Flights Of Fantasy Artist Turns Native Folklore Into Beautiful Children’s Books.

There are many faces to The Trickster, and Gerald McDermott knows most of them.

An award-winning illustrator of children’s picture books, McDermott has dedicated his life to adapting tales of ancient cultures for contemporary readers.

For his 1975 book “Arrow to the Sun,” he won the prized Caldecott Medal, which is presented by the American Library Association to the “most distinguished picture book published in the United States.” Twice more he was awarded Caldecott runner-up “Honor” status.

One of those “Honor” books was “Raven, a Trickster Tale From the Pacific Northwest.”

McDermott will present a slide-show lecture on his work at 2 p.m. today at the downtown branch of the Spokane Public Library. And one of his chief topics undoubtedly will involve Raven and his friends.

“The Trickster in most cultures acts as a kind of balance to the voice of authority,” McDermott said in a recent phone interview. “The Trickster is a character who creates chaos and disorder. And usually out of that chaos comes something new. It’s really a creative act in a sense.”

McDermott spoke from western New Mexico where he is in the midst of filming a Public Television show on his work. Part documentary, part retelling of the stories that the 54-year-old artist has packed into more than 20 picture books, the show should be ready for broadcast sometime next year.

No doubt, it will capture McDermott’s uniquely rendered portrayals of native tales. No doubt, too, it will portray the artist’s love for what he does.

“I was always interested, even as a kid, in folklore and myth,” McDermott said. “When I started making movies in college, I turned to folklore as a source of inspiration.”

Raised in Michigan, McDermott attended college at New York’s Pratt Institute. It was there that he studied art, got into film and, eventually, was introduced to the American expert on mythology, the late Joseph Campbell.

“Joe and I became very close,” McDermott said. “He was really my mentor, and he was the consultant on the films that I subsequently made. That, as you can imagine, had a profound effect on the way that I looked at myth and the origins and the symbolism of it.”

After being introduced to a book publisher, who encouraged him to point his talent toward picture books, McDermott went back to painting. His first effort was the popular “Anansi, the Spider.”

McDermott’s work is extremely stylized. He strives to capture his subjects in stark lines and bold strokes. His style is particularly effective in such tales as “Raven,” which has all the feel of a Northwest Native American totem.

“I wanted it to have the angularity and the kind of carved, hard edge that a wood carving would have,” he said. “Then I played that off against those soft watercolor backgrounds of the landscape.”

While the tales he tells have their basis in the storytelling tradition of Native American, African and other ancient cultures, McDermott writes his own stories. He tries, he said, “to spin out my own tale … always being true to the organic logic that has grown out of centuries of storytelling.”

He doesn’t introduce new characters, nor does he change the stories’ basic elements. But he does tell each tale in his own words, “giving it a voice that somehow comes from me.”

And amazingly, he has so far avoided being criticized by those who resent any attempt by mainstream America to interpret native tales.

“In fact,” McDermott said, “my experience has been quite the opposite.” Although he wrote and illustrated his Pueblo tale “Arrow to the Sun” without ever even visiting the Pueblo area of the Southwest, McDermott was once told by a children’s librarian in Santa Fe that the Pueblos “all use your book to teach their children their own traditions.”

Maybe there’s a bit of The Trickster in what he does. He’s told three Trickster tales so far - the Northwest-based “Raven,” the West African tale “Zomo the Rabbit,” and “Coyote, a Trickster Tale from the American Southwest” - and he is at work on a fourth that features “Jabouti,” an Amazonian tortoise.

Of them, it’s the character of Coyote that is most complex. In the Southwest and in Mexico, McDermott explained, Coyote “is a complete and utter fool. To the Pueblos, Coyote always fails, and his tricks always rebound and result in catastrophe for him.”

But to the northern tribes, Coyote is viewed as the joker whose tricks end up helping the community at large.

“He steals fire and brings it to the people,” McDermott said.

In a similar way, McDermott delivers the rich legacy of traditional tales to the public at large.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos

MEMO: McDermott’s appearance is sponsored by the Washington State Library Construction and Services Act and is the third in a series of workshops and programs designed for the Spokane Public Library’s Project Right Start outreach program for day-care providers.

This sidebar appeared with the story: SLIDE SHOW Children’s book author/illustrator Gerald McDermott will give a free public slide-show lecture on his work at 2 p.m. today at the downtown branch of Spokane Public Library, 906 W. Main.