#i’m more of a creative illustration girlie than a creative writing girlie

[shrewfern]

crestfallen

sirius black x reader page count: 3 word count: 1386 /// ‘...and so, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly —’ “OH, GROSS!” a voice cried from the stairway as the slamming of a heavy door echoed.  Remus inhaled and just as deeply exhaled, the sound of footsteps pounding their way down the stone stairs. Less than five seconds later, a traumatized James appears at the foot of the threshold.  “Moony!” James wailed as he pointed to the stairwell, the annoying aura of that one gross, sticky, smelly kid who wore that zip-up creeper hoodie from elementary school palpable, “Moony, they’re snogging agai-ai-aiinnnnn!!!” “I know,” Remus sighed, putting his book down. And he did know, he’s accidentally walked in on Sirius and [y/n] making out more times than he can count. Be it in the dorm rooms, the common room, the Forbidden Forest, the Quidditch pitch — everywhere! Every-fucking-where! They were practically glued at the tongue! “I know,” Remus repeated with the air of a soldier who buried his heart with his fallen country. “I know.”

Normally during breakfast, Remus could hardly keep his eyes off Sirius. Strangely, though, as of the past few weeks, when [y/n] infiltrated the Marauders, he couldn’t keep his eyes off them. But he didn’t feel the same way he did when he looked at Sirius. No, no, when he looked at Sirius, he felt…warm. Happy. Content with life. But [y/n]?? Fucking [y/n]????? He wanted to tear out their spine and shove it down their Sirius-sucking throat! Like, actually. Who the bitch do they think they are? But, he kept that to himself; it wasn’t very socially acceptable to tear off your boyfriend—I MEAN BOY BEST FRIEND's partner’s nails. So, he sat there, hunched over his...his… What—what is that? Beans on a bagel?? God, British people are a bunch of freaky deakies.  Okay, okay, so he ate his bean bagel and by god was he royally pissed at the mere thought of  Sirius wrapping an arm around this hoe. But that they were actually doing it???? In front of him???? What the actual skibidi toilet??? Sirius should have his arms wrapped around HIM — wait that’s kinda gay tho.

Despite his eternal rage, time moves on. During Potions, Sirius helped [y/n] cut their dandelion roots, even though, “THEY’RE TOTALLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT THEMSELVES,” Remus explained in a loud “whisper” to James and Peter. Somehow both of them were totally oblivious to the fact that [y/n] was clearly taking advantage of his lover – I mean their age-old friend. Yep, friend. Friend, friend, friend. That’s what Sirius is to Remus, a friend. Golly, what a weird word, “friend”. Like, friend? I barely know her! Friend…Sounds weird haha. God, [y/n] is such a fucking dickwad.

Transfiguration. Turning a rabbit into a bo’oh’o’wa’er. Easy, right? WRONG! I dunno, man, shit’s hard when some stupid fucking hoebag is busy fucking giggling in your goddamn ear! “Wdym ‘in your ear’ they’re literally in the seat adjacent to you,” James said plainly. Where the hell James learned the word “adjacent” is a concern beyond Remus’ line of sight. This bitch is literally high-key on god no cap so annoying. Like actually. It’s the kind of annoying where the people in front of you are walking slowly but there’s no way to walk around them so you just have to try to not push them over times a hundred. “Lupin, your rabbit!” A girlish voice behind him squealed. In his train of malicious thought, Remus nearly suffocated the poor thing…It was [y/n]’s fault, though! If they weren’t shrieking like a maniac whenever Sirius breathed in their general direction, he wouldn’t have been so pissed off.

“Ummmm…” [y/n] hums, turning Remus’ porcelain teacup clockwise, glancing at a book every so often. They were reading each other's tea leaves, and for whatever reason, the Divination professor must hate Remus. Why else would she pair him with [y/n]? Fucking [y/n]!  At least they weren’t able to manipulate Sirius now, but still… God damn, [y/n] is such a stupid asswipe. Looking up at him with those STUPID eyes, they said, “Well, here you’ve got a…a spider web over here,” they looked back at their book, “That could represent jealousy…” DAMN RIGHT. “But in it,” they went on, “is a heart.” They looked from the drenched tea leaves to Remus. “Are you jealous of someone?” they asked innocently. Well, innocently enough; Remus could see the snakeish gleam in their eyes — the serpent that lies beneath the innocent flower.  ‘ArE yOu JeAlOuS oF sOmEoNe?’ NO YOU DUMB BITCH THAT’S STUPID. Being jealous is for pussies, and by god Remus is NOT a pussy. But y’know who is? [y/n]. Honestly, he could bitchslap that dumdum right here, right now. Who knows, it might be like in the cartoons when someone gets hit in the head a second time and they go back to being themselves. “No, that’s silly,” Remus replied calmly, looking into their pink porcelain teacup.  Crack! Remus is holding [y/n]’s cup so calmly, he accidentally cracked it! Once again, this is obviously [y/n]’s fault! If they weren’t so stupid, he wouldn’t have strangled the cup. I mean, hell, if they didn’t exist, all of the world’s problems would be solved! No more hunger, no more war, no more dating Sirius — Sirius would be single and ready to mingle. Ready to mingle. Ready. To. Mingle. Mingle. Mingle with Remus — wait what. 

The rest of the day continued in a similar fashion: Sirius and [y/n] h*ling h*nds, Remus strangling whatever he was holding, and James and Peter trying to calm Remus down.

Honestly, who the hell do they think they are? (“Remus, a word?”) “You look very pretty today [y/n],” Sirius cooed. (“Remus.”) Remus couldn’t see the appeal. (“Remus?”) Maybe if they ate all that makeup instead of smearing it all over their face, they might actually look tolerable on the inside — “REMUS!”  Remus snapped his murderous gaze from [y/n] to James. “Remus,” James said, gesturing to a corner (the same one Sirius and [y/n] were making out in exactly three hours, twelve minutes, and forty-two seconds ago), “a word?” No response. “Now?” “What?!” Remus hissed once they made it to the corner. “Dude what the actual hell??” “What do you mean what the hell?!” “Moony, you’ve been a total bitch all day!” “Nuh-uh!” “Yes the fuck you have been!” James whispered loudly. “Honestly, you’re being a jealous bitch!” And it was true: Remus has been a total beta all day. In fact, it was more than all day; he’d been a total beta all last week, too. And the week before. And before…and before… Then it hit him: I’m in love with Sirius.  He looked at [y/n]. They were in Sirius’ lap, a loving smile plastered across their stupid face. But it wasn’t just their lips curled in adoration, it was their eyes too. Their eyes were love-sick as they looked at Sirius.  Remus’ heart fell; Sirius had the same look on his gorgeous face when he looked at [y/n]. At [y/n].  And so, there Remus stands, the ugly scowl that crossed his horrendous, scar-drawn face when he looked at [y/n] tilted into a frown. The eyes that had gone green with envy softened as water threatened to break through them. He loved Sirius and couldn’t stand the thought of him being with someone else, yet here he is. He clumsily picked up his heart as it lay there dying.  Honestly, why was he even making such a big deal about any of this? He was a werewolf for crying out loud, a werewolf! Who on this god-forsaken earth would want to even think about being with him — hugging him, holding his hand, welcoming him home after a long night’s work with a warm smile, placing a kiss on his scarred lips. Why would someone even think about laughing at his stupid jokes, dancing the rainy night away to some slow jazz, holding him late at night, not caring that he was a grotesque beast.  Why would anyone even think about looking at him…looking at him the way Sirius looks at [y/n]? Remus loved Sirius, but it was too late. With a defeated sigh, Remus turned his pitiful gaze from his fargone lover to James. “I know,” Remus murmured, burying his heart with his fallen love.

