David McLimans Art for Peace Memorial Scholarship Fundraiser

press release: Come out of the cold for an afternoon of book reading, music, and warm beverages - a benefit for the David McLimans Art for Peace Memorial Scholarship which will be awarded to a Madison High School senior for using art to express the idea that WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. This scholarship is sponsored by the Madison Veterans for Peace.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27th, 1:00-2:30, at the Farley Center

Reading of Big Turtle ( a Huron legend )

Celtic Music with Michael Duffy and friends

After a stint in the US Navy, David McLimans, a Green Bay Native, took a few courses at UW Platteville, and eventually received his undergraduate degree in Minneapolis before going on to  earn an MFA in graphics and illustration at Boston University and eventually returning to live and work in Madison.  

With  pen and ink, a superb hand at drawing and detail, an intimacy with nature stemming from his boyhood  on the farms and in the woods of Wisconsin, and a mind filled with satire, whimsy, paradox, and outrage,  David McLimans  began his career  as a contributing editorial illustrator for nationally known newspapers and magazines such as The Progressive, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Rethinking Schools.

But, his love of form, color, and line called him in other directions as well   - water color, wood carving, collage work, making masks from “junk” and delicate birds from the leaves, seeds, and stems of plants he grew or gathered. In his last decade, he turned to writing and illustrating children’s books – Gone Fishing, Gone Wild, and Big Turtle. Much to his surprise, Gone Wild won a Caldecott Honor Award! Each one of the books is exquisite; each one is a statement about the preciousness of the natural world and is meant to be read by the only people he really believed in - children…. In his last years, he discovered the joy of cutting up maps, rearranging small pieces, wiping out boundaries , and then assembling them ( often juxtaposing ‘enemy’ territories ) into living - almost breathing, crawling, slithering, fluttering – images of endangered animal species. His last were human skulls… a statement on our precariousness. His work can be seen at www.davidmclimans.com