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News from Michael McCurdy Illustrator & Author

THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY ACQUIRES THE MICHAEL McCURDY ARCHIVE!

The archive of Michael's work as an author and illustrator and covering a period of 48 years, will find a home soon in Boston's venerable Boston Public Library. Original work, dating from McCurdy's first wood engraving in 1962, to current work for both adult and children is included, as is correspondence with authors and publishers, initial sketches, proofs, and wood blocks. The archive will not be available for viewing by the general public for at least two years.

Michael has executed nearly 600 wood engravings, in addition to his scratchboard drawings. His Penmaen Press archive is housed at the Thomas Dodd Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs. The UJCONN archive preserves books and ephemera printed and published at McCurdy's Penmaen Press from 1969 to 1985. The work includes first-edition books of poetry, fiction, and translation, and it is already available for public viewing, The letters between McCurdy and his friend and close associate Robert Hauser, offer an intriguing glimpse, into a fruitful and creative relationship from which a variety of projects have come into being.

WORK IN PROGRESS

1. Nine McCurdy wood engravings have been commissioned by the poet Frank Polizzi of Brooklyn to accompany a sequence of poems that Polizzi will publish.

2. A yet unnamed project in rhyme is in progress, featuring 26 drawings for an alphabet book that deals mainly with the animals found at Walden Pond in the time of Thoreau. It is due to be published by Charlesbridge Publications in 2010.

3. Michael is working on a frontispiece drawing for the well-known historian Douglas Brinkley's forthcoming book I So Declare It: Theodore Roosevelt and the American Wilderness 1858-1919

Wood engraving for Esquire magazine

UPDATED JULY 14, 2008

Aside from the many books McCurdy has illustrated for publishers, he also has created his fair share of corporate assignments--such as this engraving, used for the Rock'n' Soul duo Hall and Oates.