[plor-bindery]

Bound: Truth to Materials

It’s done!

I have a colour printer now. Can you tell? Lol.

This is, of course, a bind of my own co-authored fic with lately, who is not on Tumblr much/at all, and not under that name. (Apparently I continue to have the idea that I must try out new techniques on my own work first?)

The fic features artist Draco, so I went with that theme for the book design. I also used Canva for the first time, which was a mix of frustration (“whyyyy doesn’t it do this thing Illustrator does???”) and joy (so! much! stock! art!!!) I actually wound up banging the cover doc back into Illustrator because I didn’t trust the lack of guides and dimensions for measuring the cover, but the export was fairly seamless, so that was fine.

Back cover blurbs feat. @moonflower-rose because their comment made me lol so much when I went digging for gold in the comments. Also @thehoneybeet! (I feel weird putting my own reviews on the cover but I’m pretending they’re all directed at lately.)

More blathering under the cut.

For the wrap cover: glossy legal photo paper laminated in a matte legal 3mil pouch — two covers back to back so only the front gets laminated. I actually tried this first on plain paper but the ink bled in spots from the glue moisture and the whole thing delaminated as the glue struck through. I think the glossy coating provides a better barrier between ink and glue. I also used straight PVA on the second go, reasoning that it carries less water. Seemed to work?

Ran into some troubles with hinges delaminating, though, I think more from flexing and the bone folder than moisture? I can see why the IG Dramione binding girlies use the soft touch laminate — less than half the thickness. I haven’t bought any yet though, not sure I am that keen?

The endpapers are foiled but I was annoyed with the folding obscuring the words — might have to be more cautious with that in future.

All the chapter headers are artworks pulled from the bestmuseumbum hashtag on the bird site. It was very fun finding them. (This fic started with a Louvre visit in which lately and I very maturely admired many sculpted arses so there’s a theme.)

Endbands are sewn with embroidery floss and they came out sooo shiny and neat. One strand of floss per wrap is the way to go, even though it’s slow and fine work.

The rest of the bind is unremarkable — legal quarto, sewn French links, bradel-style case.

The cover came out quite 90s which I kind of love. As I’ve said before, and at risk of dating both of us, co-author lately and I met in our young teens, and that was…in the 90s. The earlier part. So a 90s vibe cover for the first fic we managed to co-write since that time? Perfect. Saved by the Bell goodness.

So… cover wraps… I am not sure! I think it’s probably cheaper than even homemade book cloth, but I imagine the archival quality is not great with all the plastic involved. But then same with HTV. I will almost certainly do it again, especially if I want to do something like a book that’s disguised as a textbook or magazine. While I love the artwork available in Canva, I definitely felt like my own creativity was less present? Hard to describe.

One little technical problem that I’m solving: endpapers didn’t stick to the hinge insides fully, not sure if the wrapped spine is too wide or it’s a lamination not liking glue thing or… but the problem is minor. Something to troubleshoot next time.

[girlreviews]

Review #184: She’s So Unusual, Cyndi Lauper

You’re receiving a fair warning right at the outset: there are going to be no less than two references to The Simpsons in this review – possibly more -- and I’m not even a little bit sorry about it.

I think that Cyndi Lauper is one of the very first female artists I ever knew the name of and recognized, and knew her record from start to finish. I don’t think it was this one. I believe it was a compilation CD called Twelve Deadly Cyns… And Then Some, that had a really striking image of her with bright yellow hair and a bright red hat. It had all of the major hits from this album, and the next few, as well as the most interesting remix of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun that was done by the guys from Redbone, and was very much my first introduction to the bassline from Come And Get Your Love. That shit worked.

Anyway, I wish that every three-year-old girl got to hear Cyndi Lauper like this because she’s fucking iconic. Powerhouse voice. Uninhibited. Artist. Creative genius. A girl’s girl and a woman’s woman. I’d love to get drunk with her and play a round of cards. I bet she’s been treated like a child while navigating this industry. I just feel it in my bones and guts. Because of the earnest, girlish, sincere, whimsical music she’s making, as well as her unapologetic cute and girly aesthetic and small frame. But she’s always demanded to be taken seriously. She’s the inspiration I’ve carried around as an experienced professional in my field: I can have a bubble tea pencil case with a smiley face on it, and cute stationary, and a notepad with a bird on it, and a cute haircut and fun outfits. It doesn’t mean I’m childish, or any less good at my job, and I will rip you a new asshole if you fucking cross me or any of my employees, cool? Do not be fooled by the enamel pins on my jacket. I could stab you with them if I wanted. I just don’t, that’s all.

My notes: Money Changes Everything, which it does, has a harmonica solo in it, and I think we all need to take a moment and bow down to the boldness of that. How many harmonica solos do we hear outside something like Bob Dylan? It’s pretty few and far between and it’s really fucking great in this song. Every single track on this album is deep, fun, and interesting. And some of them have harmonica solos! When I was a doofy little teen, I used to have a necklace with a tiny harmonica on it. It was ugly as could be, but it was pretty cool. I recently started looking into whether there were any cute, adult versions of it. There are. And I am once again inspired by Saint Cyndi to be cute, functional, and badass.

I’m going to save Girls Just Wanna Have Fun for last because I have so much to say about it. So next up will be Time After Time, which to be honest is every bit as iconic. Genuinely. It’s absolutely beautiful. Stunning. Moving. How does one write a song so incredibly poignant and dedicated to someone? Can anybody listen to this synth ballad and not just feel their heart plunge into it? Maybe they can. Maybe they’re a monster. Not a Simpsons reference, but to illustrate my point: even April Ludgate, known to be cold-hearted and dead inside, can’t resist the pull of this song.

She Bop is one of my favorites. I think I loved it when I was really tiny. It makes sense that I would have. I loved nonsense. I still love nonsense. It’s a lot of nonsense (Oop, she bop, she bop, she bop, he bop, we bop, I bop, you bop, they bop, be bop, a lu bop), but it’s positioned over some very serious-sounding synths and electric drums. That’s my exact shit and always has been. There’s a good chance Cyndi Lauper and this song are largely responsible for my entire persona, in hindsight. That’s fine with me. I think this song is about bad boys and having crushes on them (hey, hey they say I better get a chaperone, because I can’t stop messin’ with the danger zone). Cyndi Lauper has always been completely about her uninhibited noises. Woops, and breaths, and squeaks, and squawks. They’re amazing, and they add absolutely everything to the experience. Simpsons reference #1 coming up here. They made it the butt of the joke, but I loved it. Cyndi Laupi (yes, Laupi), singing the National Anthem at a baseball game, with all that breathy, squeaky, baritone nonsense. Absolutely fucking hilarious. Also the way in which I mostly learned the words to the National Anthem (you try knowing it when you grew up in Europe? I do not accept your judgment, and frankly I’m still pretty shaky on the words and I don’t care).

Every track on this album slaps, and you should listen to it, but it is one of those where you kind of have to focus on the singles/iconic tracks because they are iconic for a reason. So here we go. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I want to say that this song is so happy and upbeat and means everything to every girl and woman that knows it, which, is like, all of them, ever, and if it isn’t, it should be. However. There’s also a sad undertone to it, or at least I have always felt one. It’s always just tugged at my heart a little bit. I actually have no idea whether that’s just me or whether that’s a universal experience. It’s like a gentle feminist wish. She’s singing about oppressive experiences — from parents, from partners, from society:

“Oh Mama dear, we’re not the fortunate ones”

“Oh Daddy dear, you know you’re still number one”

“Some boys take a beautiful girl, and hide her away from the rest of the world”

It genuinely hurts my feelings. I’m not sure a song has ever so captured the simplicity of experience. Just trying to exist. Just trying to walk in the sun. Just trying to go home and chill after work, and for some reason, it’s just hard to do. But, in singing it, she’s fulfilling the wish, because she’s having fucking fun. It’s fun. I don’t know man, that’s really cool. I love this song. But it’s way deeper than I imagine a lot of people have ever given her credit for. I imagine to a lot of people, it’s just a silly little party song. But it’s not. And if you want to fight with me about that, I’ll get my cute enamel pins ready. Here’s Homer Simpson singing it, which I have always found extremely endearing. Do you think it’s lost on him? Probably. That’s sort of what’s endearing about it.

