Amanda Freymann of Beverly Shores and her business partner Joan Sommers of Chicago recently received the prestigious 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Non-Fiction for their book, Chuck Close: Face Book. Freymann and Sommers signed copies of the book on Friday, Dec. 7 at Michigan City’s Lubeznik Center for the Arts during the First Friday Celebration. On Saturday, Freymann joined Janet Bloch, director of education at the Lubeznik, for a hands-on children’s workshop.
Freymann said the children’s book uses a question-and-answer format to present an interactive autobiography of Close and the unique processes he uses to create his art. He has struggled with severe dyslexia and faced blindness since childhood. At the age of 48, he was nearly paralyzed when a spinal artery collapsed. Now wheelchair-bound, Close paints with a brush strapped to his arm. He manages to create nine-foot-high images of faces that he paints using an elaborate grid system of one-inch squares. Close adds layers of paint to each square, working one square at a time.
Close, 72, has been creating art nonstop for 42 years, in spite of his handicaps, Freymann said. She and Sommers collaborated with him on another book before suggesting the children’s book.
“He really gave us free reign,” she said. “He’s a huge advocate for art in the schools and the importance of art.”
They partnered with a Brooklyn public school art teacher to come up with a series of questions fifth graders wanted to ask Close about his work. The interaction formed the substance of Chuck Close: Face Book, which is being sold in the gift shop at the Lubeznik.
Bloch, as an arts educator, sensed that Close’s work would appeal to children and could serve as an ideal vehicle to introduce local students to art and artists.
“I read the book and then I said, ‘Oh yeah, this is something kids are going to love,’” she said. Bloch had an opportunity to test that assumption on Saturday with an eager audience made up of Gabe Howard, his mother Sarah and friends Isabell and Armand Pozos.
Gabe Howard fell in love with Chuck Close: Face Book at first sight, according to Sarah Howard, and wanted to show it to his friends, the Pozos. She was surprised that he became so engage with the flip book because he hadn’t shown a particular interest in art before.
“He’s so obsessed with this book,” she said. “He begged me to give him the book for his birthday.”
Bloch asked the kids to pick their favorites from a table full of printed faces of famous people, cartoon characters and animals. They layered the multiple portraits and stapled them together to form a book. By artfully cutting the sheets of paper along horizontal lines, they created separate segments of eyes, noses and mouths. By flipping the various segments, they could create “new” faces.
Bloch showed a composite face she made from layered portraits of Justin Bieber, Barack Obama and Mickey Mouse. She plans to offer a similar workshop for the Michigan City Area Schools arts magnet program at Pine Elementary School.