Maurice Who?
Exploring Curated Spaces
Wolf Criers Club
Vol 24
Wolf Criers Club is a collective project of international illustrators, storytellers, and wolves exploring how we begin to get our work into the world. Thanks for being part of the pack. Let us know more about you and your creative journey in the comments.
This fall we are examining inspiration and community connections.
"My work has always been considered inappropriate. But the ones that I love, the ones that I think work as works of art and books are inappropriate." —Maurice Sendak, You Have to Take the Dive
In this issue, Colorado-based Wolf Crier Kevin Wilkins takes us in his pocket as he tours the current exhibition at The Denver Art Museum: WILD THINGS the Art of Maurice Sendak, on view now through February 2025.
A Museum is a Time Portal
by Kato McNickle
Museums are curated spaces. The word comes to us from The Ancient Greeks translating to ‘seat of the muses,’ the instigators of artistic expression in the old stories.
My Google search this morning on the origin of museums turned up more than I expected in the number of investigations and explorations into museums, their history, and innovations in the present and near future. For an interesting earful, check out this National Public Radio exploration A History of Museums: The Memory of Mankind.
When I think about museum visits, there are two shelves in my brain. One is the Student shelf crowded all of those class trips in my school-age years, and the other is marked Traveler because museum stops are part of the trip planning.
One class field trip that I made in kindergarten was to a collection of Indigenous artifacts from the Mohegan people. The Tantaquidgeon Museum is the oldest Native American-owned and operated museum in the United States. This visit made with my Gallup Hill School classmates remains vivid in my memory.
At the time, I did not understand the nature of a museum. The two people guiding the tour were adult children of John Tantaquigdeon, founder of the museum. The three-room stone structure is still in operation, but when I was six years old, I mistook the museum for a home full of old items and artwork. The full-size wigwam and dug-out canoe behind the building seemed like a fun backyard option, not a museum. The way the two curators spoke with us and guided us through the exhibits felt like we were guests in their home. It was an invitation to explore and learn.
We were shown many objects and allowed to hold things like genuine grinding stones. The history was alive with us. It was the first place I heard the stories of Sachem Uncas, a 17th century leader whose name is part of many landmarks and towns. This visit helped me understand the interconnections of people and time in our community.
And exploring the wigwam in the back, that was something my classmates and I buzzed about for a long time.
A written story is also a curated space, carefully selected words that wind the reader through a narrative. Your story is a museum of your moment in time and is intended to move forward into the time-space of the future.
What muse-driven time machine are you composing this month?
Tell us in the comments.
Maurice Who?
by Kevin Wilkins
"I think what I’ve offered is different, but not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody. It was because I was more honest than anybody." —Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, 2009
I was inspired by seeing the Art of Maurice Sendak at the Denver Art Museum.
I think everyone is inspired by looking at original artwork. Books are fine, Online is OK, a Print can come close but, seeing the original and being able to breathe on the glass so you can see the line work, the paint strokes, and where the pencil starts and stops is always a brainstorm for me. I get sensory overload looking at original artwork. It is as if the art is living and breathing right in front of you. Sometimes it is all I can do to not touch it (and that is why museums have guards posted in every room just so people like me will stop touching the work). I can’t help myself. I want to feel the marks like it was a sculpture or an object you can pick up.
If the show comes where you can see it, please go. You will see a body of work that is both personal and universal. I really did not know much of his work past the obvious “Wild Things” so to see so much more than that, 400+ pieces more, was amazing and very inspiring to say the least.
The biggest revelation was how small he worked and lots of line work but not all of it crosshatching, some but not all of it done as crosshatching.
It first looked to my eyes like he was using a small-tip dip pen for all of the ink work—maybe a Crow Quill Hunt 108 nib dip pen—but some of the pen strokes look more like mechanical pen strokes than ink dip pen strokes. Have a look at the circle he made in the photo I took below.
Below is a photo I took of one of his drawings on tracing paper for Wild Things.
The paper for the finished artwork looked to be a hot press watercolor with a little texture to it.
Where there was color it was watercolor. Sometimes the watercolor would be so thick it would look like gouache covering over the color.
Well you made it to the end. Good job!
As a reward here is an old Maurice Sendak interview and profile from 1973.
Thanks for the read.
Kevin
One of the Wolf Pack.
Kato McNickle and Kevin Wilkins composed this week’s newsletter.
Wolf Criers Club is a collective of illustrators, writers, innovators, and wolves. We explore aspects of dynamic storytelling each week through pictures and words, how to improve, and where to take it next. Why not run with us?
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The wolf-wearing-glasses logo is by Wolf Crier Michael Luk.
Kato,
I loved how you saw the museum as a someones home full of old items and artwork. I had somewhat the same growing up. Small town museums where I am from are like someone's barn. Full of old saddles, different kinds of old barbed wire, a few old farm tools etc, etc. Great story telling.