[nad-zeta]

Match up (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

ay I have an ikesen matchup, please? I’m an asexual cis girl who leans to boys. Yet, shy around them. Lacking some experience with general things. So I tend to be obvious. Sometimes sarcastic and bold, but with an innocent mindset. Since most dirty jokes fly over my head and I think some people mean well. Though being a little sensitive and may cry.

I’ve been told I can get lost in my own world. I’m a tan brown girl with dark brown curly hair. A petite figure, 5'6. I have a girly, pastel free attire. I love vintage things, post-rock, jazz songs. I love to draw and express myself through art. My dream is to become an illustrator or cartoonist. Including my love for stuff animals, Grimm brother tales.

Hi hi Love! 🌻❤Thank you so much for the request! I hope you enjoy it and i hope you have the best day! Also sorry for taking soooooo long! ❤❤🌻

So I match you with…………. Hideyoshi

The first time you arrived at the castle, Hideyoshi did not trust you one bit. He watched you like a hawk from day one. He didn’t like it when strangers got so close to his lord. 

You kept your head down and worked hard, and all the maids and castle staff really adored you. You were so sweet and kind, like a little rabbit. Even Nobunaga had taken a liking to you, and as classic standard procedure for him, he invited you up to his room that night. When Mamabear heard that Nobunaga has called you to his room, Hidemama, was on high alert. He and Mitsuhide had followed you as you made your way to Nobunaga’s room. They hid in the shadows, and when you finally entered their lord’s room, they placed their ears against the door ready to burst into the room at a seconds notice. 

You shyly made your way up the stairs into Nobu’s room, you hadn’t seen him since he named you as, princess. It wasn't even 3 second into the conversations when he, made a pass at you, about wanting you to warm his bed for the night. A comment which mind you, flew right over your head. Your mind was so innocent and pure, and this boy legit had to explain his intentions to you, which left you blushing. You very kindly told him that you were not that kind of girl, “Fine then fireball, but I still expect you to entertain me somehow.” You were curious as to why someone so busy was still awake so late, and that’s when he told you that he struggles to fall asleep. You gave him a gentle smile and said that you knew a few tips and tricks that could help.

You told him to lay down in his futon, he did as you asked with the most amused glint in his crimson eyes. You then tucked him in and started playing with his hair. “You are treating me like a child, fireball.” You gave him another one of your gentle smiles, you couldn’t help but make a sarcastic comeback to his comment. Nobunaga simply smirked up at you, especially after you mentioned that you were going to tell him a bedtime story. You knew so many stories thanks to your love of the brothers Grimm tales. By the end of your story, Nobunaga’s breath had evened out, and he was now fast asleep. 

Hideyoshi and Mitsuhide knew that if you were to do something, now would be the ideal opportunity. They strained their ears to hear what you were saying. You looked down at the sleeping man’s face and smiled, “Here is one more thing to make sure you sleep soundly.” When Hideyoshi heard you say those words, he opened the door to peek inside the room, it sounded like you were going to kill him. He was shook when you kissed the man’s forehead and stood up, extinguishing the candles. Hideyoshi is that moment realized he had majorly misjudged you, you weren’t an assassin, you were just an extremely kind sweet girl.

The next morning you woke up to your room that was filled to the brim with clothes, flowers and little trinkets. You were super confused, even more so when Hideyoshi had entered into your room carrying a tray of breakfast and a sunshine smile. You had to do a bit of a double-take cause you have never seen anything other than a scowl coming from Hideyoshi. “Oooh good you're awake, I brought you some breakfast, and I came to apologize for the horrible way I’ve been treating you.” He then bowed down super low to you. Honestly, it all felt like one big dream.

Hideyoshi then invited you out to the markets where he absolutely insisted on buying you even more gifts, to make up for his mistakes. You had come to really enjoy this new side of Yoshi, he was super sweet and kind, like a protective older brother

Since then every spare moment he got, he would spend with you. The two of you loved going out for tea together or just browsing the markets. When Hideyoshi had discovered that you enjoyed jazz music he would take you to any and every jazz performance he could find. He would usually make up a picnic basket, filled with delicious snacks and then surprise you with an outdoor picnic concert. The two of you would then sit and enjoy some good food, and music together.

Hideyoshi loved spending time with you, and the more time the two of you spent together, the more and more he found himself falling hopelessly in love with you. He loved your sweet, pure, innocent mind. You were honestly like the female version of his sweet angelic vassal. Who like you was blissfully unaware of Mitsuhide and Masamune’s dirty jokes and minds. 

He also enjoyed watching your bold, sarcastic side come out. It would usually happen when he would confront Mitsuhide. In the midst of his arguments with the snek, you would be right there by Hideyoshi’s side, backing him up. Firing sarcastic comebacks at Mitsuhide whenever he gets on Hideyoshi’s nerves, or evades Hidemama’s questions with sarcastic remarks.

Hideyoshi also loves that you love animals. This boys heart melts into a puddle of goo whenever he sees you playing with Uri, his pet monkey. He will stand in the doorway, beaming with pure happiness at the sight of his two beloved girls spending time together. It was then when Hideyoshi started to make plans to confess his love for you. This doting mother is a hopeless romantic so its, go big or go home when it comes to love.

That morning you woke up to a little not resting next to your pillow, the note contained instructions to a game. You smiled as you solved the small riddle at the bottom of the page leading you to the next clue. After running around the castle solving all sorts of little puzzles, the final note led you to Hideyoshi’s manor. You open the main door to see a path of rose petals leading you outside. You couldn’t help but smile at the sight, Hideyoshi standing in front of a candlelit dinner in the middle of his garden. Honestly, the best part was that he had dressed little Uri up like a waiter, who gave you a single red rose and the final note with the words sprawled across the page, “I love you.”

The two of you made the sweetest couple. Hideyoshi loved everything about you from your loving, kind heart to your sarcastic, bold side. He loved it when you would doodle small cartoon pictures on the napkins during your tea dates. He loved the beautiful art pieces that you would create, they expressed so much emotion and always left him breathless. He would proudly display all your art around the manor. 

When you had told him your dream of becoming a cartoonist and illustrator, he was ecstatic and was determined to help you make that dream come true, even though you were now stuck in the past. Yoshi introduced some of your drawings to Nobunaga, who loved your illustrations so much that he commissioned you to start writing children’s books, to inspire the young minds to follow their dreams. And although Nobunaga would never admit it, he loves reading your children’s books at night, as they to help calm his cluttered mind enough for him to fall asleep.

Hideyoshi knows what a soft sensitive soul you are, and is always by your side to protect you against anyone or anything. If you are feeling low or sad, he would gather you in his strong arms and whispers words of love in your ears. Honestly, this man will shower you with love and affection from dusk to dawn. He absolutely loves to dote on you so, expect to be pampered like the sweet princess you are, cause this man WILL spoil you.

Yoshi loves to sit behind you with his arms circled around your waist and his chin propped up resting on your shoulder, as you draw your latest illustrations. He could spend hours just watching you bring the most beautiful and creative drawings and cartoons to life. 

Don’t be surprised if he occasionally drops a few sweet kisses on your shoulder or cheek as you work. He will 100% brag about your work to everyone in the castle after you are done. He is your biggest cheerleader, and he loves everything you do.

