AMHERST — A pair of tiny-footed socks with ridiculously long legs hangs in the entryway to “The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children.” It’s on display along with a jar of buttons, several candy bars with silly names like “Crunky,” a photo portrait of a doleful Basset Hound, a “This Is Little Lulu” vintage comic, and plenty more.
It’s a re-creation of the artist and writer’s workspace, or in her own words, a “museum of the mind.” She uses the phrase to describe the marvels of Monticello in her book “Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Everything.”
Kalman is no Jefferson, to be sure, but her tastes and inspirations on view here vividly reflect an imagination brimming with the arcane, the absurd, the art historical, and the affectionate. This tart and tender exhibition, organized by guest curator Jane Bayard Curley, is at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
Even if you don’t know Kalman, you may know her work. She has published 18 children’s books and a dozen for adults. She’s made giant murals for Grand Central Station and collaborated with David Byrne of Talking Heads, writer Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, among others. She has drawn 15 New Yorker covers — the most famous is also the best-selling, a map of “New Yorkistan” drawn with Rick Meyerowitz and published in 2002.
If you believe a short day-in-the-life film about her made by her son, Alex Kalman, she takes piano lessons from a long-suffering teacher named Mrs. Danziger, played in the movie by a chicken named Lorelle.
This is the wry world of Maira Kalman, and it is a balm.
I was in a stew when I walked into the exhibition, having listened to the news on my way to Amherst. One of the first things I saw was a compendium of dogs’ names she put together for her book “Beloved Dog.” Pancake, Buster, Pickles, and many more, stacked high in her trademark scrawl on the wall.
Dogs! Good, loyal, and true! The list blew the dark shards of the news from my mind like a great, cool wind.
Kalman was born in Tel Aviv in 1949 and moved to New York with her family as a small child. She met her late husband, graphic designer Tibor Kalman, at New York University. She published her first book in 1987 after Tibor, who had helped design Talking Heads cover art, introduced her to Byrne. Kalman’s two children, Alex and Lulu, were small at the time.
If you’re looking for a cheeky repudiation to lullaby books such as “Good Night Moon,” this is it. “Stay Up Late,” based on the lyrics to Byrne’s song of the same name, captures the affectionate (if maniacal) intent of a child to keep an infant sibling awake all night. Kalman’s jaunty, frenetic illustrations poke all over the page in simmering colors. Their rhythm and sharpness echo that of another New Yorker artist, William Steig.
Her style has evolved since then. It’s no less caffeinated — her hues are, at times, so buzzy you might squint — but she’s added cream and sugar. Kalman has an eye for the sweetly preposterous, like those knee socks for a leggy tot. She likes cake, hats, and, of course, dogs.
Her mother was terrified of dogs, but the artist adores them, and they appear in every one of her books. Sam, a Wheaten Terrier and dear companion after Tibor died in 1999, had such a gleefully rapacious appetite, Kalman wrote “What Pete Ate From A-Z (Really!)” an alphabet book listing everything he gobbled down (including a camera and a variety of shoes).
Her children’s books plug right into a child’s wide open viewpoint, and sometimes address how terribly confusing the world is.
In her book about Jefferson, for instance, she begins, “Thomas Jefferson had red hair and some freckles (about 20 I think), and he grew to be very tall and oh yes, he was the third President of the United States.” All important matters, as is Jefferson’s role in the formation of the United States.
As are his personal conflicts about slavery. She paints the cramped, sparse slave quarters at Monticello and a ledger of the enslaved, which lists Sally Hemings, the alleged mother of several of Jefferson’s children. “If you want to understand this country and its people,” Kalman writes, “and what it means to be optimistic and complex and tragic and wrong and courageous, you need to go to Monticello.”
This exhibition pulls illustrations off the page and puts them on the walls and into three dimensions. One of the bustling Grand Central murals hangs above a bench and beside an information kiosk, with an inviting character in every window. There are giant cakes to decorate or climb on, and Pete the terrier shows up quite large with magnets to play with, depicting things he ate.
But Kalman is not just for kids. She has illustrated, for instance, a version of Strunk and White’s legendary “The Elements of Style.” That photo of a Basset Hound in the entryway is here converted to a droll illustration of the phrase, “Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in.”
Her hopeful consideration of democracy, “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” appeared first as an illustrated blog in The New York Times after President Obama was inaugurated. I wonder what she might produce about today’s state of affairs. Let’s hope she’s working on something, and it’s full of dogs.
THE PURSUIT OF EVERYTHING: MAIRA KALMAN’S BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
At Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, through April 5. 413-559-6300, www.carlemuseum.org
Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @cate.mcquaid.