“Crunch, crunch, crunch, his feat sank into the snow.” Ezra Jack Keats illustrated this in 1962 and named in The Snowy Day. He then said that “In The Snowy Day the figure you see walking through the snow is a little abstract shape. I wanted to keep it simple.” He wanted the book to be “a chunk of life, the sensory experience in word and picture of what it feels like to hear your own body making sounds in the snow.”
In its essence, Keats writes and illustrates children’s stories. And something about the piece makes it experiential. I do feel my feet sinking in the snow. The simplicity of the piece draws out my memories and I become the abstract red figure in the drawing. I feel the snow. I created the drawing. It wouldn’t be complete without my memories.
The rest of the museum also depends on the viewers. As I walked through the Jewish Museum and saw more drawings, I noticed that the curators had put out little notebooks where visitors could write their comments. There were walls where Hanukkah memories could be posted. There were books where little children drew the word Great or Awesome. There were life sized replications of some furniture that Keats drew, and I didn’t try sitting down on it. But the whole place felt like home to me. Because I could say something about it. The place needed us to complete it.
This kind of art is my favorite, the kind made by artists who are not control freaks. I mean, I like seeing the complete vision of an artist, but the whole interaction with the art seems cold then. When the artist leaves something intentionally simple, then he/she calls on the viewer to finish. The two imaginations meld and there’s a moment of companionship there. I love the feeling of intimacy between the artist and the viewer. It’s what makes art enjoyable for me, knowing that it’s the brainchild of another human being, who I am communicating with through the artwork. The act of being is not ask beautiful as the act of exchanging.
I want to be part novelist and part children’s story writer, because my dad used to tell me stories when I was a kid, because I feel like the speaking and listening of stories connects two human beings in a special way that nothing else can. It ties two humans together with each other, but also with something greater, a bigger story and narrative in the cosmos.
Artist: Ezra Jack Keats
Title: The Snowy Day
Date of Work: 1962
Materials/Medium: Visual Art
Duration: 9/09/2011 – 1/29/2012
Genre: Panels of a Children’s Book
Venue: The Jewish Museum
Friends? I was alone.