Often the two of you cuties can be found simply holding hands in the teahouse, chatting away about everything and anything.

Other potential matches………….. Kennyo  

I hope you enjoyed it and i hope you have a super good day! 🌻😳🐇@daydreamerneko123

[ireflectaut]

Post Three

Things to explore and think about that I learnt from my research:

Listing- I found the listing in Eloise Goes To Paris so compelling and entertaining.

The poetry & rhythm of both books was beautiful and integral to the writer's art.

Dialogue was a great part of both books as well; Eloise had such a strong voice that made you feel and love her, and Max’s character came through in his dialogue. The phonetic spelling and humour in Eloise Goes To Paris was a great was to make the character come to life, and the dynamic nature and visual aspect of Max’s dialogue in Where the Wild Things Are was captivating.  

Maurice Sendak’s story doesn’t rely on an abundance of unnecessary words; he gets the point across concisely and vividly. Both stories also have an assertive protagonist which is something I need to work towards.  

I adore aesthetically the abstract nature of Sendak’s writing; I think it lends well to the concept as a whole and getting children to explore their imagination in less rigid terms, and also makes the illustrations come to life and have creative licence to elevate the story.

Themes of childhood emotion, imagination and being boundless in what your protagonist can do was very inspiring to me as well.

I wrote drafts of a few different stories that were inspired by my research in order to find one that I could then edit, and use as my final story.

One:

What I am trying to explore: 

Abstract concepts, interesting dialogue, themes of imagination and using repetition. Also themes of who you are and who you can be that I was interested in in my proposal.

Story:

“Hello, me!” said Sam to the mirror

“Hello, you!” said the mirror to Sam.

“I’m doing something different today.”

The mirror smiled back.

Sam liked their hair long,

Sam liked their hair short,

Sam liked that their hair had a life of its own.  

Today Sam’s hair wanted to be long.

So they stepped through the time hole.

They were very very squished

And then, suddenly, hugely stretched out

And Sam popped out in one year.

They looked in the mirror

“HELLO, old friend!”  

Sam was bewildered,

Their hair twirled all around.  

Sam twirled with it.  

Two:

What I am trying to explore: 

Exploring listing & imagination. Thinking about poetry; alliteration, rhyme, cadence & repetition.

Story:

My Things

I have a million things.

They are all me,

And I am all them.

This one cost two whole dollars!

This one I found

In the middle of a tree!

This pile of things is very heavy

And very dusty

Because they stay very still

And I watch them intently.

These are my jewels.

I collect them on my walks.

I give them to friends

Who come in all sorts.

Sometimes I lose my things,

In fact I do it a lot...  

Usually it's those silly Grimbles

This is a Grimble hot spot.

Flowers are my favourites.

Its ok if they get dry,

I stick them between a book

Or just paint them with my dye.

This one I made  

It hangs on my wall,

If I focus and point,

I can make it fall.

This one is expensive,

My mum got it for me.

I get under the covers,

And I go off to sleep.

Three:

Inspired maybe a little too heavily by Where the Wild Things Are; inspired by the narrative structure and themes. Also playing with the use of capitals like Sendak does.

A mean finger pointed in Lolas face

A big red mean finger attached to a big mean red ogre

That looked like he was about to SWALLOW Lola whole

Lola screamed and she ran and ran and ran and ran

And her face was wet with tears.

As her tears fell something strange happened

The tears became bigger and bigger  

And more and more

Until they themselves grew larger than Lola

And they swallowed her up.

Lola tucked her knees to her chest

And locked her arms around them

She closed her eyes and sobbed some more.

Lola created a bubble around her

So that nobody from outside could enter her tears

And no creatures from her tears could enter her bubble.

She was all alone.

One hundred years passed  

and the tears had dried up

And Lola was alone...

“YIPPEE” she said! “WOO HOO” she yelled!

She danced around the land!

She twirled all day! And skipped all night!

And yelled into the air

“I AM ALOOONNNEEEEEEEE!”

She looked around....  

She danced around the land, again.

She twirled all day.

And skipped all night.

She whispered to herself

“I am all alone.”

So she walked across the land,

And back across the hundred years,

She found her tears  

And swam.

She found the big red ogre

Who had shrunk back to his regular size,

With his shirt tucked in,

And his big round eyes.

He bent down to little Lola

To show her a smile.

He was no longer red.

And she      was no longer scared.

Four:

Inspiration from the craziness of the world around Eloise- I love the flamboyance of the crazy hotel she lives in and the strangeness of the world around her.

Story:

Amelias house lent to the left  

Unless there was a particularly strong wind

Or you told it off,  

In which case it leant to the right.

Amelia didn’t like to tell the house off

But sometimes it got carried away

And squashed her cats

And once it almost squashed Amelia

When she was sleeping

(and she had to grab bricks from her dream and pile them up  

So she didn’t get squashed)

(she made sure to return the bricks later)

After that incident she had to tell the house off  

Really bad  

And it lent to the right for a while after that

Which made the furniture look funny.

Amelia did what every normal child did;

She made sure to pay the monthly bills

She talked to important people on the phone

She worried about money  

and made sure to find as much as she could on her walk to work.

Her work was petting strangers' cats.  

She loved it, don’t get me wrong, but boy was it stressful sometimes.  

When she got home from work, she said to house

“UGH, will you let me put my bag down first!

Before you start harassing me for things!”

And then she poured herself a glass of something strong;

Tonight, it was lime cordial.  

On the weekends she slept in

And said oh boy, I wish everyday was like this!

She made sure to read the news paper

For her news, on paper

And she shook the pages around  

And flipped them back and forth as best she could

And made sure to fold it in a few different ways.

Sometimes she would grab a pen and say to house

“what's a four-letter word for flabbergasted?”

And then do a big loud “Hmpfh”

And turn the page over.  

Since all of this was really quite exhausting,

Amelia was lucky to have her parents' house to escape to

If she needed it.

Five:

What I am trying to explore: 

Themes of childhood emotion, actively trying to write an assertive protagonist. Using repetition & alliteration. Also trying to write so that when read out loud it will be amusing.  

Story:

I put on my favorite dress,

My secret favorite dress, nobody knows

Its girly and pink and the sparkles go BOOM

And then I heard the voice,

He always comes

Whenever I put on the secret dress

The voice is slimy and dark and dank

And throws you into a deep dark hole

The hole is so deep and dark and deep

Sometimes I think I'll never leave.

He says yuck, that dress is girly

So girly pink and yuck

You look silly, didn’t sally say?

When you wore that dress to school one day?

But there is one thing that I can do

When that slimy voice comes

I pull out my sword and say GO AWAY

And I cut the slimy thing to the bone

The funny thing is,  

The thing behind the voice

The slimiest sluggiest slip slop yuck voice in the whole wide world

Is the smallest tiniest silliest thing,

It's hard not to laugh at it.

Six:

What I am trying to explore: 

Story:

There once was a little girl who never spoke.

Well, she had spoken once, as a baby. She said ‘baba’ which in baby talk meant “please get off my bed, big brother, I would like to be alone now”

But her brother laughed, and pointed a big red finger at her and called their parents in.

“What, what?” they said, “hurry up boy!”  

“Look at Amelia trying to talk!”

They crowded her and staired at her with their big round eyes, waiting.

Amelia tried to say: “I'm not sure what the commotion is about... I know what I want to say, I’m just figuring out how to get it out. I’ll figure it out soon, mummy, daddy.”

But only a loud babble came out: “Mmm gaba.”

Her family scrunched up their faces and started laughing at her.  

“Well, she's not going to be the brightest of the bunch!”  

And they left her all alone.  

Amelia was so embarrassed from that day forward that she didn’t say a word again.

