Carter, Don 1958-

Personal

Born 1958, in Hartford, CT; married; wife's name Catherine; children: Grayson, Phoebe. Education: Attended Paier College of Art, 1976-80. Hobbies and other interests: Jazz.

Addresses

Home—West Hartford, CT. Office—Adams & Knight, 80 Avon Meadow Ln., Avon, CT 06001. Agent—Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown Ltd., 10 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003. E-mail—don@adamsknight.com.

Career

Illustrator and art director. Tryol & Mikan, art director, 1980-81; Lardis, McCurdy & Company, art director, 1981-85; Naftzger & Kuhe, associate creative director, 1985-86; Mintz & Hoke, creative director, 1986-2001; Adams & Knight Advertising, Avon, CT, creative director, 2001—. Creator of Happy Monster Band (animated television series), Playhouse Disney, 2007—.

Member

Advertising Club of Connecticut.

Awards, Honors

Original Art Exhibit inclusion, Society of Illustrators, 2000, and 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing designation, New York Public Library, both for for Wake Up House!; awards for advertising art direction and copywriting from institutions including The One Show, CLIO, Connecticut Art Directors Club, and Advertising Club of Connecticut.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Get to Work, Trucks!, Roaring Brook Press (Brookfield, CT), 2002.

Heaven's All-Star Jazz Band, Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

Send It!, Roaring Brook Press (New Milford, CT), 2003.

Old MacDonald Drives a Tractor, Roaring Brook Press (New Milford, CT), 2007.

ILLUSTRATOR

Dee Lillegard, Wake Up House!: Rooms Full of Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 2000.

Donna Conrad, See You Soon, Moon, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

Dee Lillegard, Hello School!: A Classroom of Poems, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001.

Carter's work has also appeared in Sesame Street and Nick Jr. magazines.

Sidelights

Don Carter, the creative director for a Connecticut advertising agency, has served as the illustrator for books that include Dee Lillegard's Wake Up House!: Rooms Full of Poems and Old MacDonald Drives a Tractor, a self-illustrated title. Carter is also the creator of Happy Monster Band, an animated television series for Playhouse Disney.

Describing his journey from advertising executive to children's book illustrator, Carter once told SATA: "I developed what I thought was a unique 3-D illustration style with the hopes of illustrating for the advertising field. I was already working in the business as an art director, so it seemed like it would be an easy transition. Without an agent or any serious marketing, my hopeful career went nowhere, so I shelved my portfolio and moved on.

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"Many years later, a local artist's representative reignited my interest in illustrating. I was designing a lot of posters for local theater groups at the time, and whenever I could, I would work on my own illustrations. There was no money to pay an illustrator, so it was a good way for me to at least get some printed samples of my own. Hoping the rep might be able to get me some paying jobs, I pulled together a bunch of the samples, and just for kicks I dusted off my old 3-D portfolio and dragged it along. When he saw the 3-D samples, he went nuts. I remember him saying, ‘Never mind pastels. I've got at least five guys doing pastels. This 3-D stuff … that's what you should be doing.’

"Not satisfied with the quality of my old samples, I developed a whole new portfolio in the 3-D style. The funny thing about it was, not until I had finished all the samples did I fully realize every piece could have easily been for a children's book. I had stuff like blue dogs, teapots with faces, and farm animals dressed as people. I had always had an interest in children's books, but never seriously considered illustrating for them because I had always heard it was next to impossible to break into the market. Now I had a portfolio full of colorful, whimsical illustrations that was pretty much limited to some kind of children's market. So I thought the next logical step was to try and illustrate for the children's magazines.

"I took out an ad in a new publication titled Picturebook that was marketed solely to the children's market. Perfect, I thought. I would just sit back and wait for the jobs to come to me. The phone rang maybe half a dozen times. Everyone loved the style, but I didn't get any jobs. The ad also came with five hundred reprints of my page. So I mailed a personalized note along with a copy of the reprint to every magazine, every publisher I could find. The phone started ringing almost immediately. I got several requests to see my portfolio, and Sesame Street magazine gave me my first job. I was on my way, or at least I thought I was. Knowing that art directors often filed samples for future jobs, I knew it would take a while for the mailings to bring in work. So I waited. And waited. Again, nothing. I needed to try something else.

"Earlier on I had joined the Graphic Artists' Guild, primarily to get a discount on my Picturebook ad. The discount was more than the membership dues, so what did I have to lose? The Guild had a yearly show at the Puck Building in New York City, where illustrators could exhibit their work. Art directors and designers from the advertising, editorial, and publishing fields were invited. I thought maybe it would be a good opportunity to get face to face with the people who actually hired illustrators.

"That night was a major turning point. Designers and art directors snatched up my reprints and asked to be put on my mailing list. One editor from a major children's book publishing house came back to my table probably three times to look at my work. At the end of the night, I came home knowing I had to stick with it.

"Several months later, I received a call from Random House. They asked if I could send my portfolio to their art director. One of their designers had seen my work at the show and had brought back my sample sheet. When they returned my portfolio to me, there was a Random House catalog enclosed. Attached was a yellow post-it note with the message, ‘Your portfolio is terrific and I have you in mind for a project. I'll be in touch soon….’

"What was the project? Was it a definite thing? How soon would they be in touch? I couldn't wait. I gave [the art director] a call the next week. That turned out to be my first book, Wake Up House! by Dee Lillegard.

