Brynsight

Pictures at an Exhibition

2009-12-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

The Outbreak show at the National Museum of Health and Medicine opened on Halloween. It's a beautifully curated exhibition that uses my work in interesting ways to tell the story of public health, intermingling my art with objects from the Museum's amazing collection. On December 5th, I spent a day at the museum presenting a series of talks on my work and the history of public health and a demonstration on how to paint a vibrio cholerae. Despite the snow, audience members came from as far away as Philadelphia to see the shows.

Originally, Outbreak was slated to close on January 22. NMHM recently decided to extend the show another month and a half. So until March 8 you still have a chance to see some of the creepiest pictures in the world of illustration.

The NMHM is a remarkable institution housed on the campus of Walter Reed Hospital. It houses over 24 million artifacts related to medical pathology: historical microscopes, protheses, glass slides, casts of facial reconstructions, photographs, even the actual bullet used by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Only a fraction of the collection is on display.

Imagination Takes Flight

2009-11-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

About six months ago, I entered a public art competition, organized by the city government of Beaverton, Oregon, to design a piece of art for the municipal library. This airy, wood-and-glass structure is designed to look like a stylized rain-forest. It's beautiful and welcoming. But adult traffic tends to flow from the ground floor entrance straight ahead, into the children's area, rather than up the grand double staircase where the grown-ups belong. The art was wanted as a gentle way to separate the flock.

194 people entered the competition, and after several rounds of winnowing, I won the commission.

My idea is a wrap-around portal mural entitled Imagination Takes Flight that depicts a sort of literary flight deck, with animal aviators scrambling a squadron of books into the skies. It will consist of a diptych flanking the doorway. The composition is based on a cover I did many years ago for Spider magazine. This portal mural is complemented by a long frieze, that will show the animals flying through the clouds on books, papyrus rolls, cuneiform tablets and possibly a laptop or two. There's also a wrap around mural for the children's reference desk, where squirrels with pencil navigation wands guide the action.

To paint the portal mural on stretched canvas, I needed a big space taller than my studio. As it happens, Friday Harbor Middle School has an empty sixth-grade classroom and as of this year, no formal art program. I asked if I could use the space in exchange for visits by students and teachers as Imagination takes Flight takes shape. The idea is to paint the mural on stretched canvas in Friday harbor, then, when complete, roll it up and transport the canvas to teh library. Portions of the mural will be installed like wallpaper. The portal mural will be restretched.

So far I've been FHMS artist-in-residence for two weeks.

Here's my progress so far.

11/1/09: Stretching the canvas

I built stretchers out of 2x4s purchased at our local lumberyard, Browne's, and fastened together with star-drive screws. The stretcher is 63 inches wide by 135 inches tall. The canvas is a roll of Winsor and Newton, 63" x100 yards, gessoed, from Dick Blick. This is shorter than the actual portal, so I wrapped the top part of the canvas around the top of the stretcher. When I've finished the lower portion of the portal mural I'll unstretch it and move the canvas down.

Once the canvas was stretched, I sprayed the back of the canvas with water so it would tighten up.

11/4/09: Toning the canvas

I bought a gallon of a warm violet Benjamin Moore interior flat latex house paint, and applied it with a roller. This creates a middle value base for the painting. Instead of the classic bolus ground (a brick red used by Renaissance painters) chose violet to harmonize the relatively saturated, warm to cool palette. From this middle tone I will paint up to lights and down to darks.

11/5/09: Squaring up the drawing and beginning the underpainting.

Squaring up is a venerable method that has been used by artists for centuries to enlarge a drawing. I created an 8.5x11 inch color sketch of my composition and gridded it with 1/2 inch squares. On the canvas I gridded 1 foot squares, then transferred the drawing square by square.

Once that step was complete, I began blocking in the major shapes of the composition in acrylic, starting with semi-transparent washes and working up to opaque passages. I have a lot of ground to cover so I'm using 16 oz. jars of Golden Acrylics and a 2 inch house painter's brush.

11/8/09: Refining the underpainting.

