Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 27, 1995 TAG: 9509270017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
David Wisniewski has learned, however, that an entire picture book can have a more concrete value: 800 size 11 Exacto brand knife blades.
That's how many of the blades Wisniewski, a children's book author and illustrator, dulled and discarded while making the elaborate cut-paper pictures for his first book, "The Warrior and the Wise Man."
So he sent a copy of the published book off to the Exacto company, along with a note pointing out a mention of the company's name in the back of the book and explaining how many blades he used.
Exacto responded by sending him 800 more size 11 blades - for his next book, they said.
Hey, an artist - starving, commercial or otherwise - has to take what pay he can get.
Six years later, Wisniewski has gone through about 4,000 more blades and published four more children's picture books.
Three of his original cut-paper illustrations are part of the current "Dreamweavers" exhibit of fantasy art at the Art Museum of Western Virginia.
While "Dreamweavers" is not limited to children's book illustrators, several of the 15 artists do work in the same field as Wisniewski. In connection with the show, he was in Roanoke last weekend to speak about his craft and background.
His highly detailed cut paper illustrations are like nothing else in the show, or even in his genre. But then, Wisniewski's training to become an artist isn't what you'd call typical anyway.
The strange journey began when he got up one morning and strapped on a pair of big shoes.
Really big shoes. Red ones.
It was 1972, and Wisniewski had just enrolled in Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College.
He subsequently spent a few years clowning around with famed animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams - and getting paid for it.
Eventually tiring of the road, he "ran away home from the circus" and took a job with a puppet show in his native Maryland.
He married the boss, Donna Harris, and the two started their own shadow puppet company.
From cutting out puppets, he got pretty good with a knife. And from writing puppet show scripts, he learned how to tell a story. He published that first book in 1989. And now the former circus clown is in a show of fantasy art.
But first things first. What the heck is fantasy art?
"Well, it's more than just Dungeons and Dragons," says Bristol artist Charles Vess. He co-curated the show in connection with the William King Regional Arts Center in Abingdon.
Sometimes fantasy art is just what you'd think - fairies and unicorns and pointy-eared imps mixed with knights and damsels in distress and spread evenly on a medieval landscape. Sometimes it's not.
Take, for instance, Michael William Kaluta's watercolor, "The Fate of Dollies Lost in Dreams." It shows a bed flying against a stormy sky. A frightened girl peers over the edge of the bed at a rag-doll tumbling helplessly through space.
"There are beasts and dragons out there," Ruth Sanderson, another of the artists in the show, said in a lecture at Hollins College last week. "Life is not entirely safe. Children need to know this."
Vess, whose colored ink pictures are of the "pointy-eared imp" variety, wanted to show "the broadest possible spectrum of fantasy art. I did not want it completely contained to book-jacket art."
The result is a collection of 40 illustrations from children's books, science-fiction books, comic books and collectors' plates.
Vess spent two years putting together the show, which traveled from its birthplace in Abingdon to Tuscon, Ariz., Findlay, Ohio., and Northampton, Mass. before coming to Roanoke.
"I looked for work by artists who, even if in a commercial medium, still injected their personalities into it," he said.
Wisniewski's three pictures - from his books "Rain Player" (Clarion 1991), "Sundiata, Lion King of Mali" (Clarion 1992) and "Elfwyn's Saga" (Clarion 1990) - might be the most distinctive in the show.
They are many layers of brightly colored paper deep, with tiny detail that any self-respecting rice-carver would envy. We're talking right down to individual blades of grass and the wrinkles in the character's knuckles.
Wisniewski's books are inspired by the myths and legends of other cultures, like the Maya, the African and even the Vikings.
"If you turn out skim milk," Wisniewski says of picture book art, "the book is a one time read. But if you turn out something rich, people will keep coming back to it."
Sanderson says she has found her "artistic home" in fairy tales. Her oil on canvas paintings are in the potions and princesses vein.
"I guess I've got the 'Pre-Raphaelite' fever," she said, referring to her penchant for red-headed dames in flowing medieval gowns.
She has both illustrated others' work and written her own fairy tale, "The Enchanted Wood" (Little, Brown, 1991).
Her paintings, like "The Silver Wood" from "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" (Little, Brown, 1990), are remarkable, Vess said, because they don't have a single traditional fantasy element - no unicorns or fairies - yet they have a strong fantastic mood.
Sanderson uses photographs she takes with models as inspiration. Her paintings are highly realistic as a consequence, yet Vess said "the feeling and the color just put you in a different world."
Sanderson said she frequently attends fantasy art conventions and wins awards.
Wisniewski doesn't mind being included in the fantasy genre, either. He's just happy to be in the show with some "real heavy hitters" in the illustrating world, like Brian Froud and Jerry Pinkney.
"Dreamweavers" begs the question of whether illustration qualifies as "art." It's an old debate, Wisniewski says. His favorite example is the subtitle of a coffee table book of Norman Rockwell paintings: "Artist and Illustrator."
According to Wisniewski, that's like saying "Artist and Ditch-Digger."
He has no problem with getting paid for what he does.
"Some people call it selling out," he said. "I call it making a living. I call it using my art."
Sanderson, likewise, suffers no identity crisis in the world of fine art. She studied the old masters at the "very tradtional " Paier College of Art in Connecticut, but wanted to be an illustrator from the beginning.
"I just decided phooey on what other people thought."
There's something pleasing about seeing your art in book form, Vess said, even if it is smaller.
"Plus, you don't have to sell your original."
``Dreamweavers" will be on display in the second floor gallery of the Art Museum of Western Virginia in Center in the Square though October 15.
by CNB