That was nine whole years ago.  

Since Amelia’s family didn’t believe her to be bright, they never sent her to school.

But Amelia learnt in her own way.

She taught herself how to read and how to paint using things from around the house. Marmite was a great black, and if she cut out parts of magazines she could create great images of colour and people.

She sat in her garden and learned about the bugs and the trees, and about how the leaves on the trees fell when it was getting colder, and how flowers started popping up when warmer weather was on its way.

Amelia was lucky to have the kindest next door neighbour in the world; Miss Andrews.  

Miss Andrews was as loud and chatty which made up for Amelia’s lack of words. She also played violin.

I also wrote an alternate path for this story, but wasn’t able to finish either due to lack of time.

Amelia walked to school by herself every day.  

She crossed busy roads and walked down dark alleys.

She walked past bullies who pulled her pigtails and stole her lunch;  

Not that they were very impressed with it, Amelia's family weren’t big cooks

Usually, her lunch was packed with ice,  

or sometimes a lemon found its way in.  

Amelia never said anything to the bullies.

She was too scared to talk.  

Amelia had a horrible teacher who picked on her in class.

She forced all the children to read their work out loud

And if they could she would yell “PAAASSSSS!”

But if they couldn’t she would yell “FAAIILLLLLL!”

And make them run 100 laps around the field,  

rain or shine.

Luckily, Amelia had a friend.

Her name was Lola.

Lola ran laps around the field with Amelia,  

Even when she didn’t have to.

Lola made fun of the bullies when they weren’t looking,

And Lola shared her lunch with Amelia, so she wouldn’t be hungry.

Amelia walked into class and took her seat next to Lola.

Seven:

Laura wasn’t good at anything.

She didn’t know how to be good.

She tried drawing but she did it wrong

And her parents told her off.

She tried reading but she didn’t know the words,

She tried writing but it came out all wrong,

The words were lopsided and fell off the page.  

She tried cooking but she made a mess

She tried tidying but somehow... made it even messier.

She hid from her mum after that,

But she wasn’t good at hiding.  

Laura felt silly and strange so she sat in her garden

And she closed her eyes for a very long time.  

When she woke up, she got quite a shock.

Her garden had grown into a tall dark forest,

With flowers and vines and big dense bushes.

Laura looked around. She was lost, and cold. A howl echoed far away.  

But then – she heard a smaller howl. A tiny one. She turned to see a little wolf.

The wolf looked at her and growled – he was scared too.  

Laura crawled slowly to him and held out her hand.

“Come here, little wolf. Its ok, I won't hurt you.”

The wolf whimpered and cautiously sniffed her hand.

She pet him on the head and he came into her lap.

“Where do you live, little wolf?” asked Laura, and they heard another loud howl in the distance.

The little wolf tried to howl back but was so quiet Laura barely heard it herself.

“I see.” she whispered. “I’ll get you back home.”

So Laura and the wolf took off looking for home.

I ended up choosing my three favourite stories and working on them to find what my final story would be.

[ladywiththegirlsheart]

bis pre-issue review★

The magazine itself is quite big, bigger than LARME and similar to the size of ViVi or Sweet. I like big magazines because bigger pictures (although scanning is a bit harder)! Also there’s 136 pages. 

The cover is okay, I’m not super crazy about it but it’s nice.

★

Anyways, looking inside, the main story is 「Never mind」which features the cover girl Mirai Shida. Like the cover, it’s quite dark and makes use of different layouts, borders and text layouts. The main theme is about being reborn.

The shoot advertises different trends like flare plants and chiffon dresses. The looks will set you back a couple tens or hundred of thousands of yen though, it’s not cheap. On the cover she is wearing a 410,000 yen dress by Rochas. However this shoot, and the first few in the first half of the magazine, are more likely for aesthetics and promoting ‘high fashion’ brands to try to emulate for yourself as the second half of the magazine balances out the price of items.

The next editorial is 「Gemini」. It advertises new collections from brands like Theatre Products and Jill Stuart along with some writing by Erika Kobayashi about twins. Like the first editorial it’s pricey with the aim of looking high fashion. I didn’t really love it and the photography was just okay to me.

Next was 「Vespertine」. There were one or two pictures I liked, but again it was just a high fashion-y sort of editorial with a little bit of superfluous text. And I didn’t really like the clothes. 

The last of the high fashion editorials was 「忘れる (Wasureru)」. This one was very artily edited, which focused more on aesthetic than the clothes. I wasn’t enamoured by this one either unfortunately. I think it would have been better without all the graphics around it. 

Next was 「UTOPIA MAKE-UP」. It’s about “Mode Feminine” make up, aimed at ladies becoming adults. The main header pictures were really creative and nice with a robotic twist, but the make up wasn’t to my taste - the cheeks are meant to be a skin tone colourless colour. The lip colours were reddy pinks though. The featured make up brands were Anna Sui, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Jill Stuart etc.

Now we come to the divide of the magazine. From here on out the magazine picked up a lot for me and was more affordable, bright and youthful. 

Starting with 「Summer Style of Vintage」a book in the magazine (like the little book in book things) which features some questionable fashion choices that nobody would be caught dead wearing - like a shoulder to toe lace bodysuit and a dress that looks like it was made out of blue cling film... But some of it is okay... take it with a grain of salt. Actually the last page promotes a magazine called DOOR which seems to have styled this, so it might just be some kind of PR.

Moving on, next in the little book segment is Products Needed This Summer. It features the model Raimu Taya, who seems to be the main ‘bis girl’. It shows the make up to do in different situations like daily make up and date make up, then shows you how to style your hair and makeup with certain coord items like cat eye sunglasses and bloomers. I actually liked this spread a lot, but wished it wasn’t all taken in front of a grey background, that, and lighting doesn’t make the make up look so great.

Next, a prettier layout for popular keywords for now. There’s even some coordinate examples, to give a taste of the fashion in bis. Some brands featured in this are HONEY MI HONEY, Zara, Supreme.La.La, Faline and Katie. There’s also keywords about skin care, cosmetics, nails and make up. 

Now back to the main magazine, my favourite editorial! 「Pretty Things」. It features Haruka Kudo (from Morning Musume ‘17), Raimu and Raika Yumi as three sisters working in a hair salon. The coordinates feature them wearing one of the same item of clothing or accessory and mix and matching with different pieces. It’s easily the best editorial showing different situations like “Selecting Flowers for (the) Salon” and “Scouting Pretty Girls”, and the fashion’s cute too. The most featured brands are Katie and Agnes b.

Next is a “healthy summer” mix and match, featuring Raimu in Vintage Casual and NANAMI in Girly Casual. Some of the brands featured include lilLily, Peach John, Uniqlo, Zara and Forever 21. It shows at most 5 coords for each style for the months between May and August. There’s some cute stuff, there’s some basic stuff. Layout wise it reminded me of ViVi.

Next is a feature on hairstyles for summer. Mostly before and afters promoting different hairdressers to visit and some styling tips. The fashion in this segment is quite nice. 

Next is another hair feature, but this time a hair arrange segment. My first thoughts were that it looks a lot like LARME. I don’t know if this ribbon hair stuff is popular in other magazines nowadays though, so it could be the norm. Anyways, it’s nicely laid out and the models are cute. 

Next is 「Self Body Care Salon」. If you’ve read something like this in another Japanese magazine you’ve probably read them all! There’s a lot of exercises, stretches, diet tips, massages etc in this part. The theme colour of the pages are baby blue which is really pretty. 

Next is the recipe segment. A part of this is also on the bis website. It’s recipes featuring noodles with 0 grams of carbohydrates. The instructions are limited to about 3 or 4 steps so I don’t know how easy they are to follow, but I genuinely want to eat them all.