At this point I'm still working in acrylic, refining the silhouettes of the major figures. and changing portions of the composition. The stacks of books and the size and position of the giraffe have undergone several changes to get to this point. I've also moved the position of the turtle's arms. I'm nearly ready to switch to oil.

The Plague Doctor is In

2009-11-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

Variolization

While the H1N1 pandemic rages and our lawmakers debate the merits of national healthcare, my exhibit Outbreak: Plagues That Changed History, has a new home for the next three months: the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC. The 30 paintings and 7 maps are from my book Outbreak, published by Crown in 2005. As you may recall from previous posts, Outbreak focuses on six diseases: bubonic plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera, yellow fever and influenza, with sidebars on toxoplasma, malaria and AIDS. As the title suggests, this is not just a recounting of epidemics, but a social history of public health through the lens of disease.

Armistice Day, San Francisco, 1918

The NMHM started out in 1862 as the Army Medical Museum, a division of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. It is on the campus of the Walter Reed Army hospital. To complement the paintings, the staff selected a few items from the Museum's collection of 24 artifacts. Visitors are greeted by a life-size costumed model of a beak-masked plague doctor. The Museum also installed four exhibit cases with artifacts and specimens related to the diseases in the book—a wax model of the face of a 15-year-old boy with lesions resulting from small pox, a tuberculosis-prevention brick engraved with the words, “Don’t spit on sidewalk ,” a lung that shows signs of bronchopneumonia resulting from the 1918 influenza pandemic, and the microscope of Walter Reed himself, the man who led the team that determined the etiology of yellow fever.

Memento Mori

The show opened on Halloween (it runs through January 22). For the opening, children made and wore medieval plague masks stuffed with dried rosemary, and created macaroni skeletons engaged in the "Dance of Death."

I'll be speaking at the Museum on December 5.

Imagine Cascadia

2009-09-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

I've been included at several shows at the Port Angeles Fine Art Center. Jake Seniuk, the director, is a generous, imaginative and innovative curator. His shows include "Disaster!" (works about environmental catastrophe), "The Seed" (paired works showing early artistic promise and current output) and now "Imagine Cascadia" (utopian and dystopian works about the Northwest). My contribution to this current show, which runs through the summer in Port Angeles and then moves to Olympia, is a painting of the seventh day of the Genesis story, published several years ago by Time-Life Books. I painted the image the month I moved to San Juan Island and first experienced the unimaginably clean air, the vivid sunsets, the damp cedar forests, the tiny island deer, the ubiquitous blackberry brambles, the chill waters of the Sound, and the remarkable orcas, pandas of the sea.

It really did seem like Eden.

The Seventh Day

Swine Flu High

2009-09-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Last spring, I was invited to teach a painting class at Friday Harbor High School. Our art teacher of 30 years, Pat Speer, had retired and her replacement, Andy Anderson, had yet to arrive, so the district had cobbled together a temporary program. My job was to teach one class, an hour a day for the semester. Although I've taught at several colleges over the years, and I've been a guest speaker in many elementary and secondary school classes, this was my first daily interaction with high schoolers. I had a class of 25 kids, from freshmen to seniors. It was an illuminating experience.

Alex McDonald

As the semester progressed, reports of a swine flu epidemic, first in Mexico, then worldwide, became increasingly prevalent in the media. The school staff received daily briefings on the outbreak from the state health officials and the school administration. I brought a dispenser of hand sanitizer to the classroom and spent a few moments of class time discussing the truths and falsehoods circulating about the epidemic.

Student chatter and texting began to include talk of H1N1. Although many students were outwardly casual and dismissive of the fuss, their comments laced with overtones of irony and teen ennui, I detected, among some students, an undercurrent of anxiety. Who was well? Who was sick? Hadn't a student on neighboring Orcas Island been sent home with swine flu? Weren't the Lopez Island schools going to close? Day by day, my supply of santizer diminished.

