Elly MacKay's Theater Clouds

When I learned I won The Ledge Press Poetry Chapbook Competition last spring, I started looking for cover art. My publisher invited me to participate in that process, and I was giddy. Authors are not always offered this opportunity, and I appreciated the chance to be included. I spent hours on Etsy. When my eyes itched and burned, I rested them. But after I rested them, I generally always discovered that my shoulders were hunched and scrunched. So I un-hunched and un-scrunched them. But soon I was back on Etsy, where I found Elly MacKay's Theater Clouds. Oh my, such magic and enchantment in her dioramas!

I remember the magic of reading Beatrix Potter's books -- maybe, particualry, The Tale of Two Bad Mice -- and I remember my belief in the world Potter created. Each time I read that book -- even years later, when I read it with my son, I felt as though I entered Lucinda and Jane's dollhouse with Hunca and Munca, and I watched, uncomfortably, as the two bad mice broke the ham and bent the tin spoons and pulled Jane's clothes from her chest of drawers. And so it is with Elly MacKay and her art, but with less discomfort and more delight. Pure delight. I enter it, fully.

I am so happy Elly's art will be featured on the cover of my chapbook, The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker. I've carried this good news around in my heart all summer and into these autumn days. Imagine my pleasure when, yesterday, I discovered that her work is featured in the October issue of O Magazine (The Oprah Magazine).  It's a beautiful full-page spread. Page 38 of the actual magazine.

Here, also, is a link to Elly MacKay's work featured on Flavorwire. Her prints are lovely, but it must be wonderful to stare into her full dioramas, built with layers of paper and filled with sailboats and foxes and little houses with smoke puffing from chimneys.