David M. Carroll Biography in Brief
Selected Awards; Exhibitions; and Documentaries
“Beyond Words” Exhibition at the Currier Museum
The Digs NoteBooks
Digs Notebooks – Description
The Swamp Dialogs
The Swamp Sketchbook
Drawings and Watercolors produced to illustrate my published books
David M. Carroll Archive for Sale
ARCHIVE OUTLINE (Updated draft, September, 2022).
The following is a summarized, but at the same time rather comprehensive, inventory of the content – the volume and variety of material that would comprise a core archive collection. It is delineated in three major categories reflecting the three branches of my life’s work: “Artist”; “Naturalist”; and “Writer”.
There are countless reinforcing and enhancing interconnections among these primary aspects of my archive, my legacy.
The content of each category is represented in greater detail in the separate pages of text and art of my “David M. Carroll Archive for Sale” posts. The following accounts provide background on the nature and history of each category, its creative evolution and place in my oeuvre.
Viewers may want to look at some of the great variety of less comprehensive text and many images on the various pages before turning to this catalog. It is still in part a work in progress, as anticipate posting additional material in time.
WRITER (LITERARY) COMPONENT (Awards listed in separate category)
PUBLISHED BOOKS – The four natural histories and one memoir that I have written and illustrated:
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- The Year of the Turtle. 1991
- Trout Reflections, A natural History of the Trout and its World. 1993
- Swampwalker’s Journal, A Wetlands Year. Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing. 1999
- Self-Portrait With Turtles, A memoir.
- Following the Water, A Hydromancer’s Notebook. 2009. Finalist for a National Book Award. 2004
I have written accounts for each book, interspersed with selected images of the art work I produced for each. These pages include publishing and personal history, to a degree providing how each came to be, in the evolution of my writing. In sum they depict an overview of my publishing history (which could well be a book in itself).
My Book Art Gallery features selected images of watercolors and pen and ink drawings from all five titles. These are representative of objects that would be available for inclusion in a core archive collection.
There is also a selection of original drawings and watercolors listed for sale as individual pieces.
The art work produced for the above books is a sizable and significant component of my life’s work as a whole, in both its artist and naturalist aspects. It is a collection in itself, within a collection.
As I have stated, the numbers and specific drawings and watercolors to be considered to be included in the purchase of an archival collection, or as an art-alone collection, is a matter I would be most willing to discuss.
** Literary content for each book includes manuscripts; voluminous drafts and notes; my own and editorial editing; editorial correspondence. In the case of Harry Foster, the correspondence is considerable, as he served as editor for three of my books. He was an outstanding editor to work with, as is not uncommon in the trade, we drove each other crazy at times. He was as well a great personal friend, believer in and champion of my work.
There are many pages of annotated notes from my extensive background research in scientific journals and other sources, including my “Digs Notebooks”, field notebooks (elucidated in a separate posting) that provided valuable material for my published writings.
** Numerous interviews; documentaries; reviews, and articles about me and my writing, as well as my work overall as a naturalist and advocate for the preservation of natural landscapes and their ecologies. Selected awards that I have received in this arena, in addition to the those I have received for my books, are listed in my “Awards” page.
** Correspondence with colleagues on the the broad range of ecological and other natural history considerations pertaining to each title.
** A sizable collection of letters to the author, and copies of selected responses I have written. These continue to the present day.
UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL
** Turtle’s Journey – Unpublished Children’s Book, text and art. A book proposal
accompanied by text and original watercolor illustrations. This book, another of my long-term projects/ideas, is 90% complete.
Ann Rider, Executive Director of children’s books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt at the time of my initial queries, was extremely impressed with the proposal, and sought to have the book published.
Harry Foster, my editor at Houghton for Swampwalker’s Journal and Self-Portrait With Turtles, and who was working with me on Following the Water until his untimely death (this history is detailed in my page on this book), also felt that someone should publish it, but perceptively said “Houghton won’t…”
Ann campaigned strongly for publication of the book at HMH headquarters in Boston, but it was declined. [Marketing People expressed high admiration for my past work with Houghton, and the art and writing in the proposal, but concluded: “We fear it would fail to find sufficient readership.”]
