By: John Shelley,
on 2/15/2009
But what about the pictures? I hear you say.
A lot of work on display was from my published books etc, especially my last two picture books The Boat in the Tree (Front Street, USA) and The House of the World (Benesse, Japan). The latter title is part of the Benesse Worldwide Kids series in Japan and is not available in the shops, so here's a couple of spreads that were on display.
By: John Shelley,
on 2/13/2009
Daughter Seren and I are back in the chilly UK now after 3 wonderful weeks in Tokyo. My exhibition Kingdoms Curious at Pinpoint Gallery was a great success, with over 200 attendees over the two weeks. Following the show I gave a presentation to SCBWI Tokyo on creating "Power Portfolios", if I get some event snapshots I'll post them here, but in the meantime here's a few snippets from the exhibition.
Seren made herself very useful setting up the show.
A few panoramas of the gallery. Pinpoint is a relatively small space, but ideally located right in the middle of the fashionable Aoyama district and highly focused on children's books. For a book illustrator it's the perfect size for a solo show. There were 32 pictures on display altogether, mainly from my published picture books like The Boat in the Tree and The House of the World, but with a number of graphic works created especially for the show too.
The majority of images represented a selection of work from the last three years.
I was in the gallery for around 4 hours every day. Seren was occupied by a growing number of activities, games and gifts and was an angel... for the first week at least!
A few of my more recent books released in Japan were on sale, like the Japanese edition of Jenny Nimmo's Charlie Bone series (Tokuma Shoten), and Zipper-kun to Chaku no Maho (Rironsha).
These are fantastic John! Great energy, engaging drawing, electrifying palette.
Karen Lee
Hi John - I agree with Karen Lee! And in addition, I like the joyous colour washes of these backgrounds! Delighted to be able to glimpse your Tokyo exhibition here - a long time since I've been on jacketflap. I'll come back more often now!
Bridget Strevens-Marzo