First Encounters (and Not Realizing It)

When I was young, every birthday and every Christmas my Po-Po (Chinese for “grandmother”) would give me a children’s book, filled with colorful and fantastical illustrations that widened my little imagination.  Some of these books were full of classic stories, ballets, folklore, or tales that used no words at all.  And though after the passing of several years I had managed to accumulate a number of these, (each with the first page inscribed to me with her beautiful handwriting) I ashamedly admit that at the time I didn’t fully appreciate them. 

However, I as grew older I began to realize that my appreciation for art and stories started somewhere and that these books were actually my unrecognized precious treasures.  These books introduced me to art, to design, to storytelling.  The artwork in these books weren’t merely pictures within a page, these pictures sometimes extended beyond one page into another, filled the borders with illustrations or sometimes just between paragraphs.  These illustrations served purpose of allowing the author to tell a story beyond the limitations of a story alone.

When I first started painting, I wanted to paint a picture from a book called Shibumi and the Kite Maker by Mercer Mayer.  What I didn’t realize before I chose this as my subject, was the author’s creative use of textures and patterns to give his collage-like illustration a mystical and mysterious depth.  Although this made it extremely difficult to paint, it opened my eyes that art and design can go beyond the classical mediums.

Shibumi and the Kite Maker by Mercer Mayer

Another diamond amongst my treasures (that I am appreciating more and more even this instant) is The Mitten, an adopted folktale also illustrated by Jan Brett.  I remember I would sit for hours when I was young, staring at the pictures, not just because they were extremely detailed, but because the borders were each filled with a little story of their own, expanding the story to more than just what was written.

The Mitten by Jan Brett

These were my first encounters with design – and I didn’t even realize it.  Each of these books exposed me to design by showing me how, in their own creative work, to go beyond borders.  These authors and illustrators taught me my first and very important lesson in the process of imagination.