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December Issue
2009
Greenville County
Museum of Art in Greenville, SC, Features Illustrations by William
Steig
Parents
and children can enjoy art and storytelling together as the Greenville
County Museum of Art in Greenville, SC, presents, William Steig:
The Man Who Never Grew Up, an exhibition of children's book
illustration, on view through Jan. 3, 2010.
Born in Brooklyn, Steig
(19072003) was a celebrated cartoonist who published some
1600 cartoons and 120 covers for The New Yorker before
he tried his hand at children's picture books. Born into a creative
family, he was the son of a house painter who dabbled in fine
art and encouraged his children to pursue careers in art and music
rather than labor or business. Steig took his first lessons in
drawing from a brother and began cartooning for his high school
newspaper. He spent two years at City College of New York, three
years at the National Academy of Design, and five days at the
Yale School of Fine Arts before dropping out.
When his father went broke during the Depression, twenty-two-year-old
Steig began selling his art to support the family. In those early
days as a freelancer, he also earned some money in advertising,
but it was a field he disliked. He is also known for carved wooden
sculptures that are owned by several museums in New England.
Steig began his career as children's author and illustrator at sixty, when a colleague asked him for a submission to the newly organized Windmill Books imprint at Harper & Row. Just three years later, he won his first Caldecott Medal for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, the tale of a donkey who found a pebble that grants wishes. A charming story, the book became controversial in some parts of the country because it satirically depicted police officers as pigs.
Steig
was also a masterful storyteller. His cast of characters is filled
with mice who help elephants, frogs who fly, and a farmer who
pulls his mule in a wagon when the animal hurts an ankle. In 1990,
he created the great green ogre named Shrek, who teamed with a
donkey (named Donkey) to rescue the princess Fiona. It is a story
that became part of pop culture when DreamWorks brought the characters
to the screen, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy,
and Cameron Diaz.
Organized by the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature, The Man Who Never Grew Up features illustrations, sketches, watercolors, and hand-lettered texts. It's an opportunity to examine the artistry of the author/illustrator but also to follow his process of creation.
Thousands of school children from the Upstate will enjoy tours of the exhibition in the coming weeks, led by volunteer docents who will read to them and provide gallery activities that help the children assimilate Steig's work as both entertainment and education. Families can run their own tours using activity sheets found in the galleries. Free tours for groups of ten or more are available by appointment. For information about these tours, call Museum Educator Terri Steck at 864/271-7570, ext. 17, or send an e-mail to (tsteck@greenvillemuseum.org).
For further information
check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
864/271-7570 or visit (www.greenvillemuseum.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2009 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2009 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.