Clay comes home from school to share his aspirations with his grandmother. He longs to be the Star of the Week at school, a title that would allow him to be first in line, to choose the book at story time, and to feel singularly special.
In the new book All the Stars in the Sky by Art Coulson and pictures by Winona Nelson, Clay learns that each individual contributes to a much larger tapestry, a moral that is paralleled with Nelson's watercolor images which are adorned with thousands and thousands of small beads.
"I had been trying to work out a way to combine beadwork and painting for several years when this book came up," says Nelson. "I had tried doing beadwork on acrylic paintings and that surface was far too thick for it." Nelson found success in the process by mounting watercolor paper onto a thin cotton fabric. "As far as I know, no one else has done it."
Throughout the images, Nelson incorporated an indigenous beadwork practice by including one "wrong" colored bead in each picture. "You need to include a wrong color bead so that the spirits don't think you're trying to take over their job of creation," says Nelson. "It's intended to keep you, as an artist, humble." For readers, hunting for said bead can become part of the fun.
You can learn more about Winona Nelson's artwork with Marvel Studios, Magic the Gathering, and her comics online. All the Stars in the Sky can be found at various booksellers and online.
Minnesota Reads is produced at The North 103.3 with funding provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