It is not hard to read between the lines there. Ann urged me to make some minor changes, which I did. She presented the proposal once again. The response this time: “It is too quiet for today’s child reader.”
Sample text and art for Turtle’s Journey can be seen on this website. As with all material, I would be happy to provide additional information on this project in waiting as part of an archival acquisition, or, in this case, as a publishing possibility.
Hatchling Spotted Turtle in Deer’s Footprint
* Wood Turtle of Alder Brook… Unpublished children’s book, in English and German – text and pen and ink drawings. Drafts.
This was a product of one of the times out of time in my life. In 2004 I was invited by my great friend and German teacher, Laura Ernst, to join her as team-teacher in her German IV/V class at Concord, NH, High School.
I had studied with her in her evening classes for two years. This Gehilfelehrer (teacher helper) opportunity was a big jump for me, as students who advanced to years four and five with Frau Ernst had an excellent command of this difficult language. Not a word of English was to be spoken in her class.
This was another experience opened up to me by way of my path of pursuing foreign languages.
I was out of my driveway in Warner at 7 AM three days a week, fall, winter, and spring. I missed but one class the entire school year, due to snowstorm. At the ending of the school year Laura announced I had had the best attendance in the class.
The first project I introduced was to make hand-bound books, in which each of us was to write and illustrate a children’s book. (Alles auf Deutsch, of course.) the book I came up with was Wood Turtle of Alder Brook. I worked along with the class, from projects to taking quizzes, tests, and exams.
Content here includes my text in English and German, and my pen and ink illustrations. There is also a desk top book version, with reproductions of my drawings and an edited German translation written by my good friend Klaus Schopmeier.
Wood Turtle and Brook Trout
I also introduced making a second book in which each of us would do our own writing and art work, on any theme or combination of themes.
Content: my book and original art work, and companion writing in German.
Pages from my German hand-bound book
I received a Concord High School “Hero for Students” award for this voluntary tenure.
** Looking for Ariadne – A book in progress, with a history that goes back to my days of writing SWAMPWALKER’S JOURNAL. I have carried this idea through the years and have written copious notes and drafts for chapters.
As I look back over the material I hope to work up into a (likely final) published work, I see that I have written a book about writing a book.
The leitmotif in this case is the paths and labyrinths in my life. Ariadne is the goddess of, among other things, paths, labyrinths, and mazes. The writing treats ways come upon and followed, the first and foremost being that opening to a whole other universe, the realm of nature, with my encounter with that first spotted turtle at age eight.
Accounts of that life-changing appear throughout my books, and the story has been a feature of hundreds of talks and readings I have given, to this day.
As mentioned above, a significant path leading on to ways for me has come via my interest in foreign languages. This has had a critical role for me in my thinking – my art and writing, as well as unique human relationships.
My year-long residence with Laura Ernst’s German IV-V German class is a stellar example of this.
A second truly remarkable, and deeply meaningful, experience that came by way of another language was a five- week period I spent with three young men from Perú: Guillermo, Mario, and Augusto. All three were indigenous Quechua performers of their native Andean music. They came to the United States on a New England tour sponsored by my friend Randy Richard’s Mountain Spirit initiative.
Their native language was Quechua, but they spoke Spanish. I was the only person in this region, where they were based, who spoke the language. As such I was introduced to them upon their arrival.
We formed an intensely close bond at once. I was with them nearly every day of their American sojourn, often serving as an interpreter at concerts.
An experience of great moment for the four of us was my taking them to the Digs, showing them my rounds of the year, and telling them of my life-long connection with turtles.
Throughout our time together they frequently expressed their respect and admiration for my relationship with Pacha Mama – Mother earth.
