Listen Here
By Victoria Hansen
hansenv@findlay.edu
On Nov. 7-8, teachers, students, and librarians will arrive at the Mazza Museum for the annual Mazza Conference to listen and learn from picture book authors and illustrators. However, the presenters might not be who guests expect.
“We did have several modifications that happened last minute to our lineup,” said Mazza Museum director Dan Chudzinski. Two authors, Lita Judge and Matthew Rivera, dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.
“We reached out to John Picacio, who actually was just calling about something unrelated that day, and I said, ‘What are you doing November 7?’” Chudzinski said.
Picacio is a Columbus-based illustrator who designed covers for more than 150 books and illustrated for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (the basis for HBO’s Game of Thrones). He also worked with franchises including Star Trek and X-Men.
About two weeks before the conference, the Mazza Museum reached out to Picacio’s publisher about his availability, and Picacio responded quickly.
“We are so blessed here that we have so many amazing artists that love what we do, that each of the times that like Lita or Matthew said they were not able to come within 24 to 48 hours, we were able to get a replacement,” said Amanda Davidson-Johnston, assistant director of the Mazza Museum.
According to the Mazza Museum’s website, the goal of the Mazza Conference is to create an environment “where teachers, librarians, and book lovers delight in educational and engaging presentations from some of the top authors and illustrators in the picture book industry.”
“It’s our job as a museum not only to showcase items that are historically and culturally significant, it is our role to create reasons for people to care about those items,” said Chudzinski. “What better way to get people to care about original illustrations than to bring illustrators and authors who created those stories here to the University of Findlay and give the public an opportunity to hear from the primary source what led them to become an artist or a storyteller?”
The conference costs $150 for the public to attend although an endowment has been established to help librarians with the registration fee. Admission is free for UF faculty and students.
“When people ask you what you did this weekend…you can either say, ‘Well, I went out, hung out, you know, was same old, same old,’ or you can say, ‘I went to listen to these incredible presentations from this illustrator or this author who changed the world’,” Chudzinski said.
The Mazza Conference will take place at the Mazza Museum in the Gardner Fine Arts Pavilion from 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7 to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 8. To register as a UF student, contact Davidson-Johnston at 419-434-4777 or amanda.davidson-johnston@findlay.edu.
