(bright music) (upbeat music) - [Matt] Explore the sculptures, assemblages and totems by artist Leslie Yolan.

Chat with children's book author, James Preller.

(rock music) And catch a performance from TV Doctors.

It's all ahead on this episode of "Aha."

- [Narrator] Funding for "Aha" has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M and T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M and T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Matt Rogowicz, and this is "Aha, A House for Arts," a place for all things creative.

Recently, I took a trip to the Schoharie Economic Enterprise Corporation to meet with artist, Leslie Yolan, who is showing her work in the gallery there, alongside the work of artist Jean Straussman, in a show called "Remnants and Relics."

(bright music) - Currently, I am working on a series of sculptural paintings.

They are collage-like and assemblage-like.

And I collect these materials just because, you know, it starts as a kid.

You find these, picks up rocks, you pick up acorns, put 'em in your pocket on your walk, and you take 'em home, and you're like, they're from this beautiful place that you were in.

And they talk to me about the cycles of life and impermanence and how things change.

All of this comes into just object.

And when you put objects together, they start to tell different stories.

(bright music) I have been working most of my life in clay.

Clay just could speak anything I wanted it to say practically.

I remember an early series of clay masks that went on the wall, with doors, with hinges that opened up and had this mixed media material going on behind them.

I did become a little bit unsatisfied with that because the doors in the masks were so small.

I wanted to play more with these materials that were speaking to each other.

I built a torso that had doors that opened here, so I had a bigger area to work with inside.

Masks are, in general, a covering.

They're also a way to hide.

So the openings were also about going into the subconscious and sharing the things that we usually don't.

(bright music) One of the beautiful things about working with clay, but one of the problematic issues about working with clay is that it is very demanding in terms of timing.

Certain things have to happen when it's ready.

I found myself trying to keep these things from freezing or drying out, hoping I could get to them on the weekend.

And I was at an art teacher's conference.

Someone was demonstrating encaustic and they're, you know, melting beeswax, which has this wonderful smell that I have great associations with from my childhood.

I bought some stuff on sale and set it up in my studio.

It's very similar to clay in that it can be additive and subtractive.

It's also transformed by heat the same way that clay is through firings, that there's a certain amount of serendipity, that you have to go with the flow, and I guess I like that.

Initially, I was just playing with wax and seeing what it could do and working very abstractly.

And then I went straight into this long series of landscapes, really focused on trees.

Then I retired, and then things opened up for me.

I took some time right off and raised myself a puppy, which was wonderfully distracting, and I brought my gardens back to a place of better control.

I finished a long season in the garden, and I'd been putting all these things in my studio, and I got to my studio in the fall and oh wow, I really needed to clean, clean up here somehow.

And I started cataloging and categorizing and putting things into drawers that I have.

And then I just started like, oh no.

I started putting things together in a new way.

Something spoke to each other, and I would put them together and there would be a new synergy there.

Then somewhere along the line, finished encaustic pieces came into that, I think with this piece over here.

And where I'm at now is working in this totem series, which incorporates everything.

(Leslie laughs) Art brings me to my very core and center.

When I am involved in the making, I'm having a dialogue with the materials.

A lot of these larger pieces have a sense of being about them.

This one in particular, river totem.

I really like its contrast with the other ones and that it's much softer.

Its colors are a little cooler, it's much more feminine, compared to the strong masculinity of say, primal dance.

I like what I'm seeing in that elements of work that I've done all my life are coming together, and it's exciting.

(Leslie laughs, bright music) - James Preller is a prolific author living in Delmar, New York.

He's known for the popular "Jigsaw Jones" mystery books and countless other books for young readers.

Jade Warwick sat down with James to learn about what sparked his interest in writing and to see what he is working on now.

- Hey James, welcome to "A House for Arts."

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Jade.

- Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about everything that has to do with your writing and what brings you joy and what keeps you going.

So my first question is, what first pulled you into writing, and what about it keeps you coming back to it?

- Well, you know, writing for children specifically is, I was an English major at Oneonta College, and I wanted to get some kind of job, and I got a job at Scholastic Publishers, and I was working on their book clubs, and that was really the first time I began to see all of these children's books.

And it was, it wasn't really my aspiration at that time, and I was working with really smart, talented, creative people who took their jobs very seriously, and I was just inspired by the books, and I saw the quality of them, and I began to see myself within that industry.

