Getting to know...Mike Venezia and his wonderful window on the arts

Teaching Pre K-8, Mar 2000 by Winarski, Diane

An advertising executive turned author-illustrator uses honesty and humor to make the arts approachable for students from five to five hundred ave you ever heard the tale of how young Pablo Picasso first shared his artistic vision with his parents? As the story goes, they walked in the room to see him flinging food at the wall. His father, an art teacher, pronounced Pablo would be a genius (as he was clearly demonstrating).

This story, recounted in Michael Venezia@s book Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists: Pablo Picasso illustrates as much about its author and illustrator as it does about Picasso: Mike likes to create things, he loves to laugh, and he believes encouragement is the cornerstone to success.

"If a child takes vegetables and rubs them onto a plate, he's creating something," Mike explains, perhaps as much in defense of Picasso as of all kids who choose food as their medium. '"Well, let's see what peas would look like and what carrots would look like.' That can start at a very early age, and it's really important to support it."'

A subtle start. As far as we've seen (and in as much as he admits), Mike himself doesn't work much with vegetables. Instead, he divides his creative energies equally between two jobs he couldn't have imagined 35 years ago: children's books and advertising.

"I wasn't a good student," Mike offered as we talked during his visit to our Connecticut office. "Though art was my strongest point, I kept telling myself that I couldn't do it. But it didn't matter-there were my parents saying, 'Oh, you have great talent, you should go the Art Institute,' and there were my teachers saying, Try to get in, because you have talent. You should develop that talent.' I always appreciated that. It's what got me into this thing."

Mike's advertising career began soon after his graduation from the Art Institute of Chicago. He started in an agency's paste-up department and has been with the same company for 31 years. His first book followed several years later as the result of his collaboration with a friend who wanted to try his hand at children's books.

Pleased with their resulting success, Mike approached his editor with the plan for a children's book about an artist. Like the ventures of Aaron Copland, Andy Warhol and Auguste Renoir - just a few of the figures he would eventually write about - Mike's idea was met with skepticism. "What I proposed was a way to present artists as real people who had real lives. They were babies, they grew up, and they had problems just like us and families just like us. My editor was mildly underwhelmed."

He persisted, and Children's Press published the first two books in what is now the 29-book "Getting to Know the World's Greatest..." series. "Even if people don't like what you're doing, if you believe in it, they'll often come around if you stick to it."

Say it with style. Mike injects what could be dry biographies with photos, text and comic strip-type illustrations reminiscent of the 1960s "School House Rock" televised shorts that used animation and humor to enliven history, grammar and math. Coupling humor with obscure facts in this vein "loosens kids up and provides a springboard for questions" about the artists and composers on which Mike focuses.

After all, what student wouldn't giggle upon hearing that as a child, sculptor Alexander Calder hitched desert creatures to the simple wire and thread mechanisms he created and raced them with his sister? And who wouldn't love to know that Michelangelo's nose is bent because as a child, he was punched by a jealous art student?

Mike is on a quest to make all kinds of art more approachable. He's working on an idea with the San Francisco Symphony to make classical music and musicians less intimidating. "There they are up on stage in tuxedos and black dresses and they do this magical thing with instruments. It would be fun to have them wearing Hawaiian shirts and jeans and talk to kids. Kids could ask questions like, 'How do you get your bass to work? Do you stuff it in a cab? Put it on top of your car?...

Similarly, Mike believes museums can be too much like cathedrals. We speak in hushed tones and keep safe, respectful distances from the artwork. "Guards seem to come out of the walls if we get too close. But we want to touch sculptures; they're made to be touched. I'd love to see every museum provide one piece of art for kids to touch. Students need to feel the texture of paint on canvas."

Living with the arts. At their suburban Chicago home, Mike and his wife, Jeannine, created an art-filled environment. "It's so important that kids be surrounded with paint and markers and paper. That way, they have every chance to express themselves." Their son, Michael, went from sketching Star Wars movie scenes on huge rolls of white butcher paper to studying English and film at the University of Illinois at Champaign. Daughter Elizabeth, a high school senior, helps her father color sketches for some of his books. "She'll probably study fashion or marketing, but she loves to help me," Mike explained with a smile.