Next is a make up Q&A. Again, read a make up Q&A once and you’ve read them all; but you do get some summer tips and bis make up recommendations. There’s a question on how to make your eyes look bigger without circle lenses, and flicking through the magazine it seems more often than not that circle lens aren’t used that much. 

Moving on to culture, it kicks off with a piece on a short movie that is being shown in the video section of bis’s website. I haven’t watched it yet, and I haven’t read the piece yet. 

The next page is on 「Transparents」- clear accessories. I guess this isn’t culture...but it’s just one random double page. There’s some expensive clear accessories which seem like they belong more in the beginning part of the magazine. I don’t know, really.

Next is some promo with Sanrio for Sanrio Puroland. It features some ‘bis girls’ - SAKURA, Noa Sato and Mei Tanaka. I’m not familiar with them, but they look quite young. You can see this PR feature on bis’s website too. 

Next there’s an interview with the title “Do you think birds are free?” It also has some illustrations. It’s quite long, so I haven’t read it yet. 

Next 「How to grow my wings」with Raimu. It’s a weird layout with text all over the place. I don’t understand it, but I think it’s supposed to be deep. It’s pretty at least.

Turn the page and there’s  「LAKE」. Another written piece about something...It’s from a story about travellers or something.

Anyways, coming towards the end, there’s 「BOY’S CULTURE MODE」. Which is an interview with Kento Nakajima, a member of Sexy Zone. I don’t know about Sexy Zone and I don’t really have any interest in it, so I didn’t read it. 

The first of the monthly instalments, 「bis BOOK 」. This month’s book is “Night Flower The Life and Art of Vali Myers”. The other is 「bis FLOWER」. This month’s flower is Dahlia. I like flowers, but I didn’t expect that to be something they’d do every issue. It’s different, that’s for sure. It’d be nice to have a model posing with the flowers though.

Then, fin, telling us the magazine will start to be published in September. 

★

My first impressions are that the magazine is not bad. But there’s a big disconnect within the magazine. The first half is Vogue x Sweet, the second half is LARME x ViVi. Since it’s only the pre issue, it can definitely be hard to get one original ‘bis’ style down of course. However if they maybe spaced out the high fashion parts, or just inserted some high-end pieces into the second half and vice versa, it would be better. It’s too much at the start and it’s boring. I like high fashion editorials but the pictures weren’t enough to make me feel like looking at them over and over again. 

The second half is nice, and has some pieces and coordinates I like. I can see it’s a bit more mature even if the models look young. 

I also think the very last part needs some work. The culture sections are lacking. 

Also, going back to my first impressions regarding the website; the magazine and the website are indeed different. Some things from the magazine are actually on the website in short articles, and some website articles don’t actually feature in the magazine. Everything related to appealing to boys only exists on the website and some of the outfits in the magazine actually go against what’s written on the website - baggy shapeless pants that hide your figure being something boys don’t like girls to wear is actually in coordinates in the magazine. It’s another example of disconnect, with the website giving a sort of different impression. The magazine is definitely more mature than the website.

But overall, as I said, the magazine needs some work. Luckily there’s a couple of months before the magazine launches to make changes. I also think it’s a little expensive. It’s a little less than Sweet which has over 350 pages and always comes with a gift, like a bag. Maybe they should give a gift with it, or maybe it will have more pages later on.

★

So, for the pre-issue that’s may overview and review. I’m not completely blown away, but it’s not a lost cause. Now’s the waiting game for Autumn! Thanks for reading and I hope this helped! Has anyone else got their issue? What are your thoughts and if you weren’t sure about bis do you think you’d be interested in getting it now? 

[thingsireflecaut]

Post Three

Things to explore and think about that I learnt from my research:

Listing- I found the listing in Eloise Goes To Paris so compelling and entertaining.

The poetry & rhythm of both books was beautiful and integral to the writer’s art.

Dialogue was a great part of both books as well; Eloise had such a strong voice that made you feel and love her, and Max’s character came through in his dialogue. The phonetic spelling and humour in Eloise Goes To Paris was a great was to make the character come to life, and the dynamic nature and visual aspect of Max’s dialogue in Where the Wild Things Are was captivating.  

Maurice Sendak’s story doesn’t rely on an abundance of unnecessary words; he gets the point across concisely and vividly. Both stories also have an assertive protagonist which is something I need to work towards.  

I adore aesthetically the abstract nature of Sendak’s writing; I think it lends well to the concept as a whole and getting children to explore their imagination in less rigid terms, and also makes the illustrations come to life and have creative licence to elevate the story.

Themes of childhood emotion, imagination and being boundless in what your protagonist can do was very inspiring to me as well.

I wrote drafts of a few different stories that were inspired by my research in order to find one that I could then edit, and use as my final story.

One:

What I am trying to explore:

Abstract concepts, interesting dialogue, themes of imagination and using repetition. Also themes of who you are and who you can be that I was interested in in my proposal.

Story:

“Hello, me!” said Sam to the mirror

“Hello, you!” said the mirror to Sam.

“I’m doing something different today.”

The mirror smiled back.

Sam liked their hair long,

Sam liked their hair short,

Sam liked that their hair had a life of its own.  

Today Sam’s hair wanted to be long.

So they stepped through the time hole.

They were very very squished

And then, suddenly, hugely stretched out

And Sam popped out in one year.

They looked in the mirror

“HELLO, old friend!”  

Sam was bewildered,

Their hair twirled all around.  

Sam twirled with it.  

Two:

What I am trying to explore:

Exploring listing & imagination. Thinking about poetry; alliteration, rhyme, cadence & repetition.

Story:

My Things

I have a million things.

They are all me,

And I am all them.

This one cost two whole dollars!

This one I found

In the middle of a tree!

This pile of things is very heavy

And very dusty

Because they stay very still

And I watch them intently.

These are my jewels.

I collect them on my walks.

I give them to friends

Who come in all sorts.

Sometimes I lose my things,

In fact I do it a lot…  

Usually it’s those silly Grimbles

This is a Grimble hot spot.

Flowers are my favourites.

Its ok if they get dry,

I stick them between a book

Or just paint them with my dye.

This one I made  

It hangs on my wall,

If I focus and point,

I can make it fall.

This one is expensive,

My mum got it for me.

I get under the covers,

And I go off to sleep.

Three:

Inspired maybe a little too heavily by Where the Wild Things Are; inspired by the narrative structure and themes. Also playing with the use of capitals like Sendak does.

A mean finger pointed in Lolas face

A big red mean finger attached to a big mean red ogre

That looked like he was about to SWALLOW Lola whole

Lola screamed and she ran and ran and ran and ran

And her face was wet with tears.

As her tears fell something strange happened

The tears became bigger and bigger  

And more and more

Until they themselves grew larger than Lola

And they swallowed her up.

Lola tucked her knees to her chest

And locked her arms around them

She closed her eyes and sobbed some more.

Lola created a bubble around her

So that nobody from outside could enter her tears

And no creatures from her tears could enter her bubble.

She was all alone.

One hundred years passed  

and the tears had dried up

And Lola was alone…

“YIPPEE” she said! “WOO HOO” she yelled!

She danced around the land!

She twirled all day! And skipped all night!

And yelled into the air

“I AM ALOOONNNEEEEEEEE!”

She looked around….  

She danced around the land, again.

She twirled all day.

And skipped all night.

She whispered to herself

“I am all alone.”

So she walked across the land,

And back across the hundred years,

She found her tears  

And swam.

She found the big red ogre

Who had shrunk back to his regular size,

With his shirt tucked in,

And his big round eyes.

He bent down to little Lola

To show her a smile.

He was no longer red.

And she      was no longer scared.

Four:

Inspiration from the craziness of the world around Eloise- I love the flamboyance of the crazy hotel she lives in and the strangeness of the world around her.