It was during this sojourn in the Digs that I had the deeply moving experience of seeing individuals look at the natural landscape with “indigenous eyes”. I had read this expression in an interview with a Native American, in which he commented on how few white people look at the natural world in this way.
An account of this one more time out of times in my life is the subject of the chapter “Chimu Inca” (the name of their group) in my book in progress.
Content: photos, CD of their music; ongoing correspondence in Spanish with Guillermo.
Upon his return to Perú, Guillermo wrote and asked my permission for him to perform a ceremony in the Temple of the Moon at Machu Picchu that would make us brothers. This came to pass.
Another enduring path in I write about in Ariadne… is the deep bonding formed between a girl my age and me at the time of my first turtle, and has found its way back into my life in later years. There is a discussion of this relationship with Julia Chase-Brand in my “Correspondence” section, below.
The interconnectedness that is a hallmark of my art, writing, and naturalist
aspects, is echoed in such paths, labyrinths, and mazes of my life.
* Unpublished drafts; notes and notebooks for additional book ideas and proposals, etc.
* Voluminous correspondence, editorial and other, related to my published works.
* Lecture notes from a number of my hundreds of presentations to audiences from pre-school to adult; including college and university seminars; keynotes at turtle symposiums, ecological conferences, etc.
* Articles in the scientific literature that I have authored or co-authored. This is further delineated, with an example, in my NATURALIST COMPONENT, below.
Non-technical articles
*Poemario: poetry, unpublished (another work in progress, to be continued some day); some in foreign languages (Spanish, Italian, German); drafts and notebooks. Fragments and complete poems, along with prose poems, from my early twenties to the present.
*Personal journals; notebooks kept from adolescence to ongoing. These are outside of the realm of my 35 years (and counting) years of keeping “Digs Notebooks”, discussed in a page of the that title. This material constitutes a significant complement of my core collection.
As such, I would be happy to expand on this category to parties considering an acquisition.
Correspondence
*A long-term email dialogue with my Literary Agent (for all five published books), and close friend, Meredith G. Bernstein. Within this is a comprehensive history of the many extreme highs and lows of my publishing career.
*Truly massive personal correspondence re my life and work. This is one of the many features of my archive that I would be happy to amplify for any party interested in making an acquisition.
* A signal collection of letters, hand-written and in later years, emails, is my correspondence with Julia Chase-Brand.
There is a long story here. She is the “Compañera” in a vignette of that title in Self-Portrait With Turtles.
She was an intimate part of my first turtle and swamp days, my very young life, from third through fifth grades (ca. 1950- 1954). In the realm of nature we found places apart in which we could be together. The wild landscapes that were our world in those years have utterly disappeared.
We shared a unique bonding. A separation came… I never forgot her and constantly thought of finding her.
Julia had a remarkable history as a biologist and professor of biology, conducting research on bats in South America, the great apes Jane Goodall worked with, various mammals in Australia, Madagascar, and elsewhere.
In her college years she was an athlete, a runner, one of a group of celebrated young women who became pioneers in breaking long-held barriers against women running marathons.
In 1986, thirty two years after I had last seen her, I did find her, in an extraordinarily emotional reconnection at Barnard College, where she was teaching biology.
At the conclusion of her tenure at Barnard, as a result of circumstances in her family, she went on to Alfred Einstein University in NYC, where she became the oldest student to have graduated with a PhD, her second – this in psychiatric medicine.
Following our reunion in 1986 our lives again diverged, until in 2009 there came another reconnection, as intense as the first. She appeared at a talk I had agreed to give on behalf of a group battling to save lingering fragments and diminished open spaces in the area of those early years we shared.
We exchanged addresses, and soon began a constant correspondence of thirteen years and ongoing. She wrote, in an early letter, “I am glad we can be together again at this end of our lives.”
This relationship is a central subject in my book in progress, Looking for Ariadne, discussed above.