Shanti Neff-Baro

I gave the students a lecture about artists of the past who had responded to the events of the day with memorable art: Da Vinci, Goya, Sargent, Kollowitz, Shahn. I todl them about my book Outbreak, and its chapter on the 1918 Spanish flu. And I gave the students an assignment: on a 16x20 piece of illustration board, create a piece of art about swine flu. Unlike previous assignments, which had focused on compositional, aesthetic and technical concerns, this assignment was open. Students could do as they pleased, as long as it was about the flu.

By semester's end, not a single student at Friday Harbor High School had come down with H1N1.

Casey Lehman

Six Days in the Hole

2009-04-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

I can't remember when I first wanted to hike the Grand Canyon. Possibly since my first car visit to the Rim with my parents, when I was a child. Possibly when I drove cross county and stopped for a look over the edge with my wife, Rebecca. But whenever the desire was sparked it's been one of those experiences I've longed to try.

This year, over Spring Break, I finally got my chance. I hiked the Canyon with my son Parks. This was the annual Grand Canyon trip of the Friday Harbor High School hiking club, led by history teacher Jim McNairy. Twenty-two people went, sixteen kids and six adults. This was two large a crowd to get a single hiking/camping permit. We split into two groups. Mine was led by Cheryl Opalski and her husband Kent. I added an extra set of grown-up eyes. We hiked from Hermit's Rest to Hermit Creek, then to Hermit Rapids, Boucher Rapids and Granite Rapids, with a final night at Monument before hiking back to Hermit's Rest. The hiking was hard. The scenery was aridly gorgeous - right on the cusp of spring, with wild flowers just beginning to bloom. The weather perfect: blue skies, temperatures in the 70s, not a drop of rain, the occasional light breeze. Chamber of Commerce weather.

I sketched every day in my Moleskin sketchbook. The cream colored pages are heavy enough to accept water color without wrinkling and the cover was robust enough to handle the rigor of the Canyon's razor-edge topography. I sketched in pencil and painted with my Cotman watercolor set. Here's a view from Granite Rapids at sunrise and another of our fearless leaders, Cheryl and Kent.

Two views from Hermit Creek: sunset and moonlight.

Kent challenged me to paint an especially interesting boulder next to our Hermit Creek campsite, covered in multi-colored lichens. It was challenging.

What I did on Superbowl Sunday

2009-02-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

"Smaerd" Illustrator Visits Village Books

by Dave Wheeler2/3/2009 11:15:12 AM

Something curious is afoot, and Bryn Barnard wants to show you what it can look like. Each night you sleep, whether you realize it or not, you are visited by the inhabitants of a land called “Smaerd.” Regional sister-act Andrea von Botefuhr and Angela Russell have created a literary world beyond their own Bainbridge Island that stretches to the furthest corners of your imagination. Partnered with Know Wonder Publishing, who commissioned Bryn Barnard as illustrator, Smaerd has become a reality you can take home and explore.

On Sunday, February 1, 2009, Village Books hosted Barnard to promote The Land of Smaerd, an inspirational picture book for all ages about dreams and the power of positive thinking. Geared toward younger audiences, Smaerd uses fantastical art and bright verses to show children how they might shift their perspective to manifest a new, positive reality around them. The collective creators of Smaerd hope to empower children to face their unique nightmares and bad dreams, and to actively engage them through art.

The Land of Smaerd, illustrated by Bryn Barnard.

The tricky part, said Barnard, is to “take the author’s verbal ideas and manifest them as images.” With his experience primarily centered around illustrating his own books on catastrophes, Dangerous Planet and Outbreak, Barnard was elated to discover the myriad fantasies and word pictures in Smaerd. This is his first project in the realm of metaphysical ideas. He worked closely with von Botefuhr and Russell to develop illustrations that resembled the pictures floating in the ether of their heads.

He pointed out a depiction of a girl standing below a whale soaring on butterfly wings. “This is one that they were very specific about.” While initially Barnard had conceptualized five different protagonists for his illustrations, all of different ethnic backgrounds, the writers encouraged him to compress all the features into a single character, one in which all children might recognize themselves.

Bryn Barnard read from The Land of Smaerd at Village Books.

