Families, join the Clyfford Still Museum for a book reading by award-winning author Lisa Rogers of the inspiring, poetic children’s picture book, Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony: La Grande Vallée Suite in the Museum galleries. After the reading, Lisa Rogers will also sign copies of the book for Museum visitors. This book is great for ages 7–10!
This program is included with Museum admission, and registration is not required. Children 17 and under are always free at the Still.
About Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony
It’s 1983, and American artist Joan Mitchell is in her studio outside Paris, transforming her emotions and memories into a symphony of colors and shapes. Inspired by her friend’s description of an idyllic hidden valley in France, Mitchell creates 21 massive paintings—her Grande Vallée series —bursting with vibrant, energizing hues. But she doesn’t paint the valley’s flowers and meadows. She paints a feeling about them—abundance, freedom, liveliness—creating a harmonious blend of drips, splashes, and brushstrokes in rainbow colors. When the paint dries, it’s time to share her valley with the world.
This inspiring, poetic picture book about an influential yet lesser-known American artist provides a snapshot of a creator who deserves as much acclaim as better-known Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning. Author Lisa Rogers shares both the despair and delight Mitchell experienced throughout her career, while acclaimed illustrator Stacy Innerst’s bright artwork captures the movement and energy of Mitchell’s work, as her paintings develop from page to page.
About Lisa Rogers
Lisa Rogers’ career as an elementary library teacher inspired her to write for children. She’s the award-winning author of several picture book biographies, including Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony, called “simply marvelous” by Kirkus in a starred review; the Golden Kite Honor awardee Beautiful Noise: The Music of John Cage; 16 Words: William Carlos Williams and “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and her latest, Woody’s Words: Woodrow Wilson Rawls and Where the Red Fern Grows.
She’s also authored the bestselling Elvis Presley: A Little Golden Book Biography; the rhyming fiction picture book Hound Won’t Go; Ronald Reagan: A Little Golden Book Biography, and Discover Her Art: Women Artists and Their Masterpieces. Lisa has poems in several anthologies, including the title poem in If I Could Choose a Best Day: Poems of Possibility (Irene Latham and Charles Waters, eds.).
A former news reporter and editor, Lisa received degrees in English Literature from William & Mary and Boston College and a master’s in Library Science from Southern Connecticut State University. A four-time runner of the Boston Marathon, she daydreams, runs, paints, and has adventures with her hound within howling distance of the marathon route.