Picture Books II

When I first met Barbara, Thomas was in the fourth grade at PS 41. For three years he had been home schooled. After the passage of PL 94-142, children with disabilities could no longer be turned away from the schools, and he was admitted to the local Greenwich Village elementary school.

Little Poems

Barbara designed a federally funded nutrition curriculum for the school. She wrote and illustrated little books for the classroom: Jolly Molly Molar,

Jolly Molly Molar

and Harmony Hurricane Muldoon, a little girl on a raft in the digestive system.

Harmony Hurricane Muldoon

When we began presenting book fairs on the New York City waterfront, Barbara designed the pages for the early NYS Waterways Project magazines, which were documents of the poetry reading at each event. She used Dover’s copyright free art, old prints from our bookshelves, and her own illustrations. The August 19, 1979 issue contained 19th Century illustrations that accompanied verses for children.

NYS Waterways Project - 1979 5

Barbara helped me mat my drawings, but none were exhibited. My friend, PJ, and I believed that art was priceless. Why attach a value? In London I had asked people to pay what they wanted for my chapbook Chrylust. At an early block fair, on Twelfth Street I asked people to pay what they wanted for my drawings. One local artist argued that artists need to expect a reward for their work. I insisted my art was non-conceptual. PJ had coined the term which he also referred to as noncon art.

Tally - Abstracting an Abstract

Each issue of Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream opened with a title page that contained an illustration and the theme for the month. In January ’87 the theme was “For what is the present after all,/but a growth out of the past?” The title page was illustrated with drawing of a chick developing within and then hatching from an egg. On the contents page was a silhouette of Father Time. He was chasing a dandy in top hat and riding boots. The third page of each issue of Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstreams was traditionally left for an illustration. For 1987, Barbara chose a 19th Century illustration of Father Time, a clock, scythe, old years passing away, a mummy, and a child representing the new year of 1889. Barbara's photographs from the Gansevoort Street Green Market and drawings she reduced on the photocopier illustrated the poems.

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 8 No 1

For the 1996 themes, we did away with words altogether and used pictographs from the Walam Olum (An epic of the Lenni Lenape):

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 17 No 1