12. Phillis's Big Test by Catherine Clinton; Sean Qualls ill. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2008.

ISBN: 9780618737390

A picture-book biography deals in the life of Phillis Wheatley, the first African American to publish a book of poetry and  the verbal examination of the authenticity of her poetry.

Media: Acrylic paint and paper collage.

5Q/5P

Curriculum Connection

Historical interpretation and poetry /literature connection.

Significant aspects of the artwork. Sean Qualls is a New York City artist who draws inspiration from an array of influences such as movies, television, childhood memories, aging and decaying surfaces, old buildings, architecture, nature, folk art, fairy tales, Americana, black memorabilia, outsider art, cave paintings, collectibles, African art, golden books, vintage advertisements, psychology, mythology, science fiction, music, and literature. His work is a mixed media combination of painting, drawing, and collage. The artist tends to work with acrylic paints, touching them with dark pencil and layering with collage that's sometimes crisp, delimiting figure edges, and sometimes adding subtle tracery to backgrounds. Square geometric shapes of the landscape play against the organic shapes of people and a unique perception of body language. The use of geometric lines that converge on a page makes his simple designs arresting and perception is altered by the lines not always following realism. Emotion and atmosphere are what the artist concentrates on in this book and the interior dialog causes you to see a repetition of the poets face on almost every page. His palette is sophisticated in its taste for gray-touched shades, making you  feel  included in something special, but the warmer accents are all the more dramatic as a consequence, and he draws faces with youthful and inviting tenderness. The use of somber color and layers of paint and drawing shows an influence of pop culture that still seems to evoke a New England feel to the painting for me.

• use of repetition through the text and/or through the illustrations.

Repetition of the face of the character Phillis Wheatley on almost every page as the dialogue is mostly interior thought. Phillis's Big Test by Catherine Clinton and Sean Qualls.

D. Guhl Summer 2009