Visiting Artist: Amy Tan's Uplifting Bird Sketches (Part 1/2)

Helloo GUT friends!

Today we’re hearing from our fourth and final Visiting Artist for the Summer.

I’ve been inspired and learned so much from each of our esteemed writerly guests so far: Alexander Chee, Austin Kleon, Gretchen Rubin. And thank you, GUT community, for your openness and attention during this series. I really enjoyed having some new voices in the mix - and “author-artists” at that. Love the overlap of attention and curiosity in writing and drawing. Our Venn diagram looks a lot like a circle.

I’m excited to return to the helm after our last visiting artist. Meanwhile, tell me: what do you think about our Visiting Artist series? Is this something you’d like more of? Less? Any particular visiting artists you’d like to visit the Grown-Ups Table? Let me know and let’s discuss in the comments:

For today ….. meet our final Summer Visiting Artist: the exceptional author/artist/observer Amy Tan!!

Amy observing birds and drawing in her backyard.

This week I’m delighted to feature the exquisite writer and exceptional human, Amy Tan. You are probably familiar with her books, including The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning, and The Valley of Amazement. A fun fact I didn't know about Amy’s first book, The Joy Luck Club, is that it stemmed from her first ever short story “Rules of the Game.” And she wrote that story at the first fiction workshop she ever attended! (Goes to show what can happen with we take leaps, try new things, and create in community.)

Amy’s numerous novels, memoirs, and stories have been translated into 35 languages, from Spanish, French, and Finnish to Chinese, Arabic, Estonian, and Hebrew. She’s even written the libretto (the text) for an opera based on her book The Bonesetter's Daughter.

And get this. She. Draws.

You might have heard she published a book earlier this year called The Backyard Bird Chronicles. (You can order a signed copy here!)

In 2016, racism against people of Asian descent in the US was on the rise. Overwhelmed, Amy turned to drawing as a refuge. Interested in the natural world, she began taking classes with nature journaling practitioners and educator John Muir Laws. Soon she was drawing daily, documenting wild birds flitting around her backyard.

On her website, Amy says,

I recorded dramas happening in my yard in cartoon-like sketches. Each observation took me deeper into questions about what birds must  do to survive. Birds also happen to be hilarious much of the time.

and

To draw portraits of the birds. I had to feel the life within and see what the bird was seeing, feeling, and planning as its next move. I imagined what it thought about me. I thought about survival.

Amy’s editor suggested she turn those pencil sketches, colored portraits and journal notes into an illustrated book. And The Backyard Bird Chronicles was born - which is to say published - in April 2024 by Knopf. And it is phenomenal.

One thing I absolutely love about Amy’s book is that it epitomizes much of what we’ve been exploring the past few weeks: how writers gather material for their craft by paying close attention, being curious, noticing things others may simply overlook, and making connections between unlikely elements, inside and out. This practice and way of being is also how we approach drawing here in DrawTogether and the GUT.

It’s wonderful to see these practices, which are often kept so separate, converge in Amy’s mind and on the pages of The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

This week, Amy is sharing THREE THINGS with DrawTogether & The GUT:

1. An excerpt from The Backyard Bird Chronicles

2. Our drawings assignment this week

3. THREE FREE PASSES to John Muir Laws’ nature journaling conference Wild Wonder (and more giveaways from Amy for members next week!) Instructions to enter below the drawing assignment!

Let’s start with the excerpt.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles: Food Fight!! by Amy Tan

I adore it this passage. You can tell how familiar Amy has become with the wild birds. It’s almost like they’re her family - or like characters in a fantastic telenovela she’s been watching daily for years. That same familiarity comes through in her carefully observed drawings. She knows these birds.

Without further ado… Enjoy the food fight.

Wonderful, right?

Next, Amy’s drawing assignment - which is more about observation than drawing. It’s a real practice in looking at the world through an artist-author’s eyes.

Amy’s First Drawing Assignment for the GUT Community:

One of author Amy Tan’s gorgeous bird drawings