Like a Kid in a Candy Store: A Talk with Seymour Chwast About His Eric Carle Museum Exhibit

Take a trip to Amherst, Massachusetts and undoubtedly you may find yourself in the vicinity of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art at some point. Home to many an entrancing exhibit, the one I’d like to focus on today concerns a certain Mr. Seymour Chwast. Called Kid in a Candy Store: The Picture Book Art of Seymour Chwast, the show is slated to run until April 14th of this year and is, “the first museum exhibition to focus on Chwast’s books for children.” Or, as the press release said of him:

“The legendary career of graphic designer Seymour Chwast spans nearly seven decades. Beginning in 1954, as a co-founder of Push Pin Studios, Chwast and his colleagues revolutionized entire categories of visual culture ranging from book jackets and poster design to product packaging and illustration art across all media. Throughout this fertile period and beyond, Chwast created more than 40 picture books and today, at the age of 92, has more on the way! His profound contributions to graphic design, however, have long overshadowed the picture book side of his career—until now.”

The show has been curated by the great children’s literature historian, Leonard Marcus, who also wrote an entire essay about Chwast that you may read here. For my part, I had a chance to ask Mr. Chwast some questions about all of this. After all, it seems to me that if you get your own exhibit, it would behoove the rest of us to hear what you have to say:

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Betsy Bird: Mr. Chwast, thank you so much for taking some time to answer my questions. And congratulations on this, your first exhibition focusing solely on your picture books for children. How were you initially approached about this show?

Seymour Chwast: The curator for the show, Leonard, has been following my work for many years and asked me if I wanted to have a show and I said “Great! I wanted to have a show for quite a while.” 

BB: You’ve alluded to the fact that the show was curated by Leonard S. Marcus. Had you a sense of the overarching themes in your children’s books over the decades until this point? 

SC: A sense of play is very important. Design is always important to me, especially in poster design and I apply a lot of what I’ve learned to my children’s books. I like to put unexpected verbal or visual concepts that will engage the readers. I have been inspired by many artists. For instance Lothar Meggendorfer, a great 19th century artist who perfected the idea of pop-ups in books. I also draw inspiration from the innovative Italian illustrator Bruno Munari, and from Maurice Sendak, André François, and Maira Kalman. At one time Ezra Jack Keats and I were neighbors and I used to enjoy watching him doing four color separations. I admired his patience and ability. What he did was labor intensive and it was worth it because the results were beautiful and inspired me. He did The Snowy Day, for instance, which became a classic.  The students of children’s book illustration should be required to study the work of these artists. 

BB: And what is your assessment of Leonard’s selections?

SC: I could not have done a better job myself. 

BB: The show consists of 30 original illustrations from nine of your picture books. Out of curiosity, how do you prefer to store your picture book art? 

SC: At the time when we were planning the exhibition the art was piled neatly in flat files in my studio. It was easy for Leonard to access and we spent many hours looking at it together. More recently, my work has all become part of the permanent collection at Washington University of St. Louis. 

BB: Did you have any difficulty locating some of the pieces Marcus requested for the show?

SC: Two or three books were out of print and I no longer had a copy. They were difficult to find. Many of the books were done before digital art, and so my editorial assistant Camille Murphy and I had to digitize the older books so that we could enlarge the images for the gallery walls. 

BB: I only just now realized that your editorial assistant is my husband’s cousin, Camille. Doggone it, it’s a small world we live in!

Now the limitations of the 32-page picture book form are upended in a variety of ways with many of the books that are in this exhibition. I’m thinking specifically of the six-foot-long Keeping Daddy Awake on the Way Home from the Beach (1986), the three-dimensional paper-toy animals of Paper Pets (1993), or the gatefold in Traffic Jam (1999). When you were creating such books were you inspired by any other artists or designers or did these come entirely out of your own head? 

SC: When I first saw Bruno Munari’s books I realized that the form of a book could change and become an object — almost anything I wanted that the budget would allow.  The idea for books that unfold, in particular, came from Harriet Ziefert, with whom I have done many books. The story is revealed as you unfold the book to one long illustration that is five feet long. 

BB: The list of picture books you’ve produced over the years begins in 1970 and only ends as recently as last year with two separate publications. How do you feel that your children’s book style altered and changed over the decades? 

SC: I don’t feel my sensibility and drawing have changed. But, the technique has gotten somewhat looser and more spontaneous. Now, I draw on paper and the computer is used to collect the work into book form, make changes and add color. I design as well as illustrate my books and submit them ready for the printer. Work coming out of the computer is also useful for sending the proposal around to publishers. 

BB: Finally, will we be seeing more children’s books from you in the future? What’s next on your plate?

SC: I have another children’s book coming out called Nosey (All about the Nose) with Creative Editions along with an illustrated book for grown-ups called Mark Twain’s War Prayer with Fantagraphics coming out in May. The message in that book is anti-war, and brings together some of my drawings and paintings over the years on the subject. I’m still not done doing tricks with my books and I have a few more ideas that I want to render into children’s books.

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A big thank you to Mr. Chwast for speaking with me today (and I’m still a bit floored that his assistant is someone I’m related to). Thanks too to Sandy Soderberg and the team at the Carle for helping to bring this together. The exhibit Kid in a Candy Store: The Picture Book Art of Seymour Chwast will be up until April 14th, so you still have time to see and enjoy it. Make a day of it!

Filed under: Interviews