David Ouimet
"Why does I Go Quiet deserve to be on top of a stack of picture books about how reading is power and imagination is liberating?"
This time I speak with the amazing David Ouimet, incredibly talented artist and children's book author. His new picture book speaks to not only children of today but to so many of us as adults.
It isn't very often I get to highlight an author that I used to work with (okay, this is the first time). David and I worked together at legendary PGW (Publishers Group West) for a good number of years. He's one hell of a nice guy and I'm thrilled he has put out such a moving and beautiful children's book. Here's just a sample of the many incredible reviews he has racked up:
From author Nell Beram in Shelf Awareness....
"Sometimes, I go quiet." A girl--hood up, slumping forward in resignation--walks to school, where "I don't know how I am supposed to be./ I am timid. I am small./ How should I sound?/ How should I look?/ When it's my turn/ to speak,/ I go/ quiet." One can hardly blame her. The paintings in I Go Quiet, by musician and debut author/illustrator David Ouimet, depict a gloomy, factory-evoking school where from the front of every child's desk hangs a dehumanizing white mask that the kids wear to some sort of assembly. Think Hogwarts by way of George Orwell.
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| I Go Quiet illustration |
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| I Go Quiet illustration |
Why does I Go Quiet deserve to be on top of a stack of picture books about how reading is power and imagination is liberating? Consider, for example, a double-page spread showing the masked kids marching up and down the school's stairwells. The image resembles a cross section of a machine, each child a dead-eyed cog. Ouimet seems to be speaking (and painting) not about one person's anxiety--he doesn't individualize the girl by giving her a name or parents--but about a larger concern: the seductiveness of conformity, the threat of human obsolescence through automation. From the moment the girl arrives at school until she heads home that night, Ouimet's illustrations are dichromatic: slate and cream, sepia and black, and so on. But on her walk home ("When I am heard/ I will build cities/ with my words"), she sees a moonlit city in color. Later, from her bed, she looks out her window. Outside is a pair of white birds--a change from all the black ones that haunt prior pages, and perhaps a sign of hope."
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| I Go Quiet illustration |
And from Stephen Fry:
"Stunning…I would have found the book a frightening companion when I was younger. A necessarily scary friend. I would have opened the pages very carefully, as if terrified that there would be a different illustration there that expressed how I felt with even more honesty, but how it would have spoken to me. In a protective world scared of triggering and micro-aggression, David Ouimet understands that to comfort means to strengthen, not to coddle. I want to send it back in time to my seven-year-old self."
David is also a musician, here is his album artwork for his band Motherhead Bug:
In 2003 David started illustrating a series of children’s books with the award-winning
author Robert San Souci. Four books were published in the Dare to Be Scared series.
In 2015 he illustrated the picture book Daydreams for Night, based on the stories of the Canadian Musician John Southworth.
David's street art, featuring his iconic “hoodiebird” has appeared all over the world since 2016.
Check out the eerily beautiful trailers for I Go Quiet and Daydreams for Night, plus a fascinating look at how David works, at this link.
http://igoquiet.com/watch
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| "I Go Quiet" illustration |
Blurbs from Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Matt Haig and Stephen Fry; people would kill for that kind of publicity. Tell me you didn’t go that far! Seriously, that’s very impressive. Did you know that was going to happen?
It was a great surprise, and I vividly remember receiving both the Gaiman and Pullman quotes at the same time. I was waiting to buy vegetables in my community garden, looked at my phone messages and literally dropped my beets. The blurbs were based on an early draft of I Go Quiet. Those endorsements were very helpful in giving me the confidence to keep true to my vision of what I set out to do with this book.
I see a bit of you in the main character of your book, at least the quiet, reserved kind of person that she is. Did you struggle similarly as a child?
The girl in the book was very much based on the struggles of one of my children, yet about halfway through the process of creating the images I recognized my own anxieties within the character. I would describe my childhood as very happy, but I was very much in my own world. As I got older that did lead to a sense of isolation, and much like the character my love of books helped me through that.
Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.