Photograph by Dave Wheeler

The book is a veritable wonderland of enchanting landscapes, and, as one looks closer, one might agree with poor Alice, who found herself in a different Wonderland, thinking, “Curiouser and curiouser!” In the artwork, Barnard embedded dragons hiding in hillsides and emphasized the natural complexities of spiraling Fibonacci sequences. The intricately designed mandalas featured in the book were created by Russell, one of which she created shortly after her original conception of Smaerd in the fifth grade!

After reading the story, Barnard sat to paint an image from the book. He described his layering technique using acrylic and oil paints while intermittently narrating a sneak peak at his forthcoming book for fall 2010, of which he is both writer and illustrator, The Genius of Islam: How Muslims Made the Modern World, from Knopf Publishing. The new book will describe the magnificent innovations Muslims have made throughout history, from crank-shafts to sandpaper.

Barnard demonstrated his technique in creating the illustrations.

Photograph by Dave Wheeler

Visit Bryn Barnard Studio to learn more about Barnard, his art, and his books. For information about upcoming author events, visit Village Books or Neighborhood-Kids.com Activities.

Pictures at an Exhibition

2008-12-28T19:10:00.000-08:00

At last, some images have arrived from Outbreak, my solo show at the Smithsonian's Global Health Odyssey Museum at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Outbreak is an educational show, and for this reason alone you won't be reading about it in ArtForum anytime soon. It's didactic. Like my book of the same title, the shows turns on the idea that epidemics have shaped us. The paintings, though framed and hung, are unapologetically illustrations. They tell stories.

The GHO curator, Louise Shaw, has taken concepts from the book and turned them into questioning super-graphics that provide context. I think it all looks pretty terrific.

Only 30 more days to see Outbreak in Atlanta. If you can't get there, enjoy these pictures.

The CDC contains an 'Outbreak' of cultural curiosities

2008-11-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

November 20, 2008 at 9:30 am by Cinque Hicks in A&E

DEATH BECOMES THEM: A skeletal death works in the world of pathogenic microbes in “Memento Mori” (translation: “Remember that you are mortal”).

Did the bubonic plague extinguish Europe’s feudal caste system and trigger the rise of the middle-class bourgeoisie? Did yellow fever end the trafficking of African slaves to the New World? Did the Spanish flu halt World War I? According to Outbreak: Plagues that Changed History currently on view at the CDC’s Global Health Odyssey Museum, the answers are maybe, maybe and maybe. And although it’s assuredly an oversimplification to attribute some of history’s biggest events to any single cause, Outbreak puts forth the intriguing notion that many of the defining currents of human social and cultural history around the globe have at least been influenced by some of the planet’s smallest inhabitants.

Outbreak is the artistic brainchild of painter and illustrator Bryn Barnard. Barnard’s 2005 book of the same name targets middle school children with lush gouache and oil paintings that bring to life key moments in world history. It shows how a slew of unimaginably destructive epidemiological disasters gave us the world we live in now. The current CDC exhibit comprises Barnard’s original paintings along with maps and text borrowed from the book. It’s the first collected public showing of the work, and as is typical for CDC exhibitions, Outbreak aims to make explicit connections between broad health issues and daily life.

Curator Louise Shaw glides though the exhibit, stopping here and there to point out a few noteworthy works. She pauses before a small painting of cholera victims being unloaded at the port of Jaffa in Tel-Aviv. Until 1912, cholera was one of the major hazards facing those who made the Muslim pilgrimage known as Hajj. “This is my favorite painting in the show,” says Shaw. “It’s sort of like a Gérôme.”

“Or Delacroix,” I add.

“Yeah, all those 19th-century French painters!”

Our obscure art historical references point out the tightrope Shaw and her CDC colleagues must constantly walk in their programming for the museum. A show designed for middle schoolers must also appeal to adults, tourists, CDC staff and government bureaucrats alike. Global Health Odyssey is a federally funded educational institution, not an art center, and even a casual visit requires an automobile search and a trip through a metal detector. But once visitors undergo the “CDC experience,” as staffers call the rigorous security protocol, the facility offers a slice of culture unavailable anywhere else in the city. Examining health by way of art, design and other cultural artifacts is where the CDC excels.

