David Wiesner

Born in 1965 and raised in Bridgewater, New Jersey, David Wiesner grew up with four older siblings, who, like his parents, encouraged him in his art. Spending long hours drawing, he eagerly absorbed the lessons provided by the televised program You Are an Artist. By junior high, Wiesner already had an appreciation of Renaissance art as well as surrealism. From the former he learned aspects of space and perspective, from the latter the employment of transformed reality that would later so characterize his work. His intense reaction in 1968 to the nearly silent film 2001: A Space Odyssey was an indicator of his budding fascination with wordless storytelling.

Perceiving his abilities, his high school art teacher allowed him free rein to develop his talent. In 1974, Wiesner entered the Rhode Island School of Design. Wiesner's first break into children's books came with his 1979 cover for Cricket magazine. Other contracts soon followed, and in 1987 his illustrated The Loathsome Dragon, co-authored by Wiesner and his wife Kim Kahng, was published. 1988 saw the publication of Free Fall, this one a ten-foot long drawing with Escher-like metamorphoses. His second cover for Cricket appeared in 1989. Wiesner coupled the cover's depiction of his now famous flying frogs with a storyline to create Tuesday, the Caldecott medal winner for 1992.

Wiesner's largely autobiographical Hurricane of 1990, the 1992 science fictional June 29, 1999 and Sector 7 have confirmed Wiesner's mastery of original, imaginative and delightful imagery. Wiesner presently lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their two children. David has received the Caldecott medal in 2002 for The Three Pigs and again in 2007 for Flotsam.

Related Exhibitions: Tuesday - David Weisner (1999)