Mural week, Sleeping Bear, U.P., howl, collage, mimeograph, and blind birding: Author/illustrator Lori Taylor
Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet author/illustrator Lori Taylor.
[Note: the items in italics are from my research into Lori Taylor. My questions follow the italicized items.]
Lori Taylor is a Michigan artist/author/illustrator. As a child growing up among the pines and ponds of Clarkston, Lori knew that drawing, writing, nature, books, and science would be her life.
Clarkston has grown up as you have, but it’s still got its share of country. What do you remember most about your childhood?
The wildness, open spaces, the woods. The feeling of safety that neighbors had our backs. After snowstorms our pediatrician plowed our road with his tractor while others walked two miles into town to Rudy’s Market to get bread and milk for the neighborhood. It was a wonderful playground to wander and explore.
Your bio says you “created many children’s educational exhibits for Michigan nature centers.” Which of your exhibits were you most proud of? Which was the most challenging?
I was most proud of the work I did for Lewis Wint Nature Center. Magnetic mural walls of habitat with hand painted magnets, educational, colorful exhibits for children to peer inside and use sensory, toys and puzzles in made. I learned so much from them.
The most challenging exhibit was the Moose Tree Nature Center which is now an Art Center in Lake Orion. I had a week to paint murals covering the entire inside of the building. I had to use a lift to paint a two story tall pine and eagle, scaffolding to paint maples, owls and woolly mammoths. I slept in the science room and rose at 6:30 to begin the walls at 7:30 and kept painting until evening. In the end it turned out spectacular. I don’t do murals anymore, I put in my time.
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| Completed mural |
You were selected as artist-in-residence for the 2007 Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. How does one get selected? What does artist-in-residence entail? What are some of your favorite memories of Sleeping Bear?
I submitted a letter and application along with sample photos of my art. What the jury panel wants to hear and see is how can you contribute to the park and experience. Is your work different, what does it offer the viewer.
An artist-in-residence is solely volunteer and interacts with public on the trail at times explaining their process and also spends much alone time exploring and being a “sponge” soaking in the place in order to tell its story.
A final public presentation is given on the stay at the end of the A. I. R., all this in exchange for staying at their park facilities. No money is allotted for travel, food, or compensation. It is gathering experience to make art in any form.
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| Sleeping Bear cabin |
My favorite memories were meeting rangers, park staff, and local artists in Glen Arbor to hear what they had to say. I met Simon Otto, an Ojibwa/Odawa elder after returning from North Manitou Island and spending time with he and his wife talking about the legend of the Sleeping Bear. He gifted me his latest book and a braid of Sweetgrass. Funny thing, I had returned a library book two weeks earlier that he had written.
Exploring the island to see the Giants, cedars that escaped logging, and the most harrowing favorite memory, hiking up two miles to Empire Bluffs from the farmhouse with my park biologist housemate to see the sunset. The color was gorgeous but as it set we realized that neither of us brought a flashlight. It was a full moon and I mentioned I worried about bears and she said it was the big cats she worried about.
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| Interior of Sleeping Bear cabin |
A Ranger had a cougar follow her on the trail about seven feet away for 45 minutes until staff arrived. Thinking about that didn’t help on the walk back. It was also a great time kayaking nearby lakes to take a break from working on my art in the farmhouse kitchen.
Then in 2008, you became artist-in-residence for the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. That’s a whole extra layer of rugged, about as far north and as far west in the U.P. as you can go. What was your artist-in residency like in the wilderness?
When I applied to this one after Sleeping Bear, I had no idea where the park was. I looked it up on a map after I got the acceptance call. Oh boy, she was over there a far piece! When the paperwork arrived the first three pages were about black bear safety. I would be staying alone in the artist cabin about a mile and a half away from the campground in the forest.
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Inside looking outside
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No power, no cell signal, a composting toilet, water had to be carried up the hill and back to the cabin. It was totally different and totally fun. I had to bathe in creek water in a tub on the porch and ice that melted in the ice box became dish water that had to be carried 100’ from the cabin and dispersed to keep critters away.
My friends and I hiked the trails and I overpacked carrying a roll of builder paper and a large sketchbook for drawing scenes. What was I thinking? It was cool ripping off a big sheet of brown paper and sketching charcoal and graphite on the ground.
Hauling the backpack of supplies was a good workout. We hiked the shoreline, the mountain trails, the lake and river trails. Presque Isle Falls was amazing, the power of river water carving and polishing the sandstone into bowls.
Hiking the escarpment trail overlooking Lake of the Clouds we were eye level with peregrine falcons and hawks. We stopped for lunch there on a rock where a lynx had also at one time leaving old scats and tiny bird bones.