In Wake Up House! Carter employs foam board, plaster, and acrylic paint to illustrate Lillegard's story of the ordinary things a preschooler encounters at home, including a bathroom mirror, a kitchen stove, a set of cabinets, a broom, and a washing machine. Hazel Rochman, writing in Booklist, stated that "Carter's clear, beautiful three-dimensional illustrations" are "as tactile and immediate as the words." Carter's distinctive illustrations also drew praise from a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who called his art "dynamic and distinctive."

Carter and Lillegard later collaborated on Hello School!: A Classroom of Poems, a verse collection about desks, scissors, water fountains, and other objects that students use. Sheryl L. Shipley, writing in School Library Journal, noted that Carter's artwork "will draw youngsters in," and Booklist reviewer Marta Segal commented that the illustrations "fairly leap off the pages."

Carter also provided the illustrations for Donna Conrad's debut picture book, See You Soon, Moon. In the work, a young boy notices that the moon follows his family as they drive through the countryside on their way to Grandma's house. A Publishers Weekly contributor applauded Carter's "eye-catching, irresistibly tactile 3-D illustrations" and the book's "simple, uncluttered layout, vibrant colors and textured cut-out shapes," and Marianne Saccardi, writing in School Library Journal, remarked that Carter's foam, plaster, and acrylic illustrations "are brimming with texture and saturated colors."

Discussing his artistic style and the process he uses to create his illustrations, Carter told SATA: "It's not based on anything I've ever seen. I used to do a lot of paper collage constructions in art school because I liked the crispness of the shadows each layer made. I guess my

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present style is just an expansion of that with thicker layers and thicker shadows." Carter added, "My initial pencil sketches are very tight. So once they are approved I blow them up on a copier to full size as a template for the constructions. After I determine how many layers are needed, I cut the pieces out of foam board. They are then glued together and covered with plaster for texture. Once the plaster is dry, everything is coated with gesso and finally painted with acrylics. Sometimes I'll incorporate other dimensional items such as buttons, twigs, fabric, and bird seed into the constructions for added interest. Then the finished pieces are photographed with a 4x5 format camera."

Carter has also produced a number of self-illustrated titles. In Get to Work, Trucks! he depicts a busy day for the men and women behind the controls of a variety of machines, including a bulldozer, dump truck, loader, crane, and cement mixer. Carter's "text provides an incantatory thrum to fill the activity with primal purpose," remarked a Kirkus Reviews contributor, and a Publishers Weekly critic observed that "every spread looks like a toy-enacted scenario assembled by a young construction enthusiast."

A young boy imagines his late grandfather cavorting with such musical greats as Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk in Heaven's All-Star Jazz Band. According to Ilene Cooper in Booklist, Carter's illustrations possess "a naive, kidlike quality that will immediately appeal to the audience," and a Publishers Weekly contributor stated that his "distinctive, 3-D concoctions … successfully translate a lofty abstraction into a joyful feast for the senses." Writing in School Library Journal, Jane Marino complimented the marriage of text and art, noting that Carter combines "sound words, rhyme, and rhythm with stylized illustration to tell an imaginative tale and pay tribute to the music and its stars."

A package makes it way through the postal system, arriving just in time for a child's birthday, in Send It!, an "instructive book for preschoolers captivated by planes, trains, and automobiles," remarked Booklist critic Karin Snelson. The work follows the package's week-long voyage, showing it aboard a mail truck, a ship, and an airplane. "With engaging simplicity, this title delivers the goods," Luann Toth commented in School Library Journal. In Old MacDonald Drives a Tractor Carter offers his take on an old favorite. His illustrations "are as enticing as ever," observed a contributor in a Kirkus Reviews appraisal of the book.

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Advertising Age, July 31, 2006, Patricia Riedman, "Storyboards Find New Life as Storybook Illustrations," p. 21.

Booklist, February 1, 2000, Hazel Rochman, review of Wake Up House!: Rooms Full of Poems, p. 1026; August, 2001, Marta Segal, review of Hello School!: A Classroom Full of Poems, p. 2125; March 1, 2002, Marta Segal, review of Get to Work, Trucks!, p. 1140; November 15, 2002, Ilene Cooper, review of Heaven's All-Star Jazz Band, p. 608; December 15, 2003, Karin Snelson, review of Send It!, p. 752.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2002, review of Get to Work, Trucks!, p. 251; May 1, 2007, review of Old MacDonald Drives a Tractor.

Publishers Weekly, February 14, 2000, review of Wake Up House!, p. 196; January 1, 2001, review of See You Soon, Moon, p. 91; January 14, 2002, review of Get to Work, Trucks!, p. 58; October 21, 2002, review of Heaven's All-Star Jazz Band, p. 741; October 6, 2003, review of Send It!, p. 82.

School Library Journal, December, 2000, review of Wake Up House!, p. 54; March, 2001, Marianne Saccardi, review of See You Soon, Moon, p. 195; July, 2001, Sheryl L. Shipley, review of Hello School!, p. 95; March, 2002, Gay Lynn Van Vleck, review of Get to Work, Trucks!, p. 173; November, 2002, Jane Marino, review of Heaven's All-Star Jazz Band, p. 112; December, 2003, Luann Toth, review of Send It!, p. 111; June, 2007, Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, review of Old MacDonald Drives a Tractor, p. 94.

ONLINE

Connecticut Creatives Web site,http://conncreatives.com/ (March 2, 2008), David Cushman, "Don Carter's Art Farm."

Flickr,http://www.flickr.com/ (August 28, 2008), "Don Carter."