NATURALIST COMPONENT
* Field Notebooks – my “Digs” notebooks, kept over 34 years and ongoing; in my central area of field work with turtles and their ecosystems, with a major focus on three turtle species: spotted; wood; and Blanding’s turtles. All are considered “endangered”, “special concern”, and/or “at-risk” throughout their entire ranges.
These notebooks, discussed in detail in my “Digs Notebooks” page, contain many thoughts and observations that continue to provide a source for my naturalist/scientific and creative writing.
*** Lamprey River: Notebooks from my field work with spotted, wood, and Blanding’s turtles along a 26 1/2 mile stretch of the Lamprey River (NH). This was in league with the river’s “Wild and Scenic” designation, under the aegis of the Lamprey River Advisory Committee (wildlife subcommittee), National Park Service, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
My charge was to locate all sites in which there were populations of each of the three species.
This was rare example of paying turtle work… 98% of the field work I have done with turtles and wetlands; my botanical art; and natural history pursuits et. al,. has been conducted without funding.
In addition to the notebooks, my papers on this long-term project ( a decade-plus at 12 to 40 days or so per season) consist of reports on the riverine and riparian habitats and ecologies of the turtles I surveyed.
As a summation I drew up a large map report of all sites I located for all three species and the status of their populations and their resident habitat complexes.
I made recommendations for critical areas that needed maximum protection. The levels of protection required have not come to pass, as human-use agendas have, as is invariably the case, been given priority, and the Lamprey has become a “teaching river.”
Two documentary videos on my observations and perceptions of the river as an ecosystem, and expressing my advocating for going beyond conservation to preservation (including the exclusion of public access) in “protecting” significant habitats, are available on youtube videos.
* * Tupper Hill (the second of my two funded research projects).
Content: 17 notebooks; maps; and drafts for reports filed during my three-year tenure (three days per month; April 1974 – April 1977) as Visiting Naturalist-Artist at the Tupper Hill Wildlife Sanctuary of the Norcross Wildlife Foundation, Monson and Wales, MA.
Correspondence with Dan Donahue, discussed below.
I documented MA state-listed amphibian and reptile species resident on the Foundation’s then 4,500 acre sanctuary. That remarkable natural landscape has been expanded to 8,000 acres since the time of my tenure.
My field work there provided me the unique experience of working in a true sanctuary for wildlife, via its status of being completely off limits to human access, except for a twenty acre visitor sector.
My notebooks reflect the influence on my thoughts on this matter of access, a constant preoccupation, via investigations in an extensive ecosystem that had been “exempt from public haunt” (Shakespeare) for some four decades.
I know of no other place like it. The sanctuary (a word, like the words “protected”, and “preserved” that is used far too loosely in conservation parlance) continues to carry out its mission, as keeping it a place for “The Wildlings”. This was the stated goal of Arthur D, Norcross, who, along with his sister Joan, began the land acquisition and founded the sanctuary, in the late 1930’s.
I maintain a connection with Tupper Hill via correspondence with and visits from Dan Donahue, Forester and land acquisition specialist at the Sanctuary. He was an invaluable comrade in arms during my years there. He has carried on my work with wood turtles.
Our thoughts lined up perfectly. Considerable history and discussion of the remarkable ecology of this utterly unique preserve and its mission is contained in our ongoing correspondence.
Thanks to Dan my work continues to help inform and guide that original mission that he has steadfastly endeavored to keep on track, as presidents and boards and their various schemes, have come and gone at Tupper Hill.
A major achievement of my investigations was the documentation of wood turtles and their critical habitat, a sine qua non of the population’s persistence, on farm land abutting the Tupper Hill holdings. This provided the basis for my advising the president on seeking to purchase the farm.
He authorized the purchase of the one hundred acre parcel and its mile of permanent stream upon which the turtles were dependent, adding this imperiled species to the others protected by the sanctuary.
*** Courser Farm Conservation Easements. Content: In addition to my Digs field notebooks centered on this acreage there are extensive notes; reports; maps; and correspondence re my forty year campaign to have contiguous tracts of critical habitat for spotted, wood and Blanding’s turtles, and their associated ecologies and ecosystems on this land – the “Digs”- protected.
