Those
SCBWI folks always make my day! This is the third time in my life time that I receive a call from Lynn and Steve with good news.
The first time was eight years ago, when they announce that I had won the
Don Freeman grant after I presented the very first illustrations of what eventually will become my book Just a Minute. A few years latter they honored me with a Golden Kite Honor.
This year? They left a message in my answering machine, to which I listen to after I came back from running with my dogs. This time my reaction was 1) to call back Lynn and Steve immediately, and 2) to try to do so by using my TV control remote.
That is what happens to my head when I am thinking with my heart.
And in their final-uncorrected-list, it is my beloved girl Little Night.
I found with delight that fuse#8 has included Little Night in the selection of her favorite books of 2007.
Pingo (little devil in Spanish) was my 2005 snowflake—the first year I participated in
Robert’s Snow fundraising.
Here is a sequence of the making of the piece.
First I built the armature with wire.
Here is my snowflake ready to be painted.
I built the basic shapes of my little devil over the armature
Pingo was made from colored Sculpey and I did almost not painting at all over the figure.
I sewed the little underwear from a knitted shirt, and the blades for the skates I shaped from the thinnest wire.
Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure starts today at 9:00am. My 2007 snowflake, Little Night: See Me Shine, a music box, will be now available for bidding and until the November 23.
So, go see and fall in love with the snowflakes!
For the second time my artwork is part of Robert’s Snow: for Cancer Cure, a distinctive fundraiser consist of online auctioning more than 200 original pieces of art created on wooden snowflakes.
I received my wooden snowflake in the mail over the summer, right at the time I was finishing illustrations for a book and before my annual trip to visit my family in Mexico. But at last, late in August I was able to work in my snowflake.
I had been looking forward to the work, for I had a specific idea for this year. I was going to use one of my book characters as inspiration, Little Night, a book I painted while learning about the fierce fight for life of two Mexican families, the Varilla Cruz Family, and Asuncion’s’ family, whose mothers and one of the children were dealing with cancer and poverty.
The other part of my idea was that I wanted to create a music box—something new for me, but that I have seen before in the work of some of my artist friends.
At last the auction will begin this Monday, and as Little Night: See Me Shine, a music box, is about to be available for bidding, it came to my attention that the description posted by the Danna- Farber foundation has led to confusion about what my snowflake is and does. Here is the question that has prompted: Does Little Night: See Me Shine glow in the dark?
It does not. My snowflake is a music box. You twist the base of piece, and it cranks the mechanism that begins a broken tune. While the tune plays, the figure of the babe standing atop of the box turns around. The music was originally a popular Christmas song, but I altered the tune by taking apart the mechanism and breaking some teeth of the steel comb.
To give a further insight of how I make my snowflake, I put together this video that I created with the help of my artist fiends. My husband and son were the photographers, my friend Miguel Martinez created the music, and another friend of my provided the recording of the music box sounds.
And so why call it “See me Shine” if it does not shine?
I would say that the shine is in the eye of the beholder. My snowflake is a wish. A wish I have from my own child, my beloved son, as well for the Varilla Cruz children and Asuncion’s kids, which are five and have nobody else in the world but their mother. My wish for all of them is that they shine.
When I showed my writer’s group my snowflake and we discussed the name of my piece, one of them, my friend Jim, sent me this writing by Marianne Williamson, which tells it all so right:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
And so here is my wish for everybody: Shine.
