Paschkis, Julie 1957-

views updated

Paschkis, Julie 1957-

Personal

Born 1957. Education: Attended Cornell University; Rochester Institute of Technology, B.F.A.

Addresses

Home and office—Seattle, WA. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Children's book illustrator and artist. Art teacher, 1983-91. Exhibitions: Work included in solo exhibitions at Grover/Thurston Gallery, Seattle, WA, 2003, 2006; Alysia Duckler Gallery, Portland, OR, 1999, 2001-02; Davidson Gallery, Seattle, 1998, 2000-01; Mia Gallery, Seattle, 1991, 1993, 1996; and Portland Community College Gallery, 1994.

Member

Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (Western Washington chapter).

Awards, Honors

New York Times Ten Best Illustrated Books inclusion, 2000, for Night Garden by Janet Wong; Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor Book designation, 2006, for Yellow Elephant by Julie Larios.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

So Sleepy; Wide Awake, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 1994.

Play All Day, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998.

ILLUSTRATOR

Dennis Fairchild, Palm Reading: A Little Guide to Life's Secrets, Running Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1995.

So Happy; So Sad, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 1995.

Henry and Melissa Billings, Young People's Stories of Sharing, Young People's Press (San Diego, CA), 1995.

John McCutcheon, Happy Adoption Day!, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1996.

Dennis Fairchild, Fortune Telling: Palmistry and Tarot, Running Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1996.

Joe Famularo, Italian Soup Cookbook, Workman (New York, NY), 1998.

Dennis Fairchild, Tarot, Running Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1999.

Lee Wardlaw, First Steps, HarperFestival (New York, NY), 1999.

Janet S. Wong, Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams, Margaret K. McElderry Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Margaret Read MacDonald, reteller, Fat Cat: A Danish Folktale, August House (Little Rock, AR), 2001.

The Nutcracker, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 2001.

Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret H. Lippert, retellers, Head, Body, Legs: A Story from Liberia, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2002.

Dennis Fairchild, The Fortune Telling Handbook: The Interactive Guide to Tarot, Palm Reading, and More, Running Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2003.

Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret H. Lippert, Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2003.

Janet S. Wong, Knock on Wood: Poems about Superstitions, Margaret K. McElderry Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Melissa Eskridge Slaymaker, Bottle Houses: The Creative World of Grandma Prisbrey, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2004.

Janet Lord, Here Comes Grandma!, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2005.

Maxie Baum, I Have a Little Dreidel, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2006.

Won-Ldy Paye and Margaret H. Lippert, retellers, The Talking Vegetables, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2006.

Rachel Rodriguez, Through Georgia's Eyes, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2006.

Julie Larios, Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2006.

Janet W. Wong, Twist: Yoga Poems, Margaret K. McElderry Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Sidelights

Julie Paschkis has illustrated works of children's fiction as well as nonfiction books for adults. Regardless of theme, Paschkis consistently pairs vibrant colors and intricate patterns in the majority of her artwork. Called a "creative exploration of color" by School Library Journal contributor Carol L. MacKay, Paschkis's illustrations for Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary feature vibrant, stylized animal images within a "visually stimulating" folk-art-inspired design as the setting for Julia Larios's poetry. Her collaboration with Melissa Eskridge Slaymaker, Bottle Houses: The Creative World of Grandma Prisbrey, showcases the creative life's work of a creative artist in vibrant colors that reflect the colored glass used as the artist's unusual medium. Beyond the pages of books, her art has also appeared on greeting cards and in solo exhibitions staged in and around her home in the Pacific Northwest. As Paschkis noted on her home page, illustrating children's books is akin to storytelling; she views each illustration project as creating "a 32-page painting in service to the story and characters of the book."

Paschkis's work for Rachel Rodriguez's Through Georgia's Eyes reveals her versatility as an artist because it

required her to recreate paintings by noted twentieth-century painter Georgia O'Keeffe. The picture book recounts O'Keeffe's early influences, including her upbringing on a Wisconsin farm and her metamorphosis into an artist. A Publishers Weekly reviewer acknowledged Paschkis's ability to interpret O'Keeffe's recognizable images, noting that the illustrator "recreates the feel of O'Keeffe's work but with her own style." In her illustrations for Through Georgia's Eyes Paschkis incorporated cut-paper collages into her paintings, done in blues and reds, and this method was praised by a Kirkus Reviews critic because it "perfectly evoke O'Keeffe's vision without ever seeming like mere imitation." School Library Journal contributor Carolyn Janssen cited the illustrator's incorporation of "bold shapes of flowers, skulls, and mountains" as a way of revealing the images emblematic of O'Keeffe's own work. Lolly Robinson, reviewing Through Georgia's Eyes for Horn Book, lauded Paschkis for her ability to capture the shapes typical of the artist's work and cited the illustrator for using "sweeping arcs" to conveyed O'Keeffe's unique "way of seeing the world around us."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 1, 1996, Julie Corsaro, review of Happy Adoption Day!, p. 667; May 15, 1998, Kay Weisman, review of Play All Day, p. 1633; November 15, 2001, Helen Rosenberg, review of Fat Cat: A Danish Folktale, p. 577; August, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of Head, Body, Legs: A Story from Liberia, p. 1968; November 15, 2003, Gillian Engberg, review of Knock on Wood: Poems about Superstitions, p. 596; March 1, 2004, Jennifer Mattson, review of Bottlehouses: The Creative World of Grandma Prisbrey, p. 1206; October 1, 2005, Jennifer Mattson, review of Here Comes Grandma, p. 64; February 15, 2006, Carolyn Phelan, review of Through Georgia's Eyes, p. 109; March 15, 2006, Gillian Engberg, review of Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary, p. 49; September 15, 2006, Ilene Cooper, review of I Have a Little Dreidel, p. 60.

Horn Book, May-June, 2002, Lauren Adams, review of Head, Body, Legs, p. 340; September-October, 2003, Susan Dove Lempke, review of Knock on Wood, p. 624; July-August, 2004, Lolly Robinson, review of Bottle Houses, p. 470; May-June, 2006, Lolly Robinson, review of Through Georgia's Eyes, p. 347.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2001, review of The Nutcracker, p. 1484; August 15, 2003, review of Knock on Wood, p. 1081; March 1, 2004, review of Bottle Houses, p. 229; February 1, 2006, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 294; March 15, 2006, review of Here Comes Grandma, p. September 15, 2006, review of The Talking Vegetables, p. 963.

Publishers Weekly, August 5, 1996, review of Poems from the World of Dreams, p. 84; March 13, 2000, review of Here Comes Grandma, p. April 1, 2002, review of Head, Body, Legs, p. 82; April 10, 2006, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 71; April 26, 2004, review of Bottle Houses, p. 65; February 20, 2006, review of Through Georgia's Eyes, p. 156; September 25, 2006, review of Through Georgia's Eyes, p. 68.

School Library Journal, July, 1998, Judith Gloyer, review of Play All Day, p. 81; March, 2000, Barbara Chatton, review of Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams, p. 232; April, 2002, Susan Helper, review of Head, Body, Legs, p. 140; July, 2003, Susan Oliver, review of Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile, p. 116; December, 2003, Margaret Bush, review of Knock on Wood, p. 140; June, 2005, Steven Englefried, review of Head, Body, Legs, p. 56; September, 2005, DeAnn Tabuchi, review of Here Comes Grandma!, p. 177; March, 2006, Carolyn Janssen, review of Through Georgia's Eyes, p. 212; March, 2006, John Peters, review of Bottle Houses, p. 89; April, 2006, Carol L. McKay, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 127.