MOVABLE pT AT An Interview with Robert Sabuda, Part 1 Barbara Valenta Staten Island, N.Y.
Robert Sabuda, winner of the first Movable Book Society Meggendorfer Prizefor outstanding contribution in the field ofpaper engineering, is a young artist whose careerpath has traced a bright and influential trajectory in his field. He is known internationally for the intricacy and beauty of his pop-ups, his great eye for color, and his ability to incorporate time through movement into his work. In person, he is very modest, very supportive of others in the field, and absolutely dedicated to what he is doing. It was a pleasure to be granted the time to do this interview in his New York City studio. In Part 1 of this interview, Sabuda describes his boyhood, influences, and the path that led to his phenomenal success as author of tlhe tremendously popular Christmas Alphabet. In Part 2, he will discuss his work methods, his professional life andfuture plans.
BV-Can you fill us in a little bit about your boyhood? Was there any indication then of what your future path would be? Were there any influences, role models, mentors?
RS- I grew up in a small town in rural Michigan. Pinkney, Michigan. I was always an artist, always drew and sketched. I wasn't a very good painter. My mother was a secretary for Ford Motor Company and we didn't have very much money. She would always bring home Ford Motor Company stationary for me, and sometimes she would bring home manilla folders that had been used for something else-and at that time you couldn't get card stock-there just was no such thing-so that was great and I made my first pop-ups from those manilla folders. In school the teachers always asked me to do bulletin boards, which was fun. I used lots of cut paper and got a very good introduction to paper that way. In high school my teacher told me- in this little town in rural Michigan she said to me "You should go to Pratt". (Pratt Institute-a well known art school in Brooklyn). She took me by the hand and guided me through all four years of high school showing me what it would take to live the life of an artist. And so I applied to Pratt. That was the only school I applied to. And after graduation I came to Pratt. My
VOLUME 7 NUMBER 3
AUGUST 1999
senior year of Pratt I did an internship at Dial Books for Young Readers and I really learned about publishing in
general.
BV-Just general things or specific things?
RS-Well, I didn't know that pictures and words could go together. I hadn't understood the idea of a book that well.. I saw some amazing original art work for books there for the first time and that influenced me tremendously. At the age of twenty-two you're supposed to decide what the heck you want to do-and so I thought "T could do this. I could make this happen." I was always interested in graphic design, graphic imagery. Pop-Ups are very concrete. They either work or they don't. So I finished my senior year at Pratt and geared everything towards book illustration. After that it took me ten years, ten long years (to become established in this field). BV-How did you earn a living during those years?
RS-Lots of freelance graphic work on the side, and I took all the illustration work I could get. Right after I got out of college I illustrated coloring books to make money. (I can't believe I'm telling you this!)
BV-That's a hot tip. That's very interesting. RS-Even though it was coloring books I began to learn more about publishing. Things I didn't know about distribution and what it meant when something was mass