Community Corner
Paintings by Shelly O. Haas on Exhibit at Canton Public Library
he fills in the first one with eyes, nose, mouth, other features. Daughter
Shelly Haas (at that time just a young girl) takes her turn and carefully draws
an expressive face in the second circle. In silence; back to her father for the
third. The circle-face expressions get more animated and outrageous. What a
game! It was not truly competitive, but collaborative; an exercise in
communicating through art. Like a good storyteller, Ms. Haas learned to create
a visual story beginning with the most basic structure of elemental features,
then adding just the right mix of symbols and cultural and historical background
to fill in the areas that need detail and complexity.
Fast-forward to today, and the display of a wide-range of subjects of now-professional artist and illustrator, Shelly O. Haas. Through February 28, the Canton Public Library’s main gallery area will exhibit works by Ms. Haas showing her award-winning book illustrations and other work.
As an illustrator with more than fourteen
books to her credit, Haas has imbued both her fiction and non-fiction
illustrations with sensitivity and beautiful imagery. A Rhode Island School of
Design graduate, she is known for her colorful, light-splashed watercolors,
often freeze-framing a moment of essential action in the story. A madly cycling
boy with black and white dog barreling alongside, a watercolor from the book, Fire in the Sky, captures the urgency of
the action perfectly.
A skillful ability to render layers of
complexity in watercolor gives some of her paintings a dreamlike quality. She
is well-acquainted with portraiture, and has illustrated picture book
biographies of eco-pioneer Rachel Carson, ballerina Anna Pavlova, and writer
Laura Ingalls Wilder, among others. Watercolors from these books are included
in the show. The Pavlova work, in its cool blues and violets, evokes a
performer who may at our next glance, have fully transformed into the wild swan
she portrays.
Haas’s expert ability to render both human faces and the human form are matched with the beauty of her scenes from nature. She paints equally well both a spidery silver stand of birches amidst a brilliant autumn yellow sea of grass, and a pond’s rippled surface sailed upon by toy sailboats. Her painting of furry Norwegian Fjord ponies makes one imagine the sociable snuffle of sweet warm pony breath.
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In addition to the paintings mounted
throughout the library’s Adult area, the lighted display case contains the
illustrator’s own copies of her books for patrons to see. This is a show not to
be missed. Canton Public Library is at 40 Dyer Avenue, Canton. For information about the display please call
the library at (860) 693-5800 or visit their website at www.cantonpubliclibrary.org.
