Continuing our Authors Remember Their Grandparents series, today we welcome Elisa Kleven to the PaperTigers blog with a beautiful piece about her grandmother.

Elisa has illustrated two picture books that are about a little girl Rosalba and her grandmother – Abuela and Isla, both written by Arthur Dorros (Dutton Juvenile 1991 and 1995). These are magical stories in which Rosalba and Abuela fly hand-in-hand over New York (Abuela) and over the Caribbean island where Abuela grew up (Isla), powered, as it were, by the flights their imaginations take thanks to the stories that Abuela tells and Rosalba loves.

And, as Elisa pointed out to me, “Two other of my own stories that mention grandmas are The Apple Doll, when Lizzy’s mom tells her that her own mom taught her how to make an apple doll, and my very early book, Ernst, which features a kind, loving crocodilian grandmother.”

Elisa has two books due out later this year, her own The Friendship Wish (Dutton Juvenile, due October 2011), and One Little Chicken written by Elka Weber (Tricycle Press, due August 2011), which she says, “takes place in a little Jewish village, probably something like a prettified, peaceful version of my grandma’s.” Her grandmother’s influence on her work becomes very clear in her piece below, and once you’ve read it, I’m sure you’ll be as glad as I am to know that Elisa is now working on a new picture book about her Grandma Eva, for she sounds a very remarkable person.

To find out more about Elisa’s work, visit our Gallery and read her interview with PaperTigers – and visit her website.

My Grandma Eva (and what she found in clay)

My mother’s mother, the aptly named Eva Art, was a sculptor whose magical ability to conjure vivid people and animals from clay has colored my own world view. Delicate, quick to laugh, sensitive as a bird, Grandma Eva could also be deeply melancholy. She didn’t like to talk about her past. When I would beg her to tell me stories about her childhood in a little Jewish village in Ukraine her mouth would tighten into a sad, tense line.

This much I knew: she was sent at age fourteen with her sixteen-year-old sister to work with relatives in a tailor shop in America, and she never again saw her parents or seven brothers – all lost to anti-Semitic violence.

Her sculptures, however, tell many stories. She discovered her gift almost by accident: as a fourth grader, my mom received the assignment given to all California public school children, then and now, which was to make a miniature model of a California Spanish Mission. Excited by the challenge, Grandma helped my mother carve a tiny mission from a bar of Ivory Soap – and hooray! – her passion for sculpting was born.

Grandma quickly moved from mission-making in soap to shaping figures with clay. As she worked her fingers through the oozy, cool clay, she re-created her long-lost friends and relatives, forming their likenesses until they emerged into the light of her work space. And there they were again, just as she remembered them, hugging their children, reading their books, patiently knitting their socks.

Grandma Eva was creative in the deepest sense – able to turn loss and nothingness into tender beauty and life. Her vision, like my mother’s (another artist and another story), inspires and shines through my own work, both as a collage artist and a children’s author. A common theme in my stories is the power of art and imagination to fill the empty places made by loss, and the power of artists, however young or small, to create something from nothing, to transform old into new, and familiar into fantastical: to turn a puddle into a shimmering treasure, a piece of paper into a princess, a broken tail into a bird, a dried apple into a comforting friend. Although neither my mother nor my grandma lived to see any of my books, I feel their spirits guiding my fingers, inspiring my vision, each day as I go on my way.

Elisa Kleven

…a special thank you, Elisa, not only for sharing your special memories with us, but also for the photographs of your Grandma Eva and some of her beautiful sculptures.

Last week I was lucky enough to spend some time in San Francisco where one of the highlights of the trip was a day spent sightseeing with PaperTigers’ managing editor and producer Aline Pereira. Our first stop was the outstanding Asian Art Museum, one of the largest museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian Art. We wandered though the three floors of amazing exhibits and got to watch master Japanese bamboo artist Tanaka Kyokusho demonstrate his bamboo art. Tanaka mixes traditional bamboo techniques with a contemporary sensibility to create a unique style of his own. His bamboo baskets are amazing works of art. While the adults watched Tanaka’s demonstration, kids got to try weaving a pattern with various materials such as paper and raffia.

Our next stop was the San Francisco library to see an exhibit of artwork by author/illustrator Elisa Kleven. Elisa, currently featured in our PaperTigers’ illustrator gallery, is appropriately described by Aline as being a master of imaginary worlds. Her artwork is simply stunning with bright colors and so much detail that the illustrations feel as if they are moving and jumping off the pages at you.

Aline (l) and myself (r).

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Click to enlarge the photos and you can see the original illustrator manuscript for Abuela plus a puzzle!
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I purchased a copy of The City by the Bay: A Magical Journey Around San Francisco (written by Tricia Brown, illustrated by Elisa) to bring home to my children. Here’s my daughter Emma reading it to our dog Riley and a close up of her favorite page – fireworks and the Golden Gate Bridge. Emma took this book to school for Show and Tell where it was quite the hit! The kids loved the illustrations and the challenge of finding the dog, cat and baby on each page. Check out our PaperTigers’ gallery to see more of Elisa’s work.
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