- Welcome to "Kalamazoo Lively Arts".

The show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant creative community and explores the people who breathe life into the arts.

- Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

I'm Jennifer Moss here at Miller auditorium.

On today's show, we take a look at the ways artists in Kalamazoo were encouraged as kids by parents or school to be creative.

But first we meet Emmy Kastner, a children's book author and illustrator with a love for literacy and science.

- Emmy Kastner author and illustrator, I'm gonna ask you the toughest question to begin this conversation.

So what are you writing and what are you illustrating?

- So I am doing a lot of different things, but currently the thing I'm sharing and so excited about my first fictional picture book, comes out August 2nd.

It's called "A Very Big Fall", and it's a fun picture book about change, about being an observer, kind of seeing the world and what it means to go through change and going through change together.

And it's not the same for everyone, even navigating the same overall environment.

So, I'm really excited about that book.

Yeah.

- All right.

So here we are in your world, Emmy.

You've just received your finished copy.

- So this is my book, "A Very Big Fall", and it is so magical because when you're making art, you're working on a flat surface, you're making art, you're knowing it will be in a book, but there's something about opening it, about the smell of the pages, about turning, about actually being able to see the page turns and-- - Put that up, lift that up and show it to me.

- Yes - Yeah.

- Yeah.

So, you know, like opening it up, small decisions we make about like a book plate that says, "This book belongs to little things that we make along the way."

And I've only ever seen this in the painting I did.

And so seeing it now where it's supposed to live at the beginning of the book is very exciting.

And then just little details, too.

So this is called the jacket of a picture book.

And when you take it off, we call it a little case reveal of a different set of art and it's wild too.

So this is an example of one of the spreads in the book.

So this is pretty large.

(laughs) So this is how I've only seen it.

And just knowing like this will be in a book and then seeing it like this.

- [Shelley] Wow.

- So it starts like this.

And then in the book, it's got text around it and yeah.

- Next best thing is to have you autograph it, right?

- Right.

And to see someone else reading it, that's always very trippy.

(laughs) Cause it's only been in my hand so far.

- How is this book the same or different than other books you've authored and illustrated?

- That's a great question.

I launched my professional career as a illustrator and author with a series called "Nerdy Babies".

And so I used to be a science teacher.

So I went to Western Michigan University.

My degree is English secondary education.

So I taught high school English and I taught science.

That was my minor.

So, that world of like fusing together science and art and writing was a lot of fun.

And then I had small kids and I love the way that kids were repeat books.

And I was like, how fun would that be to have a science book where they're repeating science facts.

And so that kind of was the seedling of that series.

And so the last two in the series come out in August as well, "Insects and Rain Forests", and the other books.

I have one about the ocean and space and rocks and weather and transportation and dinosaurs.

And so lots of fun things that it's all about being curious.

And I feel like that's really at the heart of all my books.

- What's your medium?

What are you using to make your art?

- So for "A Very Big Fall", it's acrylic gouache.

So I paint and I use colored pencils on top of that.

And a lot of collage like cut paper.

So I'll paint some paper and cut it out and collage things, too.

- Are you writing your book before you're illustrating or do you doodle and make the story come alive after that?

What was your process here?

- It's really different for every book project.

For the "Nerdy Babies", it really was about the concept and about that sort of information that I wanted to relay and how I was gonna do that creatively and fun.

And that's really where those books started.

For "A Very Big Fall", that was totally different.

I painted three leaves.

I actually brought them, but I painted these three leaves.

These are two, and this is the third.

- [Shelley] Those leaves have personalities.

- Exactly.

And it just kind of dawned on me like there's the characters of a book.

So I from there was like, "Okay, what's their story?"

- Name a picture book or two that perhaps, well, got you where you are today.

What'd you read?

- Well, for me as a kid, I really did love "Frog and Toad" so much.

"Frog and Toad", their just sort of relationship and whole dynamic was so sweet and inspiring and funny.

I even have a toad tattoo of Toad in a bathing suit.

I just love "Frog and Toad" so much.

So yeah, I really love this book "Imogene's Antlers" by David Small.

So he is a local Michigan, very talented author and illustrator.

And so that book really was like wild to me as a kid.

And it just felt like, I don't know, he wrote it just for me.

(laughs) And so now as an adult, getting to know him and meet him has been kind of this full circle magical moment.

- Let's find a page or two, and let's go through that process little inch by inch.

- Right.

So, so much of this book about fall leaves is about the lead up to what we all know happens with fall leaves.

They change color.

And so, this spread is when the leaves learn that some squirrels tell them that they're going to change color.

