Children's book on the way from Lincoln Artist Annie Allen Clark

Local artist Annie Allen Clark's book, "Undulating La Roux," is due out this December from Sweetgrass Books, a division of Montana's Farcountry Press.

"Undulating La Roux" will feature a variety of characters and quotes and is an all ages book, said Clark, who noted there are no swear words, and that kids will love the illustrations.

"The characters from the book came from morning meditation journals that I have many, many of. Trace and I often talked about the fact that they came to me just rolling out of my head with the words," said Clark, noting that the final character in the book was developed by her husband, Trace.

"We both love Einstein," said Clark, continuing, "The last character came together with Trace's quote. So it's followed by an Einstein quote that's touched my life with art, with kids." In addition to creating her own artwork, Clark teaches art classes for students and works with art centers to support kids' art instruction.

Overall, Clark said the book is about outliers and uses the characters she's developed to explore that theme.

"My whole life I have felt like an outlier. And the people that I was raised by, that befriended me, that loved me, and left me, a lot of times were outliers and odd, and people shook their head. Even moving into Lincoln, it's really made up of outliers here," said Clark.

For Clark, there's importance in celebrating outliers and in approaching topics with kindness and humor.

"We had three suicides in our family, many suicides around us, students I've lost. My hope is they [the characters] would reach people and say, 'You know what? You are unique. Outliers are wonderful. Treasure this.' Kindness is over-used these days, and yet, you can't use it enough. You can use humor, I think, in a gentle, wonderful way where you're not pointing fingers," she said.

Clark adds that her childhood played into the book as well.

"A lot of it, of course, being a farm-ranch kid, is based on my life," said Clark. The back cover illustration also ties back to her childhood. When the publishers asked Clark to send art for the back cover along with a quote, she said she realized that the book didn't include a giraffe, which was the first animal she ever drew as a child.

"The hard part, this is all done in a medium with acrylic and watercolors. It's hard to photograph, and I didn't realize how hard it was. It's all about color for me," Clark added, saying she's been working with the publishers to ensure the printed pages stay true to the colors in the original artwork. Clark makes all of her own dyes which she uses with the acrylics and watercolors on a recycled waterproof paper called YUPO.

This is the second book Clark has illustrated, and the first one featuring her own writing. The children's picture book "One Is Enough," written by Maurice Trent and illustrated by Clark, was published in June of this year.

Clark received a $2500 Montana Arts Council CARES grant to support publication of her book.