One morning I spied a large bear track down from the cabin on the Union River bank, it was so fresh the sun and air had not yet degraded it and the dimples and pores were still visible. That’s fresh!
I spent one day alone near the cabin proclaiming it Touch the Earth Day wearing only my moccasins or going barefoot. The hemlock duff was so thick and soft in the woods. Ruffed grouse would dust bathe in sandy patches and pileated woodpeckers drummed during the day.
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| Porkie's map |
In the evening, a hermit thrush tucked me in for the night with his fluting song. The sun sets early in the woods that thick, and once it was dark one could not see their hand before their face or hear any sound. It was surreal, like floating in an abyss. An experience to remember.
Tell us about the Literacy Legacy Fund of Michigan, and your part in it.
I met Nancy Wiseman-Seminoff, a retired Dean from Northern University at an MRA, Michigan Reading Association conference and she was president of the Literacy Legacy Fund of MI in the U.P.
The group promoted reading and getting books into the hands of children mostly in communities where income was a challenge for families. I told her about my residencies and she wanted to host something similar at her cabin in Gwinn. I would stay and create art at her cabin, and in exchange for that I would speak to teachers at Northern University about my work and stay as well as visit the children at a community center in town for a program.
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| Boardman art |
It was a wonderful time with the kids bringing in my biofact for them to investigate and sketch in booklets we folded and decorated. I enjoy working with kids since I’m a big kid myself and they had a great time and handed out my books afterward.
Her cabin in the woods overlooked a small lake and I went out and caught a few largemouth bass for dinner. Eagles did the same while I was there. It was peaceful and I wrote and drew in the porch with the lake view. The last night in camp I had to drive to Marquette to speak to the teachers and come back in the dark to the cabin. I had everything mostly packed up to leave the next day and settled in for the night.
I opened the bedroom window and went to get into bed when a wolf howled long and mournful in the woods. It took my breath away! Had it watched me walk into the cabin? I was so excited and wrote about it in the cabin journal. Later that night the northern lights put on a show with a shooting star light display in the center of it. A nice ending to a wonderful stay.
“As a teen I loved the texture of old oil paint palettes and shadow boxes and am drawn to collecting natural ephemera treasure of fossils, bones, and stones as well as sketches of experience. My layered mixed media art tells a detailed sensory tale of a given space. It becomes a tiny museum that is approachable and touchable as people connect through texture and touch.”
Has your mixed media collage work changed over time? How have your collections grown, and how do keep them in some kind of order? What are some of your treasures?
I have a big exhibit of my collages and assemblages at Lapeer’s Gallery 194 the whole month of August into September. It is a collection of experiences, travels, and memories for the last 20 years. I still enjoy texture and layers as they tell the story of time passing as well as sensory.
I have no order really and hang all the large pieces in my home to keep it safe. My home is like a natural history museum with bear skulls, a lighted display case for collected biofacts, drying herbs, home roadkill taxidermy animal skins, books, handmade sketch books and art tools in every room as well as my front room studio. All this as well as sharing my space with my snake, axolotl, and chameleon! I call it my little cabin of curiosities.
“I'm a Michigan children's book author/ illustrator and artist. Books, art and nature are my passion! I draw, read and write every day and take FIELD NOTES on life to preserve the BIG in small moments!”
Notebooks too? Where do you store everything? Highly organized, chaos, or somewhere in between?
Good question! In tubs, stacked suitcases, book shelves. Art materials in hanging bags and boxes in my studio closet. I seem to know where to find things and if not it is a surprising discovery as I look for something and find something else I needed.
Went from a 1,680’ home in the woods a few years to now a 980’ space in Davison. Paring down and purging is cleansing in so many ways! Although my book collection is growing again. So somewhat orderly chaos.
“At a young age, I wrote, drew, and stapled my own handmade books. Later, my father lent me his mimeograph so I could run off copies as books.”
I’m old enough to recognize the word “mimeograph,” and vaguely remember pages printed in light blue ink. How did your father’s mimeograph machine affect your homemade book output?
Ah, the smell of the mimeograph toner! Using a stylus to scratch in the illustration and placing it over the cylinder to lock and crank out a few sheets. I had made a few coloring books and it was a messy process. But it got me thinking about having my own books printed one day.
This was a time where illustrators had to do work in color separation. I’m so glad I never did that, it would have driven me nuts. The mimeograph gave me the book bug.
Have any of your early book creation experiences led to your current publishing endeavors?
Before I took Writing for Young Children class at the Institute of Children’s Literature I made handmade art books. I wrote mostly in rhyme thinking poetry was a good choice for kids. But as I studied more and read more children’s books that all changed.