Story:

Amelias house lent to the left  

Unless there was a particularly strong wind

Or you told it off,  

In which case it leant to the right.

Amelia didn’t like to tell the house off

But sometimes it got carried away

And squashed her cats

And once it almost squashed Amelia

When she was sleeping

(and she had to grab bricks from her dream and pile them up  

So she didn’t get squashed)

(she made sure to return the bricks later)

After that incident she had to tell the house off  

Really bad  

And it lent to the right for a while after that

Which made the furniture look funny.

Amelia did what every normal child did;

She made sure to pay the monthly bills

She talked to important people on the phone

She worried about money  

and made sure to find as much as she could on her walk to work.

Her work was petting strangers’ cats.  

She loved it, don’t get me wrong, but boy was it stressful sometimes.  

When she got home from work, she said to house

“UGH, will you let me put my bag down first!

Before you start harassing me for things!”

And then she poured herself a glass of something strong;

Tonight, it was lime cordial.  

On the weekends she slept in

And said oh boy, I wish everyday was like this!

She made sure to read the news paper

For her news, on paper

And she shook the pages around  

And flipped them back and forth as best she could

And made sure to fold it in a few different ways.

Sometimes she would grab a pen and say to house

“what’s a four-letter word for flabbergasted?”

And then do a big loud “Hmpfh”

And turn the page over.  

Since all of this was really quite exhausting,

Amelia was lucky to have her parents’ house to escape to

If she needed it.

Five:

What I am trying to explore:

Themes of childhood emotion, actively trying to write an assertive protagonist. Using repetition & alliteration. Also trying to write so that when read out loud it will be amusing.  

Story:

I put on my favorite dress,

My secret favorite dress, nobody knows

Its girly and pink and the sparkles go BOOM

And then I heard the voice,

He always comes

Whenever I put on the secret dress

The voice is slimy and dark and dank

And throws you into a deep dark hole

The hole is so deep and dark and deep

Sometimes I think I’ll never leave.

He says yuck, that dress is girly

So girly pink and yuck

You look silly, didn’t sally say?

When you wore that dress to school one day?

But there is one thing that I can do

When that slimy voice comes

I pull out my sword and say GO AWAY

And I cut the slimy thing to the bone

The funny thing is,  

The thing behind the voice

The slimiest sluggiest slip slop yuck voice in the whole wide world

Is the smallest tiniest silliest thing,

It’s hard not to laugh at it.

Six:

What I am trying to explore:

Story:

There once was a little girl who never spoke.

Well, she had spoken once, as a baby. She said ‘baba’ which in baby talk meant “please get off my bed, big brother, I would like to be alone now”

But her brother laughed, and pointed a big red finger at her and called their parents in.

“What, what?” they said, “hurry up boy!”  

“Look at Amelia trying to talk!”

They crowded her and staired at her with their big round eyes, waiting.

Amelia tried to say: “I’m not sure what the commotion is about… I know what I want to say, I’m just figuring out how to get it out. I’ll figure it out soon, mummy, daddy.”

But only a loud babble came out: “Mmm gaba.”

Her family scrunched up their faces and started laughing at her.  

“Well, she’s not going to be the brightest of the bunch!”  

And they left her all alone.  

Amelia was so embarrassed from that day forward that she didn’t say a word again.

That was nine whole years ago.  

Since Amelia’s family didn’t believe her to be bright, they never sent her to school.

But Amelia learnt in her own way.

She taught herself how to read and how to paint using things from around the house. Marmite was a great black, and if she cut out parts of magazines she could create great images of colour and people.

She sat in her garden and learned about the bugs and the trees, and about how the leaves on the trees fell when it was getting colder, and how flowers started popping up when warmer weather was on its way.

Amelia was lucky to have the kindest next door neighbour in the world; Miss Andrews.  

Miss Andrews was as loud and chatty which made up for Amelia’s lack of words. She also played violin.

I also wrote an alternate path for this story, but wasn’t able to finish either due to lack of time.

Amelia walked to school by herself every day.  

She crossed busy roads and walked down dark alleys.

She walked past bullies who pulled her pigtails and stole her lunch;  

Not that they were very impressed with it, Amelia’s family weren’t big cooks

Usually, her lunch was packed with ice,  

or sometimes a lemon found its way in.  

Amelia never said anything to the bullies.

She was too scared to talk.  

Amelia had a horrible teacher who picked on her in class.

She forced all the children to read their work out loud

And if they could she would yell “PAAASSSSS!”

But if they couldn’t she would yell “FAAIILLLLLL!”

And make them run 100 laps around the field,  

rain or shine.

Luckily, Amelia had a friend.

Her name was Lola.

Lola ran laps around the field with Amelia,  

Even when she didn’t have to.

Lola made fun of the bullies when they weren’t looking,

And Lola shared her lunch with Amelia, so she wouldn’t be hungry.

Amelia walked into class and took her seat next to Lola.

Seven:

Laura wasn’t good at anything.

She didn’t know how to be good.

She tried drawing but she did it wrong

And her parents told her off.

She tried reading but she didn’t know the words,

She tried writing but it came out all wrong,

The words were lopsided and fell off the page.  

She tried cooking but she made a mess

She tried tidying but somehow… made it even messier.

She hid from her mum after that,

But she wasn’t good at hiding.  

Laura felt silly and strange so she sat in her garden

And she closed her eyes for a very long time.  

When she woke up, she got quite a shock.

Her garden had grown into a tall dark forest,

With flowers and vines and big dense bushes.

Laura looked around. She was lost, and cold. A howl echoed far away.  

But then – she heard a smaller howl. A tiny one. She turned to see a little wolf.

The wolf looked at her and growled – he was scared too.  

Laura crawled slowly to him and held out her hand.

“Come here, little wolf. Its ok, I won’t hurt you.”

The wolf whimpered and cautiously sniffed her hand.

She pet him on the head and he came into her lap.

“Where do you live, little wolf?” asked Laura, and they heard another loud howl in the distance.

The little wolf tried to howl back but was so quiet Laura barely heard it herself.

“I see.” she whispered. “I’ll get you back home.”

So Laura and the wolf took off looking for home.

I ended up choosing my three favourite stories and working on them to find what my final story would be.

[how2to18]

CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work. 

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

¤

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles? 

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

¤

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work. 

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

¤

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles? 

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

¤

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2CMGjGb

[olivialaita]

