Search results for ""author phyllis saroff""

Featuring the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Belle is an enthralling adventure through three hundred years of art! Belle, a painted butterfly, has been quietly hovering over a beautiful white poppy in a seventeenth-century Dutch painting that has been her home for three hundred years. Suddenly and unexpectedly there is a sudden whoosh of air and she finds herself flying out of her picture into the void So begins the adventures of Belle, the red admiral butterfly in Jan Davidsz de Heem's Vase of Flowers. Accidentally dislodged, when her painting was being taken by museum staff to be examined by the Conservation Department, Belle and her sidekick Brimstone, a fellow butterfly who was ejected from the painting at the same time, must find their way back home. When their painting rolls into an elevator without them, their journey through the art museum begins. Because they are made of paint, they discover that they can blend into any of the other paintings in the museum, no matter what the subject or period. The characters travel through the museum galleries, morphing into and out of paintings by multiple artists and in many styles, while searching for their home painting. At the same time they must avoid becoming lunch for a painted bird in hot pursuit after being inadvertently released from another painting by an awkward bump from Brimstone! Belle and Brimstone tell their story as it happens with all the scary encounters and comic incidents that have them hiding out in unlikely places in the paintings they encounter. They dash and dart as the predatory bird flies after them, chasing them from room to room. Successful and safe in the end Brimstone is up for more adventures. Belle is not so sure! Maybe it will be safer if they stay put in their painting from now on. Can you find them? While the story is an adventure story written for young readers it will also enchant younger listeners. Featuring the collection of the National Gallery of Art, this tale is a fanciful romp through three hundred years of art history, inviting young people to delve into the world of art through the paintings of de Heem, Vermeer, Chardin, Goya, Rembrandt, Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, Mary Cassatt, Renoir, Monet, Tissot, Picasso, Derain, Marc, Matisse, Georgia O'keeffe, Rothko, Pollock, Lichtenstein and many others. As an added bonus Belle has taken the trouble to create Belle's Amazing, Astonishingly Magical Journal and illustrated it with her comments on each painting and ideas on where to hide when being chased! Let Belle and Brimstone be your guides and docents and mind out for that Bird! Mary Lee Corlett, an art historian and research associate at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., owes her love of art to her father, whose mechanical drawings and plans always seemed magical to her as a child, and to an inspired teacher who introduced her to the wonderful ideas and concepts that underlie all great art. As a child she drew and painted but later when, thinking she would like to teach art, she enrolled in college and attended studio art classes and studied education, she discovered that the art history classes were more exciting than her own studio work. Her first job after collecting her BA was as a teaching assistant in the Education department at the Cleveland Museum of Art, doing art projects in Mini-Masters classes of 4-5 year olds. She then moved to Washington and worked at the National Portrait Gallery before assuming her current position. She still draws and paints but her daughter has forsaken paint brush and easel for flute and music stand. They still visit the galleries together and walk through all the amazing, astonishing and magical rooms full of wonderful paintings and sculptures just to check that Belle and Brimstone are safe and sound! Phyllis Saroff is a professional artist who can't remember when she didn't draw pictures. Inspired in First Grade by an older girl drawing pictures for a story she had written Phyllis started to illustrate her own stories. Her father would bring home large stacks of used accordion-fold computer paper from his lab. It was printed on one side with his equations, and the other side was blank. The blank side was Phyllis' side. He let her leave her drawings all over the house, on the coffee table, the dining room table and the kitchen table. His daughter only had to get them out of the way to set the table for dinner. He thought each drawing was a masterpiece; each one greater than the last. He bought art supplies for every birthday and when she was eleven he bought her a small drafting table which she still uses in her studio. She now sells her paintings in galleries and illustrates books for a living and her 97 year-old father still thinks every one of her drawings is a masterpiece.

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What kind of adventure begins in the living room on a rainy Monday afternoon? It depends. Say you just found out that Granny, who raised you, is going to lose her house because there's nothing valuable left to sell except an unfinished tapestry. And say that your pet blackbird Mead starts talking and swells up to the size of large motorcycle, and that you suddenly find yourself on his back falling into what you could have sworn was just an old rug covered with pictures of knights galloping through forests. If that's your situation, then this adventure could be weirder, scarier, and more amazing than anything you ever imagined. Time and the Tapestry tells the story of a 13 year old, would-be artist Jen and her not-quite-as-nerdy-as-he used-to-be- 10 year old brother Ed. They find themselves adrift in 19th century England, unable to make their way back home until they've gathered the missing pieces to make that tapestry whole. It's great that they can ride on Mead's back. But not so great that his feathers are falling off, too fast to count. Great that they keep meeting up with the rugmaker himself, Jen's hero, British radical William Morris. But not so great that he always seems to be yelling at somebody or tossing something at them. Great that as they travel from London to Oxford to Iceland, they begin to figure out a way to save the Tapestry (and Granny's house along with it). But downright terrifying that Mead's going to be grounded soon, leaving them trapped with Morris and his wacky daughter May in a Victorian London that may be filled with cranky artists and loveable animals, but....it's a long long way from home. The scenes set in Canterbury, Oxford, the English countryside, Trafalgar Square, Iceland, and Boston will enchant those drawn to the tapestry of history. Along with its magnificently detailed illustrations, this expertly woven tale threads together the best of classical fantasy with a tale of modern-day adventure that will captivate readers of all ages. First-time children's book author John Plotz--who's spent years studying, teaching, and dreaming about William Morris--brings the story of Arts and Crafts to life with a yarn about a world where the power of imagination may just be strong enough to bring dragons, flying birds and enchanted books to life.

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