A few months ago we took a family trip to Davenport, IA, to visit one of my drawings. The artwork is part of the Tails from Tales exhibition at the
Putnam Museum and Science Center. Tails from Tales features taxidermy displays and art inspired by various children’s picture books. The exhibition will be on display until May 2024.
Come one, come all!
I was one of 19 local (from Iowa and Illinois) illustrators chosen to have their art in the exhibit. We created our pieces, then sent digital image files to the museum. The artwork was then reproduced large-scale; my drawing, titled “The Tree of Life,” was reproduced at twice its original size with a faux frame around it!
I love that the exhibition logo is a book with a fox tail for a bookmark!
My drawing is inspired by the book
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. In the book, a man comes to chop down a large tree in the rainforest. He gets tired and lays down to rest. While he is sleeping, many animals (and even a little boy) whisper in his ear about why the tree is important to their ecosystem. When he wakes up, he sets down his axe and leaves.
“Tree of Life” pen and ink drawing on watercolor paper by Haley McAndrews, original size 24”x24”
The pen and ink drawing shows the silhouette of a large tree. Inside the tree is a variety of plants and animals native to the rainforest. There is a small silhouette of a person with an axe at the base of the tree, and even a weeping cut into the tree near him. I did play around with adding some digital color to the piece but in the end I decided to keep it black and white.
I lost track of how many hours I worked on this drawing, but I wanted it to have so many details that a visitor to the museum could come back and look at it over and over again, and still find something new in the tree. There are animals and plants of all types and sizes, including a jaguar, puma, iguanas, various insects, birds, flowers, leaves, and bees. There is even one small boy (who also comes to the tree cutter in the book.) The jungle in the background has a few different types of textures – from lines to dots to geometric swirls (a texture that has reoccurred in my artwork since I was 16.)
My youngest and I posing with my drawing!
I chose
The Great Kapok Tree as my inspiration because I have an affinity for trees in my artwork already (
which you can read about here). I grew up in a military family (we moved across the country more than once) so trees represent both growing up as well as putting down roots and having a history in one place. This drawing, showing all the different animals that would be affected by the tree being cut down, is a perfect example of a
tree of life.
I don’t know about you, but I could spend hours here.
In addition to the art on the walls, there is a cozy reading area set up with benches, a soft rug, pillows for sitting on, and many of the books featured in the exhibition! This way, visitors could read the stories that make up the display. While I didn’t take pictures of everything in the Tails from Tales exhibit, I will show you some of my favorites (to see the full exhibition, go visit the Putnam!)
You know, the story where the mouse saves the lion from the net!
There are also taxidermy displays that depict different books and stories as well! The one above showed the lion caught in the net with a small mouse near his front feet, from the “The Lion and the Mouse” from
Aesop’s Fables. Another display showed a tiger in a jungle, from
The Jungle Book.
The Polar Bear Son is a story about an unconventional family.
This display featured a polar bear and Inuit, showing a scene from
The Polar Bear Son, an Inuit tale retold by Lydia Dabcovich. In this story, an Inuit woman adopts and raises a polar bear as her own son.
“Minn of the Mississippi” digital art by Atlanta Dawn, original size 24”x30”
This piece immediately caught my eye! It has the style and feel of a woodcut, but was actually created digitally by artist Atlanta Dawn. I love the warm, muted, five-color palette. The details and textures in this illustration are beautifully rendered. This piece was inspired by the book
Minn of the Mississippi, by Holling Clancy Holling.
“Light and Shadow – Survival” hand-painted, kiln-fired stained glass by Sam McFarland, original size 21”x22”
This piece, inspired by
Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, was created by Sam McFarland out of stained glass! It shows five realistic animals (one predator and four prey) painted by hand on the glass as well as a rocky landscape and green foliage, all hand painted on glass. The geometric border around the scene is brightly colored in the three primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, and gives the whole piece a great energy with repeating black lines and dots.
"The Wind in the Willows, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" digital painting by Jason Platt, original size 38.5"x48"
This digital painting by Jason Platt is inspired by
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. I’ve read this book a few times since I was a kid, as I will always adore anthropomorphic animal characters in books. Platt was able to accurately convey the mixture of both joy and terror caused by Mr. Toad’s reckless driving.
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" digital collage by Kelvin Mason, original size 48"x48"
A favorite book in our house, our copy of
The Very Hungry Caterpillar has seen better days. I’ve never seen a rendition quite like this one by Kelvin Mason! I love the little violet shoes on the butterfly’s feet, and the way Mason digitally collaged the various foods to create the butterfly wings.
"A Party for Pooh" digital illustration by Kylie Morency, original size 48"x32"
The last piece I’ll mention specifically is also digitally created. The word I keep returning to to describe this illustration is “soft.” The colors are soft, not too bright, and the outlines aren’t in black but instead in the same hue as the solid colors. The style and characters are drawn in a distinct, adorable way. My girls also loved this piece – enough to pose with it!
There is so much more to see in the Tails from Tales exhibit, I couldn’t possibly fit it all into one blog post. And this only covers one room in the Museum and Science Center! We really loved exploring the different levels of the building, and my girls were well-engaged the whole time (their favorites were the interactive parts, of course!)
Visitors to the Putnam Museum and Science Center will be able to experience the Tails from Tales exhibit until May 2024. You can find more information about it on the Putnam’s website,
www.putnam.org. You can also follow
the Putnam on Facebook.
