STEP INTO THE STUDIO AND, AHEM, DRAW UP A CHAIR. Menomonie artist Beth Peck specializes in children’s book illustrations and her “calligraphic” images have appeared in 25 books.

In a world full of untouchable art, most of Beth Peck’s drawings do not reside behind glass. Her artwork is flippable, pick-up-able, and tells a story. Peck is a children’s book illustrator, and she works to translate verbal plot into visual expression.

Peck, a resident of Menomonie since 1990, has been illustrating books since 1984. After earning a BFA from the Rhode Island College of Design, she made a habit of dropping off her portfolio at publishers whose work she admired. Her selectivity paid off. Harper & Row gave her her first three jobs. “I thought it was a good way to mesh my artistic life with a practical application,” she says.

Since then, Peck’s “calligraphic” images have made their way into 25 books (including Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory). Two of her more recent books, entitled Just Like Josh Gibson and Music for the End of Time, are featured at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson. Music for the End of Time was one of the Best Children’s Books of 2006, according to Bank Street College in Manhattan. Also on display will be Peck’s sketch panels, which show her thorough figure studies, like torsos twisting with the swing of a bat. She will appear at Phipps Center on July 23 to talk about her illustrative process. 

On June 22, a roving museum visited her. “They find these parts of the U.S. that have pockets of childrens’ book artists,” she says of the 40 or so enthusiasts affiliated with the Mazza Museum of International Art in Findlay, Ohio.  Peck had served as a visiting illustrator at the Mazza Museum last fall, and she was delighted to welcome a bus-ful of tourists into her studio for a short talk.

But when they aren’t giving talks for museum-folk, what is the everyday work of an illustrator like?

    For Peck, the illustrative process always involves much more than putting paint on paper. “I could probably have illustrated the book without doing research,” she said of her recent work in Just Like Josh Gibson. “But it just adds a richness, I think … and it enriches my experience of doing the book,” she says.

Just Like Josh Gibson is a fictional story about a little girl who wants to play baseball, but it uses historical information concerning the career of the legendary Negro League ball player Josh Gibson. Before drawing, Peck surrounded herself with peanut-and-cracker-jack culture. She took pictures at a local game, read a biography about Gibson, and studied countless black and white baseball photos. Even unintentional observations helped her build images for the story. Having recently ridden her bike past a rural ball field, she noticed an old green outhouse nearby. “It just felt like such an amazing juxtaposition of imagery,” she says. So the real outhouse of the Menomonie countryside is now immortalized in a fictional story.

Peck, a former city-dweller, now works in a spacious, sunlit space with a leafy view. “I wanted to set up a nice, pretty place where people would feel happy coming to,” she says. Having taught observational drawing and figure drawing as an adjunct professor at both UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout, Peck has decided to teach again. She wants to offer classes to kids and adults, and will be attuned to her students’ wishes – anything from basic drawing to pastel studies to illustration is fair game. Though the details aren’t worked out yet, Peck is confident. “Have you seen Field of Dreams?” she asks.  “I told my husband, ‘if you build it, they will come,’” she laughs.
See Beth’s artwork at LE Phillips Lib    rary in Eau Claire as part of the Story Lines: Narrative and Sequential Images, on display through August.

  Visit one of Beth’s open studio events on Aug. 9, Sept. 6, Oct. 18, or Oct. 25 from 2-6 pm at E4523 County Road D in Menomonie.