Sketch Club is quick
on the draw

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

Stephen Heigh’s no stranger to winning prizes for his art.
The Fox Chase resident has penned and illustrated two children’s books in the last three years, and both were named finalists for the prestigious Children’s Book of the Year Award. One of them garnered the Mom’s Choice Award for Best Creative Children’s Picture Book and top prize for Best Fiction at the 2006 National Book Expo in Washington, D.C.
But the pride Heigh felt when the Philadelphia Sketch Club picked him as a juried exhibitor for its Phillustration ’07 show was singular. It swelled when he learned he’d been awarded second prize overall out of 100 signed pieces for his illustration With Pete, the Our Gang Dog on the Steel Pier, an image created using some old photographs of his father.
"This is a huge honor because the show is literally a who’s who of regional talent," said Heigh.
Phillustration ’07, the Sketch Club’s first juried illustration show, opened Sunday and continues until the end of the month. The theme pays homage to the club’s roots.
The Sketch Club, located at 235 S. Camac St. in Center City, between 12th and 13th and Locust and Spruce streets, is America’s oldest art club. Several of its founders were illustrators, according to the club’s executive director, Barbara Murray.
"It’s really how the Sketch Club began in the 1850s," said Murray, a Northeast native. "They started meeting together to do illustration work."
Phillustration ’07 includes some of the region’s best contemporary artists, such as Charles Santore and Robert Byrd. Award categories include editorial, advertising, book, sequential, self-promotional and student.
Exhibition chairman Richard Harrington said the show includes a broad range of styles in all media, such as watercolor, oils, pastels, wood-engraving, linoleum cuts, pen-and-ink and digital technology.
"It’s right across the board," he said. "We have this wonderful, crafted children’s illustration. . . . There are these full-scale renderings, oil paintings."
Harrington said the Sketch Club circle became more interested in illustration in the last decade. He thinks the exhibition serves to bring together established and emerging artists.
"There are a lot of people who aren’t well-known illustrators, but it gives them the opportunity to share the light with well-known illustrators," Harrington said.
Heigh, who is working on his third children’s book, The Mighty Raft, is certainly happy to be among the select illustrators in the show. He recently met exhibitor Charles Santore, a longtime idol of his, and his favorite artist of all-time, N.C. Wyeth, frequented the Sketch Club.
"It’s so exciting," Heigh said. "All I wanted to do was get involved in the show. It’s such a historic site. These are some of the people that I aspired to." ••
Admission to the Philadelphia Sketch Club is free. Gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, call 215-545-9298 or visit www.sketchclub.org
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com