisa. It's been great.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to Love Maine radio show number 180 illustrating Maine. Our guests have included Scott Nash and Melissa Sweet. Follow me on Twitter and see my running travel, food and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Illustrating Main show in upcoming weeks. Look forward to our conversations with Ann Gable, Allaire, Bill Allaire and Deborah Heffernan and learn how their lives were forever changed by the heart transplantation process. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sarah.