SENDAK FELLOWSHIP ANNOUNCES 2014 SENDAK FELLOWS
PRESS RELEASE
MARCH 20 2014
The Sendak Fellowship nominating and judging committee is happy to announce the 2014 Sendak Fellows: Nora Krug and Harry Bliss. You’ll find their full bios below.
The Sendak Fellowship was established in 2010 as a residency program for artists who tell stories with illustration. The Fellowship offers the time for artist to explore their craft outside the limitations of everyday life and in the relative isolation of a rural setting.
Between 2010 and 2013, the Sendak Fellowship was run at a house on Maurice Sendak’s property in Ridgefield, Connecticut. There, four resident artists received instruction and support from Mr. Sendak as well as from visiting artists of note.
This summer the fellowship is moving to Scotch Hill Farm, formerly owned by Mr. Sendak, in upstate Cambridge, New York. Two fellows will be provided their own fully equipped cottage with kitchen and studio space and receive a fellow’s stipend. At the same time, the two resident fellows will receive occasional inspiration from visiting artists in the field.
Maurice Sendak bought the 150-acre Scotch Hill Farm in the 1990’s, where he planned to run workshops for the Night Kitchen National Children’s Theatre. He was drawn to the area because of its beauty and proximity to the nearby Monks of New Skete (from whom he bought his German Shepherd, Runge). Long-time Sendak companion and assistant, Lynn Caponera, now owns the farm where she grows food for donation to local food banks and pantries. The farm is located in Washington County, New York, thirty minutes from both Saratoga Springs, New York, and Manchester, Vermont.
For many years Sendak wanted to create a formal program for what he’d been doing informally his whole career: helping promising illustrators As a young beginning illustrator himself, Sendak was nurtured in the Connecticut home of the artists Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. He saw the Sendak Fellowship as his “school”—a way to help others, and in 2009 enlisted the help of Caponera, as well as photographer and community activist, Dona Ann McAdams (now the fellowship’s director) to help realize his vision.
The goal of the Sendak Fellowship, in Maurice’s words, was for fellows to “create work that is not vapid, stupid, or sexy, but original. Work that excites and incites. Illustration is like dance; it should move like—and to—music.”
Former Sendak Fellows include: 2010: Antoinette Portis, Aaron Renier, Paul Schmid, Robert Weinstock. 2011: Ali Bahrampour, Frann Preston-Gannon, Sergio Ruzzier, Denise Ann Saldutti Egielski. 2012: Gerardo Blumenkrantz, Tor Freeman, Alice Lickens. 2013: Jessica Ahlberg. Ian Andrew, Marc Rosenthal, Sara Varon.
The 2014 Sendak Fellows:
Nora Krug is a writer and artist whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, le Monde Diplomatique and A Public Space, and in anthologies published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Chronicle Books. She is the creator of the graphic novel,Red Riding Hood Redux, and of Shadow Atlas, an encyclopedia of ghosts and spirits, and the illustrator of the children’s book, My Cold Went On Vacation, published by Penguin/Putnam. Krug is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright, DAAD, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work is included in the Library of Congress and has been recognized by American Illustration. It received three gold medals from the Society of Illustrators and was awarded with merits and a silver cube by the Art Directors Club. Krug’s story, Kamikaze, about a surviving Japanese WWII pilot, was included in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics and Best Non-Required Reading. Krug’s work has been exhibited internationally, and her animated guide to Japanese business etiquette, How To Bow, was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. She is an associate professor in the Illustration Program at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City.
Harry Bliss is an internationally syndicated cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker magazine. His self-titled single panel gag cartoon, ‘BLISS’ appears in major newspapers across the United States and Japan. Growing up in upstate New York amidst a family of successful painters and illustrators, Bliss went on to study painting at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Illustration at The University of the Arts (BFA) and Syracuse University (MA). Bliss also illustrates books for children. Bliss’s first children’s book, A Fine, Fine School by Newbery-award-winning author, Sharon Creech, was a New York Times bestseller. Bliss went on to illustrate Which Would You Rather Be? by William Steig, Countdown To Kindergarten and Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teethboth by Alison McGhee. Bliss has also created the pictures for Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Spider, and Diary of a Fly by Doreen Cronin, all New York Times bestsellers. Other bestsellers include Don’t Forget To Come Back by Robie H. Harris and A Very Brave Witch by Alison McGhee and Louise: The Adventure of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo.
Bliss’s first cartoon collection, Death By Laughter, with an introduction by Christopher Guest was published by Abrams in the Spring of 2008. Luke On the Loose, Bliss’ debut award-winning comic book for early readers (edited by Francoise Mouly) was published by Toon Books in the Spring 2009. Recentlly published by Harper Collins is Invisible Inkling by Emily Jenkins with pictures by Harry Bliss. Bailey (A Parent’s Magazine award-winner) was published by Scholastic in September 2011 followed by Bailey at the Museum 2012.Bliss’s next picture book, Anna and Solomon by Elaine Dillof will be published by Farrar Straus and Giroux in September 2013. Harry Bliss lives in Vermont.