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Discover Dancing Hands. | Rafael López

Perhaps the most challenging and compelling part of making a book begins with the search for direction. There’s a powerful script, packed with possibility in your hands. Crafted by none other than Margarita Engle, the remarkable Cuban, American poet and writer. We worked together previously on Drum Dream Girl and Bravo! Poems about Amazing Hispanics and I jumped at the chance to work with her again. With every page turned, how could we blend text and images to engage young reader’s in the spirit of “the Piano Girl” Teresa’s story?

The path to this new book Dancing Hands began with historical research into Teresa, her life and times. History connects us through time and people are living history. At six, she was able to compose music, performing at age 7. By age 8, she left her native Venezuela for a new life in New York City.

Teresa Carreño at age 8 beside the piano.

Equipped with my library card, sketchbook and manuscript I sat in the library and began making thumbnail versions of ideas. I experimented with the personality of characters letting my research and pencil guide me.

Searching for Teresa’s character

Understanding how people think and move through the world at a particular time and place is essential to telling a historical story. I researched and built a timeline of her early life to guide the visual storytelling.

Images for DANCING HANDS focused on Teresa’s young life and intersect the American Civil War.

This story covers Teresa’s youth with Margarita providing a historical note at the end to let readers know the full arc of her fascinating life (1853-1917) from piano performance to singing and composing.

María Teresa Gertrudis de Jesús Carreño García, better known as Teresa Carreño was a gifted Venezuelan pianist, composer and conductor.

Early sketches of Teresa

As the story unfolds, we meet our protagonist, young Teresa, a child piano prodigy who composed short piano pieces by age six.

In Venezuela Teresa’s father Manuel Antonio, a politician and amateur pianist teaches her to play the piano.

She travels with her family to New York City in 1862 to escape war in her home country.

At age 9 Teresa leaves war torn Venezuela for New York

Teresa’s immigrant story and musical journey to an unfamiliar land, coincides with the American Civil War (1861-1865), an event fundamental to her story. At the library, I viewed and checked out relevant books and films, searching the Internet for photos, videos and information.

Developing scenes and characters

Back at the studio, it was time to sketch and build a mood board to channel my research and inspiration. I believe making a book, is a bit like making a film and use a wall in my studio to sequence sketches and imagery to check for consistency and flow of the story.

Research includes colors, key words that deliver the essence of the text, textures, typography, inspirational works by artists, historical research including photos of President Abraham Lincoln and his family, Teresa, patterns, shapes and styles. In this part of the process it’s an all out search for potential direction.

Lincoln at desk in 1862-Mathew Brady
Lincoln Family-Wikimedia Commons
Illustration for DANCING HANDS, Teresa plays piano for the Lincoln family.

Searching for ideas, I watched documentaries on Teresa, Lincoln and revisited familiar favorites like Ken Burn’s epic, “The Civil War.” Teresa’s music fueled this story and was essential to telling it.

Music will always be a huge influence on my work. Making and listening to music helps shift the mind from verbal to spatial thinking where you find meaning in shapes, sizes, direction, and layout. In my studios, I’ve got 6 guitars, conga drums, a charango, two cuatros and playing or listening to music while making art keeps things moving forward. The cuatro is a four stringed cousin of the guitar that comes from Venezuela, just like Teresa.

Playing my cuatro in San Miguel.

Cuatro players use different techniques of strumming to bring percussion to their music. If you want to hear this instrument in the hands of a maestro, take a listen to this amazing duo Jorge Glem and César Orozco.

To get inspired, I played familiar Venezuelan folksongs on the cuatro that I learned as a kid. This was a great way to connect to the first part of Teresa’s story. I listened to the haunting and nostalgic Ashokan Farewell to set the musical mood while developing the Civil War scenes.

I wanted to show kids with images, how war can change things overnight.

This subject required sensitivity and the need to be age appropriate without sugar coating the timeline and events of Teresa’s story. It also required a huge leap in the color palette to set the mood and adjustments in tone to create atmosphere and reveal emotions and feelings. I was determined to get it right, to be honest by using color, value and texture to speak truth to young readers.

Color and texture set the tone for young Teresa as she leaves her war torn homeland- Venezuela.

The spark for a book can come from many places. I’ve found myself walking down a side street thinking intensely about a scene for a book. Suddenly I come across a set of colors or a texture that feels right for the story that jumps out to grab my attention.

Colors and textures on a wall in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
that found a way into this story.

I established two distinct palettes for tropical scenes in Venezuela and Cuba and a different color scheme for American scenes. You can see the hue influence from the street colors I photographed on this scene below. The warm colors in this composition convey happiness, optimism, expectation, energy and vitality. I used a variety of mediums including watercolor to add texture to the sky, sea and architecture.

While performing in Cuba, Teresa gets an invitation to play for President Lincoln.

I created a completely different palette for the United States that was based on American Civil War quilts and folk art. These quilts were skillfully designed by women from recycled men’s clothing, old uniforms, feed and fertilizer sacks, blankets, twill flannel and woven wool. Women made these quilts for fundraising and the bedding of soldiers during war time, to bring them both warmth and comfort.