First time I met Erin Forsyth was on a random drunken dancing night with a couple of new girlfriends from the Auckland Hip-Hop community. I thought, ‘She’s pretty buzzy’, but the night was fluid and we danced for hours and it ended up just being us two left out of the bunch of girls. I’m pretty sure Erin doesn’t remember our first encounter but ever since then, I always thought of her as this light-hearted, quiet, fun, pixie-like chick who I had an awesome night with. Not this alpha female, punk-rock, prolific tagger who would skull beer leftovers and butt roll ciggies from street pickings. I never got to see this Erin, I guess I was lucky. I got to remain in my bubble, thinking of the nice Erin experience I had. 15 years later, she popped back up on my radar, pretty much out of nowhere. I noticed her artworks were related to taxonomy and the way she wrote about it on her Instagram was familiar language that I’ve been exposed to before. That’s right?!, I have a Bachelor's Degree in Biology, duh! I understood her language. So I reached out. Only a couple of weeks later, I’m sitting in her home studio set-up with her bird Popo whom she rescued, who every now and then during the course of our talk, would pipe in with a lil chirp here and there. Erin, who would’ve thought, a Post-Graffiti Pacific artist who is about to show at an extremely significant New Zealand contemporary art gallery. Can you take us back to your upbringings in the Auckland graffiti scene which was like, over 15 years ago!? My place in graffiti has been pretty different to a lot of people. I moved around a bit as a kid because my parents got involved with the church so we lived up in Algies Bay while they were working for a bible college there, then came back down and moved to Northcote. People in Northcote were quite different to people in Warkworth. I had my first jobs at the Woolworths (Supermarket] and at the Fruit & Veg shop. I’d always see these tags like Trojan and Thor, which was a big one on the Shore and y’know, I didn’t really think too much about it but I always looked at the tags and read them. I started going into town just to get away from family and church stuff around then. I was at a rave and the people that I was hanging out with just started copping some tags and I was like, ‘WTF?! You can just do that? You don’t need to be someone famous?’. In my mind, people that done those were masked bandits, characters in a comic book or something, and then here were these people, just right there. I was like, ‘Can I have a go?’ and I did this terrible tag that said ‘Mint’. They said that there were like 50 people writing that and that I had to come up with something better. This was with Ape and some other Grey Lynn kids. We didn’t really do anything together, just smoke weed and do tags which was good too because it doesn’t have to be all fancy all the time. So from the start tagging was the main thing for me. I got together with Fun Boy who I had known for a long time from hanging out in town, especially from moving out of home at a young age - Even when I was at high school I used to work as a flyer girl for raves like the Brain and a nightclub called Ministry which was on Albert St. The drinking age was R20 then but I was like 15/16 and I’d hustle my way in based on working for them and would hang out with all these adults. I didn’t drink at that time but I smoked a lot of weed.

Funny, it was a weird life when I come to think about it - I knew Fun Boy from around and we ended up getting together and living in my Dad’s garage in Grey Lynn. We’d just go racking in the day and tagging in the night and that was pretty much our lives. Occasionally we’d do this with other writers like ADT but mainly it was just us two weirdos. I met most of the RFCs again at that time - I’d seen Deus before while we were both at Freelance Animation School but we never spoke. Anyway, we were all trying to shoplift beer in a beer fridge, trying to be undercover and were waiting for them to leave. Then realized they were all doing the same thing so it was pretty funny and we all went and hung out.

Things didn’t work out with .F. but I still see him around and have a lot of love for him. He definitely influenced me in terms of choosing a good spot, being consistent, all of these sorts of things that were really important to get noticed as a graffiti artist - not as a street artist, not as a professional artist but as a graffiti artist. He was always like, it’s not about style, it’s about getting up and I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that but...

I started spending more time with the RFCs who were more into the style and technique and learning more about how that applies. I remember painting with Prompt and seeing her doing cutbacks on this Mad Hatter character that she was painting and I had never seen anyone do cutbacks before! I was like, ‘What are you doing!?, that’s cheating! [laughs]’. I thought you had to do it all in one line so that was mind-blowing. I wasn’t even a kid at the time, I would’ve been 20 and I still didn’t know anything. Around then I ended up at Over’s house and was asked to choose between joining RFC or IRA which was a strong female crew that included Phem, Wise and Prompt. My choice to roll with RFC had more to do with not wanting to be stigmatized as a ‘girl writer’ more than anything else and I have nothing but respect for those women who could hold their own even back then. I’ve always felt slightly odd with ‘girly’, ‘womanly’ or ‘feminine’ things and it’s something I still struggle with. Although I have never been core RFC I still rep it. And yes I know I wasn’t in the photo in Disruptiv, I lived next door to the Disruptiv Gallery and sometimes I wanted nothing to do with it. And I know I wasn’t mentioned in several recent videos...there’s been words.

Over time, I had different painting partners, Prompt was one, Helper, Fun Boy, Gasp was one of them (while I was in Sydney Dmote, Perso, Detch, Spate, Amuse, Dboe – but that’s another story) each of those people played a big part in my life. We would plan and execute and inbetween fit the occasional sprees. Even though I might not be as tight with everyone as I have been over the time, the past is connected to the present and I really want to honour those relationships because they were really meaningful to me…and then I [nonchalantly] set-up a graffiti store. That was another thing that happened. It started as ‘Out of Order’, upstairs from what was once called Virus Clothing. The space had been a sex dungeon type torture club prior to that and allegedly some guy was actually killed there and thrown off the Hunua Falls. I had a lil place that was once the DJ booth in this club that I was renting by working one day a week for the ladies Katalena Falanitule and Tienke Drupsteen that ran Nu clothing from there. I had hardly any stock but people were really into it, just the idea that there was somewhere dedicated to supplies. There was Harlem Vintage but it was always closed and there were all these issues of just trying to get paint, caps and pens, it was incredibly difficult. So having a place that you could just buy caps, people were really into it and as I lived next door, I could just come down and open it up whenever people wanted stuff.

Later I did an enterprise allowance grant through WINZ and I got some money and moved it into St Kevins [Arcade] and then started selling sneakers as well. I thought that the reason why I wasn’t making enough money was that I wasn’t on the street level. So then I moved down to Great North Road near where Flox is now. I was terrified that I was going to get robbed so I was sleeping in the shop. I was in there with this fold-out bed and sleeping behind the counter and I heard these people talking about robbing the shop, I could hear everything that they were saying! I was like, fuck, it’s just me by myself, what am I going to do? So I crawled into the backspace and turned the light on. This must’ve tweaked them out as they left. But I thought, ‘fuck, if someone does break in here for real, what am I going to do? Just me by myself, I can’t do shit’. So I was like, oh well and went back to sleeping at my house again.

Sometime later there was an RFC exhibition at Disruptiv Gallery and I had arranged for someone else to set-up the shop next day so I could get loose and not worry about it. But I woke up to someone banging on my door the next morning and I was like, “Piss off, I’m sleeping” and then they were like, “You’ve been robbed!” and I was like, “Nooooo!”. It was actually Daniel Hounsel who used to run the skate shop First Floor that set the alarm. There was no money and they didn’t even take all the paint, but they took at least one of each of the shoes.

I don’t know who it was, I’ve been told various things, that I won’t go into. It doesn’t matter to me now but at the time…it felt really deliberate and like it was from the community, this community that I had risked everything for, telling me to fuck off. So I was like, fuck you and I left and went to Sydney. My heart was broken, I felt like I had tried so hard and I had lost so much money trying to do something for everyone. As the business was more of a drop in centre than an actual profit turning business the money lost was that theoretical money trap when you owe what you don’t have. It’s really quite different to having access to funds and advice like a lot of young creative entrepreneurs today. I really didn’t have anything, I actually had dishwashing jobs to pay my rent on the space. I didn’t have anyone showing me how to run a business, I just didn’t know what I was doing TBH. The shop ran from 2003 – 2006 all up.

I eventually came back from Australia while working as Arts editor for The New Order Magazine in 2008. My sister and I had a company called The Busy Nice and we were organizing exhibitions and I was painting and illustrating and needed a workspace. Every shared space I looked into was managed by art school grads or art students and were always ‘full’, so I started looking for a space where someone self-taught, like myself, could work. I literally saw the FOR RENT sign in the window of 6 Upper Queen St, next to all the metal aliens and walked over to enquire. The late Mr Bond was moving filing boxes down the stairs and told me I’d have to talk to his son Graham. I’d been into the electrical repairs shop downstairs and had old 45 player serviced by Mr Bond AKA Mr Fingers and had always thought it was a really interesting space. My sister, along with Christopher Washer, Alexander Hoyles and I got the lease upstairs from the repair store in December 2009. It was the first and only time the family owned building was leased out. I literally didn’t tell anyone that I knew was into graffiti that we had spaces available, I’d been burnt and didn’t want anyone in there that had anything to do with it. Huge numbers of artists worked in the space over the years including renowned artists such as Sam Mitchell, Campbell Patterson, Henrietta Harris and Imogen Taylor to name a few. It