And so this little leaf is Birch and she says, "We changed colors.

", Birch said ready for adventure.

"But green is a very nice color to be."

said, Oak.

"Oh, squirrels, think they know everything."

Maple rolled her eyes.

"Although the squirrels had been right about rain and cats and tree-houses.

Maybe they were right about this too."

And so...

Turned out Oak loved being yellow and Birch was quite impressed with her bold new hue.

But change wasn't quick for everyone.

So this page turn is the first time you see color really outside of the greens that are in the first sort of act of the book.

So this page turn is probably my favorite just because we're going from the greens to the fun surprise of what all the leaves, what happens to them.

And I just love this moment.

I was really excited in those original paintings I did of the three leaves.

This is actually the original painting I did.

And that doesn't often happen where that lands in the book.

Sometimes you're changing a lot of things and that pose doesn't necessarily work, but I was really excited that it worked to have that original painting in there.

And yeah.

And so with our little Oak character, who is very nervous about changing color, I just love this explosion on the page.

And one more little fun detail Oak throughout the book has this little friend who is a little inchworm and there are some fun things happening just in the illustration.

It's actually never mentioned in the text.

But the journey that this little inchworm goes on in the story is a lot of fun, too.

- Now your little Oak leaf has a hat.

Let's talk about that.

- He does.

He landed with a little acorn cap beret, which seemed very fitting.

But it's funny making picture books, all the iterations of all the things that you see on the page have probably been many different things.

At first, my original painting, he just looked very surprised and was just hat-less.

And one of the first things that my editor said was, "Well..." Cause Maple in the book has boots and they wanted each of the Leafs to have a little something.

I was like, "Oh, of course."

So he had a little baseball hat for a minute with a little green hat, but the acorn beret just seemed fitting.

- Let's talk about perhaps your critiquing audience.

Are you writing for your audience that is maybe the ages of your kids?

Do you measure their interest into your work?

- For sure.

Yeah.

I'm always, I think as a writer, not necessarily writing directly for any particular group, but really writing for me, writing for the format of a picture book and how that works and knowing in the text that...

I just love the art form of a picture book because it's really an elevated level of storytelling where you have texts that's doing its job and you have the illustration that's doing its job and they're working together.

So you never just wanna like tell everything that's happening in the illustration.

That's boring for a reader.

So it's really this balance throughout the process of figuring out how much legwork I want the text to be doing and how much room I'm leaving for the illustration.

And a lot of times books do have a separate writer and a separate artist.

So when I'm doing both, it's like both in my head, I'm kind of wearing different hats and trying to balance that.

And I do always have the mindset.

I think picture books are for everyone.

I really love books, picture books as an adult.

I appreciate the writing, the art.

I just think it's the best thing ever.

But I do think about everyone who might be reading my book, too.

So, there's a lot to consider.

(laughs) - So how do I get my copy, please?

- Oh, I love it.

So really the book is available, wherever books are sold.

I personally love to support independent book sellers.

It's such a vital heart of any community, the work that they're doing to reinvest back into Kalamazoo and just the expertise that you have walking into an independent bookstore and having a conversation with the book seller about what kind of thing you're looking for, or "I'm shopping for my nephew."

I just love independent bookstores.

And I wanna encourage all of us to shop there.

So locally, I love this as a bookstore and "Bookbug".

They have just been so supportive of all my work and I'm just equally supportive of the work that they do.

- Yes.

And do you have a website?

- Yes.

I'm like, "What's my website?"

emmykmakes.com.

Yes, that's my website.

You can see all my books and just some random art and a list of events.

- Well, let's make sure "A Very Big Fall" is on front and center there.

- That's the one.

(laughs) - Kastner, Thank you.

There it is.

There it is.

Thank you very much for the front cover, for the back cover and obviously what's in between, your work.

You take care.

- Thank you so much.

- Take me back to, well, day one.

How did you get started, though?

- When day one began many, many years ago, when I was about 11 years old, my father took me to visit one of my relatives who was painting an oil painting at the time.

And from that point on, I never wondered what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I always wanted to be an artist when I grew up and eventually, I became that.

- Yay.

- And what turned you on to dance?

I mean, how were you exposed to it?

- Well, my mother loved modern dance.

Actually, my very first dance teacher was a modern dancer.

She was an ex company member of the "Martha Graham Dance Company".

And she had opened up a studio in Brooklyn, really close to where we lived.

So I started taking modern dance classes when I was three years old.

We were just a household that really appreciated the arts.

- [Shelley] How'd you get started?

- When I was really young, my dad always told me, "Hey, you're good at this.

Don't give up and keep on going with this.

