Date: Fri 01-May-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

Kern-Alphabet-illustrator

Full Text:

A Is For Artist... And The Woman Who Created The Kern Alphabet

(with photo & artwork)

BY SHANNON HICKS

A is for Apple, and Artist, and Alphabet, and all of these words are related

to Newtown children's illustrator Donna Kern.

This weekend, children and their parents will have the opportunity to meet Ms

Kern when she offers a program for kids ages four to nine at C.H. Booth

Library in Newtown.

On Saturday, May 2, from 1 to 2 pm, Ms Kern will share her alphabet

illustrations with those participating in the program, and will then encourage

the children to create their own alphabet letter-paintings.

In the original Kern Alphabet, developed in 1989, Donna painted images where

an A took the shape of an apple, noodles create the letter N, and a red ribbon

forms the shape of an R. Each letter was its own painting, 11 by 14 inches in

size, which meant Donna had 26 original alphabet paintings when she started.

Kern Alphabets have since been created for the French, Spanish and German

languages. The latest incarnation of the alphabet has been the "Kern

Occupations Alphabet" (B is for baker, S is for soldier...) and the "Kern

Animal Alphabet" (F is for Frog, L is for lion, and O is for otter).

The Kern Alphabet was originally designed by Donna as an experimental piece.

It was a self-promotional piece, something the artist came up with as an

example to have in her portfolio to show prospective clients her painting

style.

In the early 1980s, Donna was working as a printer and typographer while

learning illustration. After four years of classes with illustration artist

Julie Kiefer-Bell in Illinois, Donna moved to Connecticut in 1983. She resumed

classes at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, and graduated

in 1988 magna cum laude with a liberal arts degree. Illustration as a career,

she soon learned, was not a full-time job.

"Illustration is only freelance," she said recently. "It is not a full-time

job, because there are so many styles, and everybody specializes in only a

narrow range of styles.

"An art director wants to be able to select from that wide range of styles."

What Donna learned quickly was that anyone who wanted to impress an art

director needed a "razzle-dazzle" portfolio. "You have to show what you're

good at," she said.

To open a freelance studio, she found out, you have to get the word out to art

directors at graphic design houses and advertising agencies. "You have to let

them know that you exist," she said, "and so you go through this mostly

humiliating process of picking up the phone and finding out what a company

does, if they use illustrators.

"I did a lot of that, and it's really no fun," she recalled. "It's like cold

sales. You really go in there as the underdog, but that's how you build a

business. That's how it works. Out of every ten interviews you go on, you end

up getting a client out of one."

The other way to build a name is to take out advertisements in trade

publications. Donna went that route as well, but not to an extreme. Today,

most of the business is done through word of mouth and building reputations.

"I like the idea of using my style to make a project work for a client, as

opposed to an artist who just does what he or she wants to, whatever floats

their boat," she said.

It was while she was making pieces for her portfolio that the Kern Alphabet

was created. After putting some other experimental pieces into her portfolio,

the next pieces Donna started painting were the alphabet works. She was

looking for something that would demonstrate she could design well, execute an

airbrush painting and have the work be a nice display piece.

In 1989, an art director she was interviewing with suggested she take her

alphabet paintings to a printing facility in West Haven. In September of that

year, Donna's individual paintings were first published in poster form by

Herlin Press of West Haven.

"I walked into the right place at the right time on the right day," she said.

Herlin Press decided to print the alphabet in poster form and send the poster

to its clients and prospects. When the poster came out as a self-promotional

piece for the printer, it was also a major turning point in Donna's life.

Herlin Press, she says, "put me on the map."

"Everything else that has happened from that day is a result of that meeting,"

she said. In fall of 1993, Aladdin Books (a subsidiary of Macmillan

Publishing, now Simon & Schuster) published From Apple to Zipper . The words

and texts were written by Nora Cohen, using Donna's illustrations. The book

was selected that fall by the American Bookseller's Association as a "Pick of

the List."

The poster was originally created for printers and typographers, but the first

person who saw the poster who had kids told Donna, "Oh, this alphabet poster

would be great for my kids!"

At that point in her career, however, Donna was not considering herself a

children's illustrator. Suddenly, she started receiving letters from teachers

across the country who told her how wonderful her poster was as a teaching

tool and Donna began feeling more and more like an illustrator for children.

"I did not start out to be a children's illustrator, but this poster made me

one," she said last week. "Because of this book, and because the teachers

picked up on it, and pediatricians wanted it hanging in their waiting rooms,

and that's where we would get orders from, I decided `OK, well, I'm a

children's illustrator and I'll go with that.'"

Donna Kern and her husband moved to Newtown two years ago, each bringing their

successful businesses to the separate studios each maintains in their home.

Donna has also acquired the copyright for her work, which gives her the right

to copy and sell her image in a number of forms. With the revenues from

licensing that will continue to come in as long as Kern Alphabet products

sell, Donna is also already able to think about her retirement -- years down

the line -- as fairly secure.

Licensing of her work has resulted in the Kern Alphabet appearing on T-shirts,

note cubes, giant floor puzzles, card games and another children's book. Donna

wrote and illustrated her second book, called Flossy, A Tooth Fairy Tale .

Donna used colored pencils and airbrush to create 16 round illustrations,

telling the story of the tooth fairy. First published through W.J. Fantasy in

Bridgeport (800/200-3000) two years ago, the book is now in its second

printing.

The Kern Alphabet has been used by The Los Angeles Times Children's Magazine

in an article on children's nutrition; The New Haven Register, The Hartford

Courant and additional Connecticut newspapers printed articles on airbrush

demonstrations and poster presentations at Darcey School in Cheshire; and

posters have been used for fundraising events for groups like Literacy

Volunteers of America, Mothers of Multiples, The Children's Connecticut (a

Norwalk-based anti-child abuse agency Donna has volunteered with) and Orchard

Country Day School (Carmel, Ill.)

While she owns the copyright for her work, Donna no longer owns the original

26 paintings for The Kern Alphabet. One of the biggest things that has come

out of the alphabet poster was the acquisition of the original paintings by

The Children's Museum in Indianapolis. The museum is the largest children's

museum in the world. It purchased The Kern Alphabet paintings for its

permanent collection, and put the artworks on a tour of major US children's

museums.

"It became a teaching tool. It's just this marriage: the trick is to take two

completely different objects, a key and the shape of the letter K, for

instance, and marry them together in such a way they become a third thing,"

she explained. "It's no more one thing that it is the other. This is no more a

key than the letter K, and vice versa.

"And so it works with children who are learning their alphabet. It seems so

simple to us, but there's this certain age where kids can look at this and

just get it."

On Saturday afternoon, children will be encouraged to discover for themselves

why The Kern Alphabet is such a hit with nearly everyone who has come in

contact with it. Donna's paintings for the Occupations Alphabet and the

Animals Alphabet will be on view. The children can meet the Artist behind the

letter A, and then demonstrate for themselves how an L can be a Library, a B

can be a book, or K can be a kid.