Shaw turns and we head away from the port of Jaffa and toward feudal Europe. The cholera illustration may be her favorite painting in the show, but her favorite disease is the so-called Black Death, which killed nearly 24 million Europeans between 1346 and 1351. (It’s not unusual for CDC staff members to have “favorite” diseases.)

Barnard has illustrated this ignominious moment in history with a painting of a doctor comforting a distraught young woman while a male relative lies dying in the background. The painting is loaded with historical and cultural details: the crucifix on the wall, the bowl used for bloodletting, the smattering of dead mice on the floor.

Perhaps most striking is the doctor’s period costume, which consists of a long robe, white gloves, a flat, wide-brimmed hat, and a mask with glass lenses and a long beak-like protrusion. The beaked masksurvives to this day in Carnivale and Mardi Gras celebrations, illustrating Barnard’s point: that the culture wrought in times of great disease and pestilence flows like a tributary into the sweeping river of history and lets out into the present in often surprising ways. In the Black Death’s case, feudal Europe was a festering stinkhole full of illiterates walking streets clogged with garbage and human waste. Meanwhile, universities flourished in the Middle East and the Aztecs traversed well-maintained roads complete with public pay toilets at regular intervals.

All that changed, however, when a third of Europe’s population succumbed to the bubonic plague over just five years. With a smaller labor force, wages increased, prices decreased, wealth was accumulated and, voila!, a middle class was born. At least that’s the short version of the story. Social history is far too complex to assert that the Yersinia pestis bacterium single-handedly created the middle class. But as an agent of history, its influence is undeniable.

Judy Gantt is the museum’s director. Her favorite disease is the Spanish Flu. That pandemic’s currently thought to be the deadliest in human history, racking up a hefty body count between 60 and 100 million worldwide. Gantt points to Outbreak’s power to help visitors consider what impact present-day diseases may be having on our culture now and in the future.

“AIDS certainly is having an effect,” says Gantt, who also cites chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes as potential game changers. Both Shaw and Gantt talk about how “smart” the AIDS virus is, how it has learned to survive everything humans have thrown at it, and how it is certainly changing society in Africa, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Of course we won’t know the full impact of AIDS and other current epidemics on world culture for generations. Artists of perhaps the 22nd and 23rd centuries will have to take that up. But as the CDC’s scientists work toward the prevention of these diseases, we can hope for a day when red ribbons follow the same course as the plague doctors’ masks — the signs of inevitable death transformed by history into a symbol to all revelers that there’s reason to let the good times roll.

Outbreak: Plagues that Changed History. Through Jan. 30. Free. Mon.-Wed. and Fri., 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thurs., 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Global Health Odyssey Museum, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road. 404-639-0830. www.cdc.gov/gcc/exhibit.

CDC Exhibit Just in Time for Halloween

2008-10-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

The Signal & Urbanite

Jennifer Carragher

Issue date: 10/14/08 Section: Living

The Global Health Odyssey Museum at the Center for Disease Control just opened its newest exhibit, based on the work of Bryn Barnard on September 27, 2008. The exhibit centers on Barnard's book, Outbreak: Plagues that Changed History/The Work of Bryn Barnard, and its exploration of how infectious diseases have changed human history.

The exhibit is divided into several sections with each beginning with a question about a particular disease. One question is, "Did cholera pave the way for modern cities?" The question is followed by a map of how the disease spread over time and includes vivid images of the agent that caused the disease. Barnard's illustrations from the book include information on how each infectious disease influenced history.

In another section, Barnard questions whether yellow fever helped end the slave trade or not. A map is presented showing that yellow fever, which is usually transmitted by mosquitoes, started in Africa and spread to the New World through slave ships. Most of the slaves had survived the disease as children, giving them immunity as adults. However, many Europeans were sickened and killed by the disease. When Napoleon sent his men to Haiti to quell a revolt, many of them were inflicted with yellow fever, which led to Haiti being the first nation founded by former slaves in 1804. Microscopic images of the yellow fever virus are included in the display.