Number one, I had to tell a good story, have something to say. Number two, learn how to draw sequential characters and scenes. Up to this point all my art was one off illustrations so that was big. But those early books with poems and lyrical story are precious and show a beginning place.
Tell us about Pine Owl Press. Tell us about Bear Track Press.
Pine Owl Press was my return to my art business and taking over my books. I left Bear Track Studios to go off on my own in 2024 after 17 years. I learned a lot and traveled far with them and grateful for the opportunity to live in the forest and make art and books.
Since I moved here things have moved from books to art books again. I worked as an elementary media center paraprofessional in town for the last year getting kids to write and draw their own books to encourage literacy. I happily gave most of my remaining book stock to the students. Win, win. Will Pine Owl Press carry on this year? I don’t know. I’ll see where the winds will take me.
What is Michigan Arts Access, and what kind of art do you teach?
The group has working artist teach music, writing, and art to adults with disabilities. I did large classes in Flint and Burton teaching collage and painting. It was a learn as you go kind of thing in dealing with a variety of abilities in the group and how to have people react positively to projects I presented. I left that group to work with the elementary, a better match for me and regular paycheck.
Holly Wild is your longest-running character. Where did Holly come from? How many books feature the Wild one?
Ha! The Wild one is featured in five books and I was working on the sixth when I decided to leave Bear Track Studios. Holly is my inner child. A bumbling, fumbling, messy, curious ten year old, with a big heart. “She’s weird,” I heard a young boy comment at a school visit. Yes, weird is where it’s at! Be weird, be an original.
Holly has a pet snake and quirky family based on my own. Physically I styled her after my redhead daughter at that age when I gave her a bad perm. She always hated her freckles though, and I made freckles Holly’s super power and onboard defense system when something was awry. It was fun to create her family, friends and neighbors based on people I knew.
You and your books became involved with visually-impaired students. Care to describe how you found yourself as an artist helping the blind to experience nature?
I met naturalist and blind birder Donna Posont founder of her blind Michigan Birdbrains group at the Dearborn Nature Center. She knew my county parks mentor and supervisor and we hit it off. She had heard of my Holly Wild books and loved them as they were all recorded by the state for Michigan Library for Blind and Visually Impaired. Donna had them made into braille and used them with her group because my books were very descriptive and sensory.
I went “birding by ear” with them and have done programs for them with drumming and reading and then an art show with my textural layered mixed media. Handing each person my canvas for them to feel and see the painting. My work has raised animal tracks, grasses, paper skulls, animal silhouettes and more which tells them the story.
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| Pinckney library display |
One young guy had an app on his phone that “read” the artwork telling him the style, colors, defining points, composition own overall comment. Amazing! I had so much fun with them that I did a winter birding weekend with them and had them fold accordion books and use tempera paint to center abstract birding books. Making marks or brush strokes of how they interpret the bird song.
I had bird cutouts that they painted and attached to the front of the book and the paper was strong enough that they could pierce it to write in braille about the trip.
Who are the GeEKs (Geo-Explorer Kids) you celebrate in your book, The Young GeEK's Guide to Getting Outside?
The GeEKs in that boom are the main characters in my Holly Wild chapter books. Holly and her twin team, Tierra and Sierra, and her not so nice neighbor Ivy. The other children were young walk ons to be guided by the experienced kids to become GeEKs themselves at the end.
You’ve illustrated books written by others. Which was your favorite project? How has your art changed over the years?
Oh, golly, wow! I have to say my favorite to illustrate, Moving North, for Detroit storyteller, Mary Grant. It was a challenge and far different style than my nature and whimsical style of the others and my own.
Mary told the story of her father leaving the south to move north for work and family meeting up with him in the days of Jim Crow. It was a softer, more realistic style, with the color and look of that time period. I used graphite and watercolor for those and we both were pleased with the final outcome.
What’s next for Lori Taylor?
I really don’t know. I’m working on writing again after a long time. This book is for adults, my first ever at the urging of Robin Wall Kimmerer and her agent. I’m not sure where is going to go, but since I’m recuperating from hip surgery four weeks ago it has been a trip down memory lane compiling experiences and observations from my sketchbooks.
It is the story of my life as an artist and how I got started and where I have ended up. I call it Conversations with Landscape. It’s good to get back into the writing g chair again and have missed it more than I realized.
Will I do a children’s book again? I had students suggest topics or maybe about Sasquatch. I did have an experience with my grandkids last summer while camping at Rifle River. I’ll just see what happens. It’s always a surprise when an idea hits!
List any social media you care to share:
My website can take people to different pages: www.loritayloart.com
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