| 
During
school visits I'm often asked by students, "When
did you decide to be an author?" The truth is I never planned to be one. But I
love to share my story with children, because it shows what can happen if we are
ready to catch the curveballs that life has a way of throwing at us.
I entered college as a photography major and began looking at the world in a whole
new way: through the lens of the 35mm camera I inherited from my father. I had
great professors who encouraged me to experiment with light, perspective, angles,
composition, settings, and techniques. During that time I took an art history
course where I was introduced to how the world's greatest artists have interpreted
the world. Then I changed my major to art history and kept photography as a minor,
thereby immersing myself in the visual worlds of the past and the present. Little
did I know that everything I was absorbing in those four years would circle back
to me in my career as a children's book writer.
I attended graduate school and studied the art history of the Italian Renaissance.
Switching gears, I finished my graduate studies in elementary education and began
teaching sixth graders in Southern California. The school district I worked for
had cut arts education from the budget (but not the curriculum) long before my
arrival. I was shocked that my eleven year-old students had been given virtually
no visual arts instruction (or music, dance, and drama). I decided to change that
and developed an art appreciation curriculum that dovetailed with the world cultures
social studies curriculum. The kids loved it and looked forward to the times when
we came to the "art parts" of our units.
I spent hours in the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art's library, browsing through drawers of slides to show my
students. But I was frustrated that I couldn't find great art books for kids that
really got them hooked on art. Most of the books read like college-level texts
jammed with so many facts and dates that students were tuned out by the second
page.
Moving to the East Coast, I began
developing educational materials for USA Today, The Smithsonian Institution,
and MTV. I also wrote "Making Your Own Masterpieces", an article for Family
Fun magazine, that incorporated the activities I designed with my sixth graders.
Remembering the lack of dynamic and age-appropriate art books for upper elementary
students gave me the idea to write a children's art book that would encourage
kids to really look at art and to make their own discoveries at the same time.
And one day, while looking at a painting by the Russian artist Vasily Kandinsky,
the answer was right in front of me in multicolored oils: write about how artists
see the weather in different ways. The painting, "Landscape With Rain", is now
part of "How Artists See Weather", and I've been writing "How Artists See" volumes
ever since. |
 
COLLEEN
CARROLL
Learn
more about Colleen's award-winning 12-Volume Series:
How Artists See 
Own
the series
New
from Abbeville Press!
How
Artists See Series Teachers' Guide |
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