Other diseases focused on in the exhibit include smallpox, which killed up to 90% of Native Americans allowing the Europeans to conquer the New World, and tuberculosis, with symptoms of which many Europeans thought were a sign of artistic fire. Barnard's book prompted a compelling topic for museum curator, Louise E. Shaw. "Barnard talks about the impact of various diseases on history," said Shaw. "Including plague, smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, influenza, and HIV/AIDS. The Center for Disease Control works in all of these areas, so the exhibit is a perfect fit. Our ultimate goal is to educate the public about disease control and prevention, and a popular-based visual arts project such as this one is an accessible and compelling tool."

The images used in the exhibit from the book, can best be described as haunting. The Denver Post has called Barnard's work "the stuff of nightmares."

Julie Just of the New York Times described one illustration that depicts a medieval European doctor tending a plague victim in wide-brimmed hat, gloves and long-beaked mask with goggles. "The cure looks at least as deadly as the disease," said Just.

Barnard claims his illustrations "span the range from magic realist landscapes, to scientific and historical tableaux, to children's book illustration." Each of his art works are thoroughly researched to ensure it accurately depicts historical events. Barnard's images, which he began creating in 1984, mostly consist of oil on panel, and he also uses acrylic and digital imagery.

Trudi Ellerman, one of the main tour guides of the exhibit, views the exhibit as an opportunity to apply a scientific perspective to social history.

"Smallpox enabled the conquistadores to take over the new world more easily," said Ellerman. "The Black Death contributed to the fact that Europe has a middle class now and it's not just the serfs and the landowners. It's full of just really interesting perspectives like this. She added, "We pride ourselves on showing you some funky stuff you might not see anywhere else."

The exhibit runs until January 30, 2009 and the museum is open Monday through Wednesday from 10 a.m to 4 p.m, Thursday from 9 a.m. - 7 p.m, and Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free and a driver's license or passport is required for entry.

For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/gcc/exhibit.

Of Dolphins and Document Readers

2008-10-09T09:08:00.001-07:00

The Land of Smaerd book tour continued in Southern California with visits to Mariners Elementary School in Newport Beach and Newport Elementary School on the Balboa Peninsula. Kim Newett of Epiphany Books organized the visits.

What a reception! Both schools displayed "welcome Bryn Barnard" banners. Each had arranged for the entire second through fourth grade student body to gather in the cafeteria. Both schools provided digital projectors for my Smaerd PowerPoint show-and-tell and document readers for my painting demonstrations. 400 students gathered in each school, row on row cross-legged on the cafeteria floor. A teachers hand went up, and 400 little hands rose like dandelions into the air. 400 voices stilled. That's crowd control. The children's patience and self-discipline was impressive, listening quietly as I read the story and demonstrated how to paint with acrylic.

This was my first experience with a document reader. About the size of a desk lamp, the reader has a base with USB connection, a long movable arm, and an adjustable lens that, like a video camera, captures an image and, via a digital projector, shows it on a screen. Essentially, this is an updated version of the old classroom opaque projector that displayed printed images or text on a screen.

So after reading the story and showing the illustrations to the assembled crowd I did a short acrylic painting demonstration. And I mean short: in deference to young attention spans, each presentation was only 45 minutes long. I had only about half that time to apply brush to illustration board. The document reader showed both my 16x20 inch illustration board and my butcher tray painting palette. I could zoom in or out as needed. I could mix colors and apply them to the board, explaining my actions and choices as the image developed. For many kids this was their first experience of acrylic, so we practiced colors altogether: "al-iz-ar-an criiiiim-son.," ul-tra-mar-ine bluuuuuuue," di-oxi-nine puuuurple." The kids seemed to enjoy the funny color names.

The subject of both demos was a girl on a flying dolphin (the Smaerd cover image). This proved especially appropriate for Newport El. The school is situated right on the edge of the Pacific. Students can see the ocean from classroom windows, and sometimes see dolphins playing in the waves.