This was finally achieved, receiving consideration, approval, and finally funding from a consortium of agencies (The Nature Conservancy; NH Fish and Game’s Department’s Non-game Wildlife Program; American Farmland Trust, and others). This came about ac specifically as a result of the findings and recommendations of my long-term field work and advocacy.
I continue to advise on turtle concerns within the easement’s considerable acreage (around 900 acres), and work for more complete protection for these “endangered”species via restrictions on public access.
*** The “Swamp Dialogs” – a thirty four year correspondence with great friend and esteemed colleague Brian Butler, chief scientist at his Oxbow Wetland Association. The dialog centers on exchanges on his work with species protected by the MA Endangered Species Act; and my work in NH. Aspects of our personal lives appear here and there throughout.
Extensive background information and history relative to this unique, sustained, correspondence can be found in my Swamp Dialogs page.
*** Scientific and non-technical articles; reports; testimony to agencies; notes from hundreds of talks, lectures; seminars, etc.
A particularly interesting example is a paper co-authored with Sheila E. Tuttle
on the tracking study of nest-to-water journeys of hatchling wood turtles we conducted in August and September of 1993. [Movements and behavior of hatchling Wood Turtles (Glyptemys insculpta). Northeastern Naturalist 12(3):331-348.]
This paper could be correlated with my notes of the research in the field, in my Digs notebooks (1993) for that time period. Copies of the published paper, and another on wood turtle ecology and natural history in south-central NH [Chelonian Conservation and Biology, 1997, 2(3):447-449] are included in this collection.
*Articles; interviews; video documentaries about me and my work.
*Naturalist Art, produced for my five books – over 200 works: 24 watercolors; several pencil drawings – the remainder pen and ink drawings. Information on this body of my oeuvre can be found in my archival accounts for each of my four natural histories, and my memoir.
This text is followed by a gallery of selected watercolors and drawings representative of works that could be integrated with an archival acquisition, as well as a number offered for sale as individual objects. Descriptive captions list title; date; medium; dimensions; and price.
I would also consider options for groupings – art collections drawn from the entire body of work. Interested parties are welcome to inquire about the availability of a drawing or watercolor in any of my books that is not among the images shown in this archive summary.
I will in time add a page of my botanical art, ranging from larger watercolors of peonies and magnolias to intimate studies – pen and ink drawings and watercolors of native wildflowers and winter branches and buds. Another addition will feature naturalist art works (turtles, trout, etc.) that have not been published in my books.
Botanical
*** Hundreds of slides and photos from my years in the field… another archival collection that has an important connection with my field work and field notes.
*** Slide collections assembled for a variety of presentations, along with notes and scripts for each subject. “Turtles and Wetlands” was the general title for the great majority of my appearances.
I have begun to integrate pictures with specific entries in the notebooks, a task I most likely will never be able to bring to full completion. But there is the abundant raw material, itself of archival value – as with so much of my full archive – for research; exhibition; educational out-takes; publication; et. al.
“Work in progress” is a characteristic of all of my endeavors in field work, art, and writing.
ARTIST COMPONENT
Of particular interest to museum directors; curators; private collectors; archival art institutions; and investors.
The broad range of my work in visual art, paintings and drawings, examples of the drawings and paintings I have done over my long history following my years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and my academics at Tufts University, 1960-1965.
This comprehensive ouvre is composed of three main branches:
MY NATURAL HISTORY ART
…with its epicenter, so to speak, consisting of over two hundred works, primarily pen and ink drawings, with fifteen watercolors, produced to illustrate my five published books produced over a twenty two year period – 1986-2008. A number of these have been sold, including three pen and ink drawings purchased by the Currier Museum for their permanent collection.
Others have been gifted, and a selection is reserved for a possible donation to be included in a core archive acquisition.