In the scene below, I wanted to convey the energy of New York at the time, with a collage of Victorian letterpress posters. These historical posters used extreme variations of type, different weights and sizes of decorative wood block typography, ornamentation and ephemera.

Victorian letterpress poster announcing Teresa’s performance at Irving Hall.

As a citizen of both Mexico and the United States I have experienced how my beliefs, behaviors and identity are influenced by two different cultures. This has a profound impact on my art making. I identified with young Teresa who felt out of sorts, like she didn’t belong upon arrival in an unfamiliar place. I thought about how those thoughts might influence her life and music exploring this using imagery, shapes, colors and textures. On the right, the white and gray texture and central image of Teresa and father with all their worldly possessions, magnifies her feelings of isolation.

As a new immigrant you can feel lost, out of place and alone. You feel odd, disconnected and after a time can’t completely relate to the place you came from either. How do you cope with that as a child? This scene from our book shows the moment when Teresa and her family arrive in New York. I attempt to reveal those challenges and depth of emotions through gesture, pose and expression.

At times in our story, I chose to mingle the colors from Teresa’s native land and new home as seen on the front and back cover for the book. The spirit of her music took root in Venezuela and below you see an expression of her vibrant music contrasting the intensity of the Civil War experience. In the same way musical notes overlap and intersect, I wanted to place the power of Teresa’s music, duality of cultures and life experiences together in certain scenes.

Finished front and back reveals duality and the unique power of Teresa’s music.

In previous books, I’ve chosen two inspirational artists to tip my hat to, for example: DRUM DREAM GIRL referenced two masters Henri Rousseau and Miguel Covarrubias.

Spread from DRUM DREAM GIRL a collaboration with Margarita Engle-2016- inspired by Henri Rousseau

The American Civil War was a singular moment in the history of the United States that was fought in both urban and rural areas. At that time America was mostly a rural, agricultural country where people lived and worked on farms for their entire lives. For a scene in this book I turned to Grant Wood who was born on an Iowa farm and launched the American Regionalist movement of the 1930’s. I traveled to the Whitney Museum in New York, drawn to the reverent stillness of his landscapes. This scene below is an homage to one of Wood’s roads, his unique perspective and landscapes that continue to tell stories.

Civil War scene from DANCING HANDS with United States Capitol being built in the distance.

History can teach empathy, because what happened in the past forms our identity. It reveals what we know now and how that information fits into our world view.

The history of illustration is no different. I connect to and have long been a fan of Aurelius Battaglia, an inspiring American illustrator and muralist whose work speaks volumes. The son of Italian immigrants, Battaglia attended the Corcoran School of Art and in 1934 and as part of the Public Works of Art Project created a stunning mural in his own Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, at a Washington D.C. library. You can still find his mural work there today.

As an immigrant and muralist I’ve also had the great opportunity to work with neighborhoods and communities to create public murals under bridges, at children’s hospitals, playgrounds and at public schools around the country.

Meeting the wall for the first time working with the Arne Nixon Center in May 2019
Fresno, California mural takes shape with help from the local community

In addition to making murals, Aurelius Battaglia went on to work for Walt Disney Studios in the late 1930’s and then became a prolific children’s book illustrator who crafted whimsical farm animals, daring circus performers and colorful cowboys.

Charging soldier by Aurelius Battaglia from THE FIRESIDE BOOK OF FAVORITE AMERICAN SONGS -Simon & Schuster 1952
Detail of confederate soldier on horseback, created for a scene in DANCING HANDS
Battle and the emotional toll of the Civil War.

My work is also influenced by the visual heritage, music and surrealism that was all around me growing up in Mexico City. You can see the use of these techniques on several spreads in our book.

Placing the familiar in an unfamiliar setting for an early scene in the story.

Music has the power to heal the mind, body and spirit. In the surrealistic scene above, Teresa’s uses her piano to travel to a spectacular, vast jungle.

I like to use symbols to communicate concepts and one of my favorite visual metaphors is a bird. Dancing Hands builds to the moment when Teresa performs for President Lincoln.

How could the young pianist bring comfort to a leader with the tremendous weight of a Civil War resting on his shoulders? Add to this Lincoln’s grief over the terrible loss of his son Willie to typhoid fever just the year before. Teresa longed to wrap her music like a quilt around the grieving President. In the scene below, Lincoln escapes conflict for a brief moment through the transformative power of her music. The larger than life commander-in-chief, statesman, emancipator, husband and father humbly taps his foot. Teresa’s tune flies off the keys like a soaring bird.

Teresa’s music transforms the red room of the White House into a forest.

Gratitude to Margarita, my Atheneum Books for Young Readers family and Reka Simonsen, an amazing art director at Simon and Schuster who gave me the freedom to explore Teresa’s world.

Thanks for taking the time to read the story behind our book here. DANCING HANDS: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln hits the shelves on August 27.