Let's see where it takes you."

So even from the ages of 15 to now, I always constantly practiced different styles and different ways of drawing and painting.

- My father loved symphony music.

And so he exposed me to a lot of great music.

And I think that sound was in my ears.

And my mother recognized that I had a musical gift and a passion and she just got behind me.

She just saw something in me and she invested.

She went out and got a part-time job so that I could get a better violin.

On Saturdays, she would drive me to Delaware, which was two hours from our home, every single week for violin lessons.

I think even without knowing it, whatever we're surrounding our children with, becomes the atmosphere that they absorb and they gravitate towards.

Kalamazoo does such a good job of that.

They've got this fantastic connection between education and music and they're bringing the children and they're investing in the community and that just really influences them.

It makes a difference and there's a richness there in their lives because of it.

And so I just think the community has a responsibility there.

- When I was young, I had a stuttering problem.

I had a speech impediment for many years.

So music was kind of my go to.

It was as a place where I could go and kind of get into my own space and my own thoughts and I could write, and I could play my songs for others, which was very cathartic.

And it was the one thing I got a lot of positive feedback on that I could do.

So, music has been my touchstone.

- So tell me first, how you even became involved in dance.

Either one can go first.

- I apparently begged my mother to enroll me in dance classes when I was about five and six years old.

And she finally was, I wore down by age seven.

So at age seven, I started dancing at a dance studio in my hometown, which is in Northeast Ohio.

Dover, Ohio is where I was born and raised.

So I danced there.

I studied the Cecchetti method of ballet.

I did jazz and modern.

I got very involved in musical theater.

(ballet music) - [Kim] Now, what about you, Marisa?

- So my dance career started also at a very young age.

I was apparently dancing and running around in the grocery aisles.

My mom then had a family friend who said, "Well, I have a dance studio.

Send Marissa to me."

So I started dancing.

So it's been very interesting to see my own artistry and my own voice grow throughout this process and through my many different instructors and coaches and professors and mentors.

It's been a really fulfilling experience.

And now being in more of an educational standpoint too, in the dance academy coordinator role, it's really nice seeing how I can then lead that charge as to what our classrooms are instilling for our dancers so that I feel like they are getting the dance education that is needed for youth and adults in today's day and age.

- Did you grow up with artists in your family?

Did your parents encourage you when you were growing up?

- I think it all started in church.

I was a fidgety kid.

(both laugh) So my mom and dad gave me like a pencil and paper and I would draw whatever kids do.

And then afterwards you'd always get the feedback of like, it was awesome that what I was doing.

So I just kept getting better and better.

It seemed to make everybody smile.

And I guess that's my goal now to kind of bring people into like my creative bubble and peace and like even here tonight, seeing like the smile and people enjoying it.

- Yeah.

But you do something with kids as well, which I think is really cool.

You love to teach kids art.

And how important is it that children are exposed to art and how important was it for you?

- Well, I'd say there's like two things with kids and art.

It's great to like kind of stimulate the creative energy in them.

But I thought it was like kind of a privilege to go down to Vicksburg and teach those kids.

So I would say also what enriches kids' lives is having a diverse population of teachers or just getting just different perspectives and different ways, you know?

I don't know if, like we've painted a tiger and we painted an owl.

And, I've never taught a class for 25 minutes.

But at the end of the class, all the kids had a tiger.

- [Kim] And they looked good.

They all looked different, but they all looked good.

That's what was like, so amazing.

How do you do that to a kid that's never drawn before?

- [Artist] I just kind of went through like steps and like gave 'em a couple shapes to paint.

And I was surprised with my ability to tell 'em how to create it.

And their parents were really impressed once they saw.

- [Kim] Yes, I bet.

- [Artist] When they picked up like actual tigers.

- Maybe you had somebody that believed in you even more than what you believed in yourself at that time.

- Yeah.

I would say like my mom and then I have a local person too.

But like I always would be creating or drawing or something.

And then, I think one day my mom went to an estate sell and normally you go to Hobby Lobby and it's like $5 for a tub of paint.

- Yeah.

- My mom got the whole rack, like the whole like rotunda for like five bucks.

So I had everything I needed to paint.

- Oh my God.

- To start off with.

But prior to that, I was trying to use oil pastels to paint, to get color involved, transition from just graphite to some color.

- And back to that little Emmy.

Were you curious as a kid?

Did you draw?

Were you brought up in an artistic family?

- Yeah.

My parents were very observant and just saw that that's who I was.

And my dad, I remember got me like a typewriter, his old, electric typewriter.

And he was like, "I see that you're writing."

And just kind of like slid it on the table and encouraged me to tell stories.

