I’ve spent the last few weeks working on this:
Based in the “real” but concentrated in the telling. All images made using a scalpel. “Hospital blue” made from soaking blue tissue in tea (the scans don’t show the yellowing too well). Tea is good for so much!
Hard time of year, no doubt … but making this small story was good for me. Made me confront the difference between not forgetting and holding on too tightly. And, weirdly, I had a lot of fun with it.
Based on a dream I had Thursday night.
Here are four pages that I’ve been working on—in some ways. a translation of the introductory post (click on the first image to open up the gallery). I’m trying to see if it will work to have my more “real” memories portrayed through drawings and then do the more magical/escapist/fictional/metaphoric/current narrative in cut-outs (and sort of have the two interweave).
I’m making the cut-outs from the morning paper. I have never before been so attuned to the ridiculous amount of space devoted to the lamest ads—though am super tickled to be able to re-purpose the rich and varying shades of grey in them. Really fun, too, to cut up photos of urban landscapes, politicians’ suits, and cloudy skies. I’m taking my own photos of the process along the way. Maybe will post some of them later?
I’ve had a couple of dreams about my mom in the last couple of weeks—the first I’ve had since she died in which she wasn’t sick and that weren’t nightmarish. Do I think that this creative process has something to do with the shift? Yes—there seems to be something to taking the traumatic images and memories that have been hiding in my head and putting them “out there” for others to do what they will with them. So here you are!
Mita Mahato 