And also, it felt like it would be meaningful work.

- Yeah, and I remember the Scholastic Book Fairs as a kid and like going in there and just like having like this like bright-eyed, like just happy.

Like that was a lot of kids' happy spaces and that's what got a lot of our ourselves when we were younger to be interested in books.

So when people think of like kids' books, sometimes they may think, oh, simple, you're writing for children.

No big deal, right?

But you and I both know that's not the case at all.

So what's your like philosophy and strategy for writing for younger artists?

'Cause it is a lot more complicated than people think.

- Yeah, well, you know, I don't worry too much about what people think.

I try to be stoic about that stuff and I don't, I can control what I can control.

I really, children's books is child-centered, and I've taught writing children's books to adults, and I use this essay by Annie Burroughs a lot where she talks about, you know, you have to get down to the child's level, whatever age you're writing for, and see the world through their eyeballs.

You know, so a lot of adults come to children's books and think, "Oh, I have this message and I'm gonna top down, force it on them."

And it's really beginning with the kid and seeing the world through their eyes and their experiences.

And you know, for me, I've always been able to identify with young people.

I'm an ex kid myself.

I may not look it, but, you know, what I love about young people is this sense of becoming, of, you know, like there's a plasticity to youth where they, there's an openness.

They haven't calcified in these hardened adults who are like, I'm like this and this is what I like.

- Yes.

- And I hate tuna fish and you know, and you know, whereas kids, I feel like, you know, the world is so wide open.

So when you're creating for them, you're just trying to present that world of possibilities to them.

- Yeah, and you're like really well known for your range.

Like you do very silly, like very silly, just joyful, to some really serious heavy subjects.

So how do you decide what a reader can handle?

- Well, I think with each book I, you know, I have a sense of what I'm trying to accomplish with that book and what I'm trying to say, communicate.

But, you know, kids, people don't give young people enough credit because they're dealing with the world, like look at the world, right?

They're dealing with all kinds of things.

There's children who are starving, there's children who get sick, there's children who move to new towns, whose parents get divorced.

They're dealing with stuff all the time.

So you can, in a book, give them, you know, show them some of that experience.

And the thing with books is that it's a safe way for them to experience things out of remove.

- Mm.

- So, you know, so they can see someone who's really trying to make that basketball team, and it's the whole world.

And if I don't make it, everything falls apart.

And they can identify that, with that and read it.

And if it's something very hard, the beauty of a book is you can close that book, and you can put that book away for when you're ready for it.

Maybe it's too much for you at that moment, but you know, books are like preparations for living in a way.

So if you read a lot, and you begin to, you begin to experience things without, you know, the danger of, you know, it being real life at that point.

- Yeah, and I like how you said like, you know, maybe this book isn't for me right now, but I can always put it on the bookshelf and wait for the next chapter when I do need to read that book.

- I write the, just very quickly, I write these scary stories sometimes.

And I had a mother tell me that her daughter, like so she puts the books on the shelf, but she puts them with the spine in because she doesn't even wanna, she doesn't even wanna see the spine, but she knows it's there.

And when, and they're waiting and when she's ready and she feels brave, she'll pull it out.

- [Jade] And just grab it.

- Yeah, kids are amazing.

- I love that.

So you have a new release or upcoming book called "Two Ballerinas and a Moose."

And what we've discussed is just like pure fun, joy, unapologetic silliness.

So why is it important to just have fun and be silly in your writing sometimes?

- You know, this part of my series is "And a Moose" series.

That's the second book.

The first book is "Two Birds and a Moose."

Then, there's "Two ballerinas and a Moose."

And the next one is "Two Astronauts."

And it just adds a moose, you know, just two of anything, add a moose and chaos ensues.

But it's just a lighthearted, fun book.

Beautifully illustrated by Abigail Birch, who just has a gift for just bright, appealing, simple artwork.

And you know, there's a lot of books with, a lot of seriousness in children's books, you know, kind of oddly enough and a lot of messages and a lot of heaviness sometimes.

And I just have had this sense of like, where's the humor?

Where's just the fun?

And what I want, especially for those books where kids are just getting their first experiences as readers, I want them to have a positive experience.