I live in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
It’s a beautiful, tree-lined historic neighborhood that features extraordinary mid 1800s architecture. There are many streets that give the haunted feeling that one is frozen in time, and it is ridiculously quiet for New York City.
Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?
I was living in Western Massachusetts and spent a lot of time in the woods lost in my imagination. They were very happy years at that age. I grew up in a creative family and music and drawing were very much encouraged. I also traveled with my family quite a bit and have incredible memories of 1970s Europe. The recollections are of a time before American culture deeply influenced European style. Children in wool shorts, delivery trucks from the 1940’s, men with goats. The memories of my childhood travels are a very strong influence in my artwork.
Did you have a favorite teacher and are you still in touch with him or her?
In terms of grade school, I’m not sure if I could pinpoint a favorite but I can identify those who profoundly influenced me both in positive and negative ways. In terms of college, Alfred DeCredico at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) was a huge influence in throwing away everything that I had been taught about art, and his embrace of the artistic insight gained through conflict.
He pushed us to embrace chaos so we could find our way out. Unfortunately, he passed about ten years ago.
Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?
As a young child, Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House made a deep impact.
There is something that is so compelling for
a young child to experience the passage of time by simply turning a page. There
is a quality that is inherently interactive about this picture book, and it
still moves me as it did as a very young boy.
I was also somewhat obsessed with Munro Leaf’s The Story of
Ferdinand.
It is a perfect picture book, and it’s message was so powerful that world leaders in the late 1930’s responded with either outrage (Hitler) or the highest of praise (Gandhi). Such a forceful expression of peace was something that absolutely changed how I looked at life. This was one of a handful of exceptional collaborations between Munro Leaf and the illustrator Robert Lawson.
Do you have a favorite children’s book? And if so, what makes it so special to you?
When I was five years old Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen was published. It is one of the first books that I can recall reading. The use of panels and its disorienting and strange evocation of a child’s dreamtime is utterly unique.
What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?
When I was a kid I accidentally knocked over a dwarf on a train platform in what was then Yugoslavia. In my youth I was very fidgety, constantly moving my limbs. I must have backed into him and delivered a kick. He must have thought I was some sort of terrible nine-year-old bully.
How would you say you are different now than you were in your early 20’s.
I would say that I am much more grateful about very simple things. As an example, I am thankful that I remembered my reading glasses today. I also don’t take myself as seriously as I did in my early 20’s, when I thought I had it all figured out and when I overdid everything. The mid-50s is a beautiful age where curiosity, moderation, and gratitude are my Sherpas.
| Photos of David courtesy of Kristin Pike, visit her at http://kristinpike.com/ |
I’ve always been a driven person, and probably a lot of that because I grew up without television. I learned to keep myself very busy, and much of that time was devoted to being creative. Making things (whether it’s a book, a painting, a film, a song) has always given me a sense of great satisfaction. It’s part of what makes me a very happy person. In terms of my work medium , I look at a paintbrush and a piano as tools in the kitchen, ultimately to make something a little tasty.
And David, in a short essay…………………………
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME
to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,
be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,
actually experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,
meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.
When would you go?
Where would you go?
Who would you want to meet?
And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?
When would I go? Next Tuesday at the soonest. (Sorry couldn’t resist.)
Seriously, I would go to New York City when most of the grid had been laid out, at the point where the city would have become faintly recognizable to me, a contemporary New Yorker. I would walk through the Lower East Side to experience what the lives of the newly arrived immigrants really felt like, explore streets to see what remains and what is lost. I would likely draw a lot of faces, but buildings too. I would try to see what sort of primitive theater was on, hit a tavern or two.
Who would I like to meet? I’d like to meet anyone I would encounter.
I’m fascinated by the layers upon layers of history in New York, and the constant rate of change. In the mid to late 1800s New York couldn’t have thrived without a level of tolerance that would have been rare in most of the world at that time. I would have loved to sit with a group of children to understand what they feared, and to sit in a pub and listened what the old timers hoped for. I believe the young and the elders would have the most intriguing insights about the city and their lives in it.
Thank you David, for your insights, not only on New York City, but on your life and art. I applaud you and wish you continued success.
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