The Grange Hall

THE EVOLUTION ILLUSTRATION PROJECT

Word on the street is that the big publishing houses don’t want to offend Creationists by publishing a kid’s book on evolution.  We at The Grange don’t want to offend Creationists, but frankly we feel offended that a kid’s book on evolution can’t get published.  We’ve decided to remedy the situation by publishing this brilliant missive online.  We’ve got the text (which met with Ian Tattersall’s approval), we just need the illustrations.  And here’s where we need your help…

The Grange Hall is looking for designers, illustrators, & artists who would like to channel their inner Maira Kalman and help us illustrate an online book for kids (and grown ups) that explains human evolution.

The ultimate inspiration for this project stems from the writings of Lewis Hyde, whose classic, The Gift, offers a brilliant examination of the value of creativity and its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money.  To Hyde art is a gift, and a gift is something that must be given away.  The trouble is that market economy is deliberately impersonal.  In a world where, ‘…gifts have no public currency, where the gift as a form of property is neither recognized nor honored, our inner gifts  find themselves excluded from the very commerce which is their nourishment’.  To remedy this situation, the artist must forge a ’gift economy’ which in turn creates a ‘gift community’.  This community allows the gifted to enter into the, ‘give-and-take- that ensures the livelihood of their spirit’.   In other words, through the process of sharing our gifts, we become more connected to one another and ultimately more satisfied creatively.  

How will The Grange create a Gift Community?  It’s quite simple.  We have 70 pages of text. All we need are 70 gifted designers, illustrators, photographers, collagists, et al., to take a page and illustrate it as they see fit.  We would like to post the pages as they evolve, in four or five page increments, allowing the gift to play out over time while playing with the very notion of evolution itself.

If you would like to be a part of our Gift Community simply email us at TheEditors(at)TheGrangeHall.com and we will send you a page.

We look forward to creating a vibrant Gift Community here at The Grange — with The Evolution Illustration Project being the very first in what will become a series of community art projects.