EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK

Artist Bill Crook captures Illinois' landscape and character

by Peggy Boyer Long

It has become a tradition for the reporters in the Statehouse Press Room to give departing colleagues a montage of Bill Crook's drawings.

There's a good reason. His Capitol scenes, including the legislative chambers and the stained glass dome above the rotunda, will always remind political journalists where they've been.

But for central Illinoisans, Crook's detailed sketches are more often a reflection of where we're from.

His old houses and country churches, street scenes and roadsides, rivers and open fields, always rendered in pen and ink, capture the landscape and character of our region of the state. So, we knew as soon as we saw it that we wanted to use his drawing of a cornfield outside Petersburg.

The cover portrait of that field, northwest of Springfield near the Sangamon River, was done in pen and ink, hand-printed, then painted in watercolor. We used the black and white print inside (see page 14).

Still, Bill says, the Statehouse is particularly meaningful for him. He considers it an important symbol of his hometown.

Bill says he was given a Kodak box camera as a kid. And, no surprise to us, the first picture he took was a portrait of the Capitol.

Bill focused on photography while he was a student of graphic design at the University of Illinois. "But I felt frustrated with the camera. I could never get the feeling I wanted from a picture."

Fortunately, he turned to drawing. In fact, Illinois Issues used his first pen and ink sketch of the exterior of the Capitol building on the cover of its September 1975 issue.

Bill has done four covers for the magazine over the years. We're glad he agreed to return this month.

Illinois can boast a number of talented artists, many of whom draw for us. Stan Adams of Peoria did the watercolor of the Peoria Chiefs for our cover last June. The osprey that appeared on our December 1995 cover was sketched on a grocery sack by Springfield artist Olin Harris. And Mike Cranier, a Chicago lawyer, captured Dan Rostenkowski for us in December 1994.

4 ¦ September 1996 Illinois Issues