I want them to read a book and go, "Oh, that wasn't, that wasn't so terrible.

Maybe I'll read another."

You know, and if I can just be in a springboard to the next book, that's mission accomplished for me.

- Collaborations are very important to you.

And this is something that sometimes some artists get a little, you know, a little like, "Oh, I don't know if I wanna collaborate or share my ideas or share the platform."

But you have a love and appreciation for collaboration.

Can you break down why you think collaboration is important to your creative process and why creatives should embrace it?

- Yeah, well I totally identify with the artist who's like, "Oh, I'm not able to give up that control."

'Cause for years I was that guy, and at a certain point, maybe I just got lonely enough or sad enough, or I dealt with enough rejection.

I was like, I gotta bring some fun into my life and into my creative process.

And I just started collaborating with different people, and it just does make it less lonely and enjoyable.

So I have to tell you real quickly, I started writing with an author, Audrey Vernick, about nine and a half years ago.

- [Jade] Wow.

- And we bonded over our love for James Marshall's "George and Martha" books, which are just brilliant.

And I think we just imitated those books for a few years.

But we recently sold a two book deal, but for nine and a half years, we were writing and we had kind of made our peace with, there may not be an end result here.

And I've always loved, my favorite quote is always by the Japanese haiku poet, Basho, and it's called "The journey itself is home," and that it's not about the end result.

So I think Audrey and I really gave up on the idea of like, oh, we're gonna publish a book, but our friendship blossomed and we supported each other, encouraged each other, and learned from each other.

And it's been a really beautiful experience, and I think it's made me happier than a lot of books I've done on my own.

- Yeah, it kind of reminds me of like when I'm feeling stuck, I go into a museum and just like kind of like just dive in, into looking at so many other people's work, and it inspires me, or going to a new city and people watching and getting inspired there.

You're taking yourself out of the bubble and putting you with like just so many other thoughts and ideas.

- A hundred percent.

I think, you know, the idea of cultivating your creativity is something I've thought about a lot.

I thought about it a lot as a teacher 'cause I talk to people.

You know, be like, "Well, where do you have a place where you're creative?

What is it?

You know, what, do long walks?

Is that important?

What are the things you do to cultivate your own artistic creativity?"

- Yeah.

- And kind of trying to identify those things that can help you be a better artist.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

- So to wrap things up, I want to ask you, what do you hope readers take with them once they close one of your books?

- Well, in 1990, a librarian named Rudine Sims Bishop wrote a beautiful essay in which she really was the first person to talk about books in the context of windows and mirrors.

So books can be windows into another world, into other cultures, other lands, real or imagined, which you begin to see this multicultural world out there.

But books also serve as mirrors, in which you can see yourself within that broader context.

So, you know, if you're an immigrant child, if you're someone, you know, who's struggling with a sick mother or whatever it is, when you see yourself, it's so important.

And representation matters.

It really matters.

And there's a lot of people who've been excluded from that story, and they, you know, so when they see themselves into this broader context, they get the message that I belong.

You know, I exist and I matter.

So there's that.

And I always get back to my favorite moment in "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee when Scout walks Boo Radley back to his house, and Boo is gonna enter that house.

We're never gonna see Boo again.

And Scout turns at that moment and looks out on the street from Boo's perspective.

And in that moment, kind of stands in Boo's shoes.

And that's empathy, and that's compassion, and that is story.

That's what story can give us, is an insight into others.

What do I want a kid to take away from a book is a sense that they're just engaged in this world of possibility and beauty.

- That was beautiful and very needed to hear in these days and times.

- Thank you.

- I appreciate you so much, James.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Thank you so much.

- [Jade] Thank you.

- Please welcome TV Doctors.

(rock music) (rock music) Thanks for joining us.

For more arts, visit wmht.org/aha and be sure to connect with us on social.

I'm Matt Rogowicz.

Thanks for watching.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Aha" has been provided by your contribution and by contributions to the WMHT Venture Fund.

Contributors include the Leo Cox Beach Philanthropic Foundation, Chet and Karen Opalka, Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi, and the Robison Family Foundation.

- At M and T Bank, we understand that the vitality of our communities is crucial to our continued success.

That's why we take an active role in our community.

M and T Bank is pleased to support WMHT programming that highlights the arts, and we invite you to do the same.