ART

Wren Fortunoff

the author’s daughter, grew up at Knoll Farm, and has been making art and running in the mountains all her life. Creator of carved wooden sculptures, paintings, ceramics, elaborate pencil drawings, and even bird tattoos on her own fleet feet, her favorite medium is the block print.

There are many benefits of growing up on a farm. It’s always a busy place, with lots of people to interact with and projects to help with, and it’s also full of hazards and dangers. That means you learn to be skilled, independent and agile at a young age. Most kids naturally want to help with whatever is going on, and if their parents are creative at finding ways that they can help, they quickly become incredibly competent, and with competence comes self-confidence.

During Wren’s home school years, the emphasis was always on creative projects as a means for learning in multiple disciplines at once. So even though the homeschool years were behind them, it was natural for Helen to ask Wren if she’d like to collaborate on some art for the book. The Salt Stones is Wren’s first illustrated book. Each block is her interpretation of that chapter’s theme, based on her mother’s words and her own experience of those stories as they unfolded in her young life. You can read more about this story in Reciprocal Gifts.