The Land of Smaerd

2008-10-06T13:37:00.001-07:00

About a year and a half ago, I was asked by Jack von Eberstein of KnowWonder Publishing to illustrate an adventure in verse called The Land of Smaerd. "Smaerd" is dreams spelled backwards, and The Land of Smaerd is a picture book for children, a journey through the land of dreams where readers learn affect the course of their personal reality. Angela Russell came up with the idea when she was a fifth grader. Decades later her sister Andrea von Botefuhr recreated the story as a poem. It took over twelve months of sketchbooks, layouts, and paintings to turn the poem into an illustrated book. In September of this year it was published.

Know Wonder organized two promotional tours. One for Andrea and Angela in Washington and Oregon and another for me in California. My Land of Smaerd promotional campaign commenced with a month-long solo exhibition at the Island Museum of Art on San Juan Island that ended September 17, followed by an interview on September 23 with Dr. Roxanne Daleo on the Mindworks for Children radio show. In October I traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area for several area invents, including book signings at the Oakland Convention center and illustrated talks at Books Inc. in Alameda and Book Passage in Corte Madera. Publishers Weekly ran this "Picture of the Day" from my visit to Books Inc. Thanks to Lydia Bird for the portrait of me and Natalee.

Before leaving the Bay Area I was interviewed by Denny Smithson on the KPFA radio show Cover to Cover. Anneli Rufus wrote a sumptuous article about my visit in the East Bay Express, reproduced below. None of this happened by accident, but through the tireless efforts of Alice Acheson, the organizational genius behind Acheson Public Relations.

Pigmentation Station

2008-10-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

Bryn Barnard ponders parasites, dreams, and modern orchestras' Muslim roots.

By Anneli Rufus

October 1, 2008

Bryn Barnard.

The world's most successful parasite is toxoplasma gondii. Producing a chemical that slows our reaction times, it infects half the world's population, including half the US population, where we are likeliest to get it via soiled kitty litter and raw meat.

That's not the sort of information you'd expect to get from an award-winning fine artist, but Bryn Barnard acquired it while writing and illustrating his 2006 book Outbreak: Plagues That Changed History. Diseases are verboten in The Land of Smaerd, a children's book written by poet Andrea von Botefuhr and illustrated rously by Barnard about a magical realm where dreams wait to be dreamed. ("Smaerd" is "dreams" backward.) "In Smaerd," writes von Botefuhr, "they don't have hospitals, because no one gets bugs. The doctors cure bad dreams with kisses and hugs." A Fulbright scholar who graduated Phi Beta Kappa fromUC Berkeley, Barnard created otherworldly landscapes, skyscapes, and mindscapes for the book — levitating seashells, zebras aloft inside soap bubbles — in sherbet-soft colors that seem to glow. First developed during the Renaissance, "the technique I used combines opaque painting with multiple layers of oil glazes," Barnard explains. ".... When light hits this surface, it travels through the glaze, touches the surface, and bounces back into the viewer's eye." Each illustration took thirty to forty hours to complete. His favorite shows a boulder-studded mountain that, on closer inspection, is actually a dragon: "I like the two ways the image can be read — as a landscape or as a dragon sleeping so long that houses, villages, castles, and palaces have been built on its slopes," says the artist, who will be at Books Inc. (1344 Park St., Alameda) on October 4. That idea was inspired by volcanoes in Indonesia, where Barnard lived for several years. "Villages and cultivated fields on the island of Java ... spread up the fertile slopes of active volcanoes, right to the edge of the craters. The volcanoes might not erupt for a hundred years. They [are] like sleeping dragons waiting to roar."

Set to be published by Knopf next year, Barnard's next book is The Genius of Islam: How Muslims Made the Modern World, which he both wrote and illustrated. "I lived for over five years in the Muslim world," he explains. "I was shown extraordinary hospitality there and gradually learned about the deep debt our world owes to Islamic civilization. ... Modernity would be unrecognizable without Islam." One chapter details how "nearly all the instruments in the modern orchestra are descendants of instruments that originated in the Muslim world." In Mozart's day, he says, the percussion section "was called the Turkish section." 11 a.m. BooksInc.net