What a Feller
Browsing the "free" stacks at my local library, always with an eye out for interesting old illustrated books, I came upon this copy of The Summer Birds by Penelope Farmer, with drawings by James J. Spanfeller. The book was published in 1962, and Spanfeller's art is not untypical in its creepy, pre-psychedelic style. He's not an exceptional illustrator by any means, but the work has qualities worth admiring.
This is the cover of what was obviously an ex-library copy, so the original jacket art has been transferred to the new binding and, I presume, recolored as you see here. It's a nice drawing, even if the linework is obscured by the lousy printing and color choice.
I found six other books he illustrated in the library's catalog -- a few samples of which appear below. Summer Birds is the earliest of his work I've seen... unfortunately, his stuff seems to get worse and worse with each subsequent project. His style went from the slightly skewed, elfish penwork in Farmer's book, to increasingly amorphous vignettes rendered in that most dreaded method: stippling. Ugh. What compelled him to take up this style - first resort of amateurs everywhere - I have no idea, but his work did not benefit as a result.
But that doesn't negate the merits of these first dozen or so pictures. I see vague similarities to the early work of Mercer Mayer. This was a time when kid's books were allowed to be scary or ugly -- now children's lit is disturbing only in its moralistic political correctness and predictablity.
I'm not sure what the book was about - I read a few pages, no more - but the strangeness of many of these drawings is pretty compelling.
(Apologies for the split down the middle -- the book's stitching so encroached the artwork I couldn't disassemble the pages without destroying a portion of it, and scanning the opened book - while still bound - resulted in seeing even less information... when will art directors and designers learn not to spread a single image across a gutter?)
This is kind of a disturbing image. I like how the trees to the left are reduced to a sort of flat, web-like shape, recalling the insect wings in the illustration directly above this one.
This and the next picture are my favorites -- really beautiful pieces.
This is a frontispiece from Julia Cunningham's Dorp Dead (yes: d-o-r-p), from 1965. Here Spanfeller is using pencil, and the artwork begins to drift towards something more unpleasant and somehow less accomplished than the earlier work. This one is nice, though.
These two are from Mya Cohn Livingston's A Tune Beyond Us, a collection of various authors' poems published in 1968. I like these two quite a bit, but they were easily the best of the dozens appearing between the book's covers. Looks like Spanfeller was now using technical pens and his tendency towards stippling has begun -- but these have a lovely texture and still hold together well.
The most recent biographical info I have on Spanfeller is from 1985, when he was reportedly living in Katonah, NY. A search for his and the town's name yielded this curious article (from 1982) wherein he is mentioned briefly.
Wait - what's this?! - the same search further reveals that Spanfeller drew the covers for a couple Frederick Exley novels! Holy Smokes! A Fan's Notes is one of my five or so favorite books! I'll be damned. Here is one sample of said covers, and another. What a nice surprise.
I wonder what ever happened to James J. Spanfeller.