Sophie Blackall

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/sophie-blackall.html

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Sophie Blackall is an Australian artist living in Brooklyn who has illustrated more than 30 children’s books, including “Finding Winnie,” for which she won a Caldecott Medal (equivalent to an Oscar in the children’s book world) this year.

READING Right now I am immersed in Eric Jay Dolin’s history of American lighthouses, “Brilliant Beacons.” I am working on a picture book about a stoic lighthouse through seasons and war and ice and many keepers coming and going. I’m a little obsessed with lighthouses.

The book I can’t bear to remove from my pile, even though I have finished it, is the photographer Sally Mann’s memoir, “Hold Still.” It’s about her artistic process but also about sifting through the ephemera of her past and her husband’s past that is actually in boxes in the attic. I recommend the book to anyone making anything, but also anyone alive.

LISTENING I was in a cafe while on book tour where they were playing Hall & Oates’s “Rich Girl,” and now I can’t get it out of my head. While I’m painting, I listen to audiobooks, most recently Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods,” which transported me to the Appalachian Trail as I sat hunched over my desk.

At the end of a long night, I play Tom McRae’s “Hoping Against Hope.” His music is kind of folky with really smart, literary lyrics that get you in the gut. When we go to our farmhouse in upstate New York, I play records collected in my youth mainly for their cover art, a funny mix of David Bowie, Johnny Cash, Nina Simone and Nat King Cole.

WATCHING I saw “The Lobster.” There was a lot of laughter in the theater and then involuntary sounds of just excruciating discomfort. Most people these days consume their media privately, with earbuds. So there’s something about going to the cinema and hearing everybody gasp at the same time and having that shared experience with strangers. It’s good to be reminded that, oh, yeah, we’re all human and having the same gut response. Especially in this divided political climate, it’s nice to be reminded of our similarities.

FOLLOWING One of my favorite internet rabbit holes is Atlas Obscura, where you learn about extraordinary places like buildings that a postman in France made out of shells. Public Domain Review is, in a similar way, just a gold mine of fantastic images and stories. Things like 17th-century ideas of what Martians looked like and what language they spoke on Mars with drawings and diagrams. And it’s all up for grabs because it’s all public domain.

SEEDING I would really like a goat because goats are hilarious and very endearing. I had a goat as a child. Her name was Josephine. She wasn’t a working goat. She was just entertainment. She’d come inside if you’d let her. She’d get into the car and sit behind the driver’s wheel. But so far no one has given me a goat. As a substitute, I have just bought 10 pounds of wildflower seeds, which may sound excessive. But if I plant a wildflower meadow, maybe the goats will come.