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Couple's work might be last show in museum gallery
By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art and architecture critic
Published on Sunday, Apr 12, 2009
The Akron Art Museum might be showing the last of its children's book illustrators in the Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery.
The gallery currently houses a gorgeous exhibit, The Global Artistry of Leo and Diane Dillon, displaying many of the superb award-winning illustrations of the husband-wife team.
But this incredible show might be the gallery's swan song, according to Elizabeth Wilson, Akron Art Museum director of marketing communications.
''The Corbin Gallery was part of the museum's education department, which is no longer part of our budget since the cutbacks,'' Wilson said.
''Mitchell [Akron Art Museum Director and CEO Mitchell Kahan] and the board will be looking into what will be done with the space.''
''We're hoping to be able to continue our children's book illustrators exhibits, however,'' she added. ''We are discussing the possibility of doing larger exhibits up in the Isroff Gallery. So hopefully, our tradition of showing outstanding children's book illustrators will continue.''
If this is the gallery's last hurrah, it's certainly going out on a wonderful high note.
For more than 50 years, Leo and Diane Dillon have collaborated with authors and publishers to create award-winning children's book illustrations.
Considered to be among the most talented and versatile illustrators in this country, they have earned back-to-back Caldecott Medals, two Coretta Scott King Awards and the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, among many others.
The current exhibit was organized by the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature in Abilene, Texas, and originally consisted of more than 70 works, but for the small space of the Corbin Gallery, the Akron Art Museum had to cherry-pick 28 of the best for viewing here.
The works come from 14 children's books, including Whirlwind is a Spirit Dancing, Aida, To Everything There is a Season, The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, The Girl Who Spun Gold, Mansa Musa, Earth Mother, Who's in Rabbit's House?, Harriet Tubman, The Hundred Penny Box and Northern Lullaby.
The exhibit coincided with the 25th annual Virginia Hamilton Conference for the discussion of multicultural themes and issues in youth literature at Kent State University, where the Dillons spoke earlier this month.
The Dillons have known each other since art school. They both arrived at Parsons School of Design in 1953 — he from Brooklyn, she from Los Angeles — and it was rivalry at first sight.
''We sat next to each other and for three, four years we competed . . . bitterly,'' Leo Dillon said. ''Unfortunately or fortunately, we fell in love and decided that we couldn't spend any time away from each other.''
In addition to their work in children's books, they have collaborated on notable science fiction and fantasy books, including Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen (1979), Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree (1988), and many of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books in 1994.
The artistic process
The pair developed a collaborative working style: ''We came on the concept of the 'third artist,' which was a combination of the two of us who does something that neither one of us would do separately,'' Diane Dillon explained.
''When we look at a piece after we've finished . . . it's impossible to figure out who did what.''
Their combined knowledge and abilities seem truly encyclopedic. They are able to create works that look like medieval Persian miniatures, scenes that remind us of 19th-century Art Nouveau, Gustav Klimt-like characters, as well as those that resemble batik prints.
When they begin working on a book, they work from the first page to the last, without jumping around, because they want the images to have continuity.
They do hundreds of thumbnail drawings, passing them back and forth until they find the images they like. Then they expand and elaborate on those images and work them up into preliminary drawings.
They use a blue pencil for the drawings, because they say it has no character. Blue pencils once were used for making corrections, because their blue marks didn't show up when the works were photographed for reproduction.
The Dillons are known for their airbrush techniques but also use watercolors and pastels.
The collection
The sepia-hued illustrations for The Hundred Penny Box, written by Sharon Bell Mathis, were done in watercolor applied with cotton. The light areas were treated with water and bleach applied with a brush, and some areas were softened with an airbrush, according to a note at the end of the book.
The duo won back-to-back Caldecotts for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears, written by Verna Aardema (1976) and Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, written by Margaret Musgrove (1977).
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears is like a visual version of the children's game of Telephone, where, instead of quickly whispered phrases, events are interpreted by different animals as they see them. The white pages tell the story as it happened; the dark pages reflect each animal's interpretation. The style of the illustrations, created with airbrush and watercolor, is inspired by the traditional batik fabric dyeing and printing process.
Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions is an alphabet book that derives its letters from the diversity of African cultures. The Dillons represent each group with a different letter of the alphabet. Each illustration includes a dwelling, a family, an animal, a bird and a landscape.
The Dillons said they wanted to convey that ''Africa isn't just one big place, but that like the rest of the world, there are many, many cultures.''
The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, written by Virginia Hamilton, is a compilation of traditional African stories brought to America by slaves. Some of them might be familiar to the generation of readers who remember Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. The stories have been taken from a variety of sources, however, as the author's extensive bibliography attests.
Moreover, they have been rewritten in a more modern form, instead of the exaggerated colloquialisms that writers like Harris felt reflected the quaint appeal of 19th-century rural black dialects. Thus we are spared the difficulties of trying to read those narratives, not to mention the belittlement they implied.
Shorn of the more blatant ''Uncle Tomisms,'' these stories take on new life, and we are once more able to enjoy them.
One of the stories was told to my father, uncle and aunts when they were children to make them behave. The story, Little Eight John, was about a boy who always disobeyed his parents, and in the end Old Raw Head and Bloody Bones came in the night and rubbed him out, literally.
The specter of Old Raw Head and Bloody Bones was raised in my dad's childhood to prevent childish curiosity from venturing into the attic. It was said that the fiend lurked there (it also happened to be where my grandparents hid presents).
The first version of The People Could Fly, which takes its title from the last story in the collection, was published with the Dillons' black and white illustrations. After Hamilton died of breast cancer at age 65 in 2002, the book was republished as a memorial to her with all new illustrations by the Dillons.
The Dillons' work concerns itself with the shared experiences of humanity, rather than its differences.
''We have a lot in common,'' Diane Dillon said. ''It is our beliefs that divide us. We have little control over what life brings us, but we can change our thoughts.''
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.
The Akron Art Museum might be showing the last of its children's book illustrators in the Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery.
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Comments
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akron, oh
Posted 11:30 AM, 04/12/2009
It is a fabulous exhibit. Take a magnifying glass with you to appreciate some of the detail in their works. Very sorry we only got to see part of the touring collection.
Atlanta, GA
Posted 12:14 PM, 04/13/2009
Just as it's important to distinguish between African cultures, I think it's important to distinguish between those who recorded dialect and those who mined it for condescending yuks.
Joel Chandler Harris's "exaggerated colloquialisms" were in fact a precise record of different dialects, with a careful distinction between, say, the dialect from Middle Georgia and the Gullah dialect from the barrier islands.
Lumping Harris's contribution to folklore with those authors who belittled their black characters for broad jokes is a little bit like lumping the Beatles in with the Monkees.