And they were always open for being my audience and saw that I was making a lot of art and drawing and got me like this really beautiful pencil set.

And I still have the first fancy pencil sharpener that my parents got me and I just was really supported to just be creative and we lived in the middle of the woods and I was always outside and writing and it's always, yeah.

So they've been really, truly supportive.

- Do you remember a moment when you perhaps got permission, got a green light to move forward with this dream and passion of yours?

- I mean, I feel like there are several along the way that felt like, "Oh, this is something I can really do."

Like you know, "I love books.

There are people making them.

How does that happen?"

Kind of moment.

So my fifth and sixth grade teacher was just...

Her focus on literacy in the classroom was just life changing for me.

Like the books that we were reading, the space that we were working in to make our own stories.

I still have two of the anthologies on my shelf that I wrote in fifth and sixth grade that just like live here with me from her class.

And it was just so inspired to be like, "Oh, this is something that you can really do."

And there was a opportunity to publish a poem I wrote about kindergarten and it was this national anthology and she encouraged me to submit.

And as a sixth grader, I was like, "Oh, okay.

I just dunno."

But like that moment of submitting and finding out that mine was going to be published in this book.

And then we got the copy and holding that book in my hands as a sixth grader, and knowing that I contributed a poem to it was like the most magical feeling.

And I was like, "Oh, I need to do this a lot more.

I wanna do this my whole life."

So that was like maybe one of the first green lights.

- Thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Kalamazoo Lively Arts.

Check out today's show and other content at wgvu.org.

We leave you tonight with a special look at the organization Emmy founded, "Read And Write Kalamazoo".

I'm Jennifer Moss.

Have a great night.

- One of the projects you've successfully started on your journey is "RAWK".

R-A-W-K. What's This?

- [Emmy] So "RAWK" is a lovely little acronym for "Read And Write Kalamazoo".

It is a local nonprofit that my friend Anne Hensley and I started just about 10 years ago.

It's a youth writing center.

So really the core of "RAWK" is to celebrate and amplify youth voices and having a space to just foster creative voice and agency and autonomy.

As a kid who loved to write and who had supportive people around me, like my parents and I have just some really special teachers who saw that in me and were encouraging me to keep moving with that and keep telling stories.

It's really an organization that partners volunteers with youth and publishes student work and has just a variety of programs to support classroom teachers, students during the school day, out of school camps.

My oldest is at a "RAWK" camp this week.

So it's a lot of fun.

Yeah.

- And you do something called "Read And Write Nights", which I think are so wonderful.

What are those all about?

- So we started "Read and Write Night" actually shortly after the shutdown in 2020, searching for some ways to keep interacting with folks and a group of volunteers from Western approached us telling us that they wanted to be involved with us.

So youth will sign up ahead of time.

We choose a title for the month, and then we go and deliver.

Everybody gets a copy of the book.

And then on the day we all get on to Google Meet together and we split up into breakout rooms and those volunteers help them practice reading that story.

And then we respond to it together.

And it has been such a fun way to explore reading together.

And to get some books in people's hands.

That's one of my favorite things about this job is that we get to give away books.

And having like another program where I get to do that.

And I mean, I get to pick out the books for it too.

So that's really, really exciting to be able to find like the perfect arrangement, the perfect array of books and make sure that we are representing as many experiences and identities as we can in these titles.

And then making sure that we allow for that to be part of the conversation.

And I close my computer at 7:15 on those Wednesday evenings, and just feel so full from all of the joy that those young people are sharing with us.

- How did you come to work with "RAWK"?

- This summer it'll be six years.

I started as a volunteer actually almost seven years ago.

I started volunteering in one of the summer camps.

At the time I was working in a cafe and then in a grocery store and recognizing that I really was craving connection to my community and that the service industry I was working in wasn't really giving me the feeling that I was contributing something to Kalamazoo.

So I started volunteering and found out that that was what was gonna feed me and like getting to be in a space where I can model the excitement of being able to tell my story in different ways, whether it's with writing, whether it's making art, whether it's dancing, we wanna uplift storytelling and being able to be in a space like this has been...

I don't know.

It saved my life, honestly.

It's given me something that I know every day I can get up and interact with someone and make a difference in some way and plant some kind of seed.

And then maybe the next day, I'll get to water that same seed or I'll get to plant another seed.

And it definitely like what I was searching for, I definitely found.

I found a way to connect and feel like I was contributing something to our community.

- [Voice Over] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

♪ Trying to find the in-between ♪ ♪ Can you whisper ♪ ♪ Fall back in love eventually ♪ ♪ Can you whisper ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