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Art is Life

The Life of Artist Keith Haring



A TRUE TALE WITH

A CHERRY ON TOP


Farrar, Straus and Giroux

(Macmillan)

(pub. 12.1.2020)

48 pages


Author: Tami Lewis Brown

and illustrator: Keith Negley


Character: Keith Haring

Overview:

"Keith Haring believed that art should be enjoyed by everyone. When Keith first moved to New York City, he rode the subway and noticed how the crowds were bored and brusque, and that the subways were decayed and dreary. He thought the people of New York needed liberating, illuminating, and radiating art. So he bought a stick of white chalk and started drawing…"


Tantalizing tast "With a brush and a pot of paint, he swooped and he swung, he lined and he striped. Black paint splashed as the thick brush dashed, swiping patterns to the beat of loud, thumping music - the way his father had taught him when he was small - until finally the whole room was covered with the strange shapes that rumbled inside Keith's brain."

And something more: In her Author's Note, Tami Lewis Brown explains that "in 1986, he worked with nine hundred children in New York City to paint a banner celebrating the Statue of Liberty's one hundredth birthday, and he wrote (and illustrated, of course) a wonderful book for children called Nina's Book of Little Things. In 2008, a forth-eight-foot-tall balloon inspired by Keith's Man with a Heart debuted in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade."

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