This body of work is treated in detail in my “Book Art” pages, Introduction and Gallery:
Virtual Gallery of Art Produced for My Five Books
Drawings and Watercolors Produced to Illustrate my Published Books
MY NON-NATURAL HISTORY (“OTHER”) ART
Drawings; watercolors; oil and acrylic paintings; prints; and collages. This trajectory dates from my years at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts from age eighteen to twenty three and continues as I enter my eightieth year.
The works embrace a broad range of artistic expression. Particular influences and inspiration arise from sources such as Realism; figure drawings; Cubism; Surrealism; the “Magic Square” paintings of Paul Klee; Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism and other artists of the Russian Avant-Garde.
This aspect is discussed in detail, with a representative gallery, in my “Seldom Seen” pages.
* Sketchbooks with work apart from my strictly natural history drawings and watercolors. I have detailed one of these as an exemplar in my “Hand Bound and Sketch Books” page. This is another subject I will treat in later additions to my archive.
Seldom Seen Gallery
Watercolors produced in collaboration with a pioneer USDA Forest Service tree pathologist/chief scientist.
A collection of over a hundred and fifty of the watercolors and many sheets of pencil studies produced over an eight-year period to illustrate research in tree pathology, resulting in six publications.
This major collection is discussed in detail in my “CODIT – Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees” post, which is followed by a gallery of selected watercolors from the large body I produced to illustrate six publications. This is an archive in itself, and I offer the collection as a separate entity. (V. the “CODIT” collection.)
I will reserve several paintings to serve as a representation of this unique period of my life’s work in a core collection. As I mention in my “CODIT” page, it is the most science-based of my unions of science and art.
*Lecture notes re my art work, process, history, influences, etc.
*Articles and documentaries about my work as an artist, including exhibitions.
CODIT – Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees
PRICING
Depending on the numbers and nature of content in a core archive collection – as described, one encompassing a representative collective of material in all three areas of my life’s work – the price would be in the range of one half to two and a half million dollars.
A potentially higher figure would be based on inclusion of art and written material from my wife Laurette’s collection, a combining that would lead to a comprehensive documentation cum history of a unique sixty years’ creative life and work (ongoing) of an artist couple. I outline this briefly, below: Another Consideration.
As I mention throughout my summary of content, I am open to selling subsets pending inquiries from and discussions with parties interested in making such acquisitions.
In this case, the price of acquisitions would allow for considerable variations in values to be determined.
I am also completely open to various options for payments to be made over time, for collections of any range in numbers and nature of content.
There are more than a few possibilities here. I would be happy to respond to questions and/or comments and provide additional information, examples, re objects of interest. And I would readily arrange visits for viewing material in a studio gallery showing.
I very much appreciate the time and consideration of viewers visiting this archive platform, and for any references to this site viewers might wish to pass along to others with potential interest.
David
Another Consideration: Archival material from the life and work of artist Laurette Carroll.
An additional possibility I have in mind, as I continue to build this platform, is expanding the scope of this archive-life’s-work document to include a collection of Laurette Carroll’s creative works. The abundant content is composed of drawings (brush and ink, watercolor; pen and ink); paintings(oil, acrylic, watercolor);sketchbooks; photo journals; personal journals; and correspondence.
Laurette is a gifted sculptor as well as painter. Regrettably, due to circumstances of our studio limitations, she has not been able to produce a large body of work in this genre.
A brief biography, artist’s statement, and gallery of selected art works can be seen at https:/www.lake-sunapee-living.com.
Her copious journals record and eloquently portray the the unique life of two artists and their three children over a period of sixty years – since we were students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – and ongoing. We were married during our second year at the Museum School.
A portrayal of aspects of this life, up until about 2002, forms the basis for my memoir, Self Portrait With Turtles, A Memoir.
Taken together, our personal journals and correspondences constitute a substantial documentation – a documentary, in essence. Some material in this compendium may be held in reserve until some time following our deaths.
With continued appreciation,
David
Sculpture by Laurette Carroll
