Kyra Teis

Imagining Stories

Look! Written & illustrated by, Kyra Teis

 

Reprinted with permission from

the Times Union, Albany, NY

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Author Interview

A storybook takes shape

Niskayuna illustrator uses geometry to tell the tale

 

By Tresca Weinstein

While she was painting the illustrations for her new board book, "Look!," Kyra Teis solicited feedback from a focus group of one: her 6-month-old daughter, Bella.

"I'd hold a painting up in front of her and if the liked it she would giggle, and if she didn't, she'd just go about her business," says Teis, a children's book illustrator and author who lives in Niskayuna. "I actually did scrap a few paintings because she didn't respond. So the book is officially baby-tested."

With nine double-page spreads exploding with lines, squiggles, geometric shapes and luscious colors, "Look!" is an anomaly in the children's book world, which focuses heavily on bears, farm animals and, of course, small people. It's a first foray into abstract illustration for Teis, whose previous work includes illustrations for "Daughters of Eve, Strong Women of the Bible" by Lillian Hammer Ross and "Read to Me" by Judi Moreillon.

"Look!" was inspired by Bella, who turns 2 this month, and by Teis' late father, Dan Teis, an abstract artist whose paintings hang on nearly every wall of the house Teis shares with her daughter and her husband, Jeff Zonderman.

Bella "responded so enthusiastically to his paintings," Teis says. "They're full of really bright color contrasts, color combinations that really zing and pop. I wanted to create something babies would respond to in that same way."

It was a natural fit, particularly since Teis learned the collage technique she uses from her father. Her medium is paper - fresh white paper, newsprint, sometimes even junk mail - that she's spattered or blotted with layers of acrylic paint, creating a myriad of visual textures and patterns. She often creates a palette of papers in specific hues for a particular book.

Then she cuts or tears the paper into shapes and collages them into a composition, a process the compares to quilting. She uses a pencil sketch as a sort of blueprint for the illustration, and for her richly detailed figurative work, she paints faces and hands with a brush. Teis explains and shows the entire process on her web site (http://www.kyrateis.com).

"Look!" is the first book Teis has written as well as illustrated. The simple exclamations and questions - "Squiggle. Squiggle, can you see lines that wiggle?" - reflect the kind of patter parents often find themselves engaging us as a subtext to the books they read to their children. "I had been reading (Bella) all these little baby books, and I realized that with every book, another conversation was going on between me and the baby" as she pointed out colors and shapes in the illustrations, Teis says. "I didn't want the book to be too didactic, but planned it so the different pages would talk about different concepts."

"Look!" even has its own teacher's guide, created by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, with suggestions for activities that compliment the book, from painting with pudding to making music and movements that match images in the illustrations.

Teis studied folklore and religious art at the University of Delaware, where her father was chairman of the fine arts department, and went on to earn a master's degree from Boston University's school of theology which hosted two exhibitions of her work. Her first assignment as an illustrator came in 1996, for Cricket Magazine, which she'd read voraciously as a child. One of her fondest dreams back then was to have her pictures published on the page featuring children's artwork. "Every month I'd send in my artwork, and it was never accepted, she says with a laugh.

From magazine illustration, Teis moved on to books, mostly for the 8- to 12-year-old set, including "The Healing Tree" by Kathleen Maresh Hemery; "Babka's Serenade" by Marianne Zebrowski and "Grandfather Hurant Lives Forever" by Susanna Pitzer. Her illustrations ate featured in "Speaking of Me," a journal for teenagers with inspirational quotes, written by Beth Mathers, that will be released this winter. Teis begins work this month on adapting and illustrating the Mozart opera "The Magic Flute" for children, and she'll be illustrating a book of Edith Baer's poem "Words Are Like Faces"; both are set for release next year.

Teis is also brainstorming ideas for an abstract book for toddlers and kindergarteners as a follow up to "Look!."

"This book could never have come out of me if hadn't had a baby" she says. "My approach to reading children's books completely changed after Bella was born. Even the simplest baby books I read much more critically because I know what she responds to and, as a parent, I know what I want to read to her."

Her favorite illustrators include Brian Wildsmith and Eric Carle, but the artist to whom "Look!" is dedicated is Teis' father. Since board books have no title page, she added a handwritten dedication in the corner of the very last page. "This book really was a tribute to my dad," Teis says. "I have lived all my life with the beauty of his artwork on my walls."

When her father died in 2002, Teis helped clean out his studio in her parents' house and salvaged many of the papers he had painted but never used in a collage. She added them to her own drawers full of blotted paper, sorted by color."His papers and mine are so intermingled that a lot of his papers end up in my books," she says. "Every book is a combination of both of us."

 

Tresca Weinstein, a freelance writer from Canaan, NY, is a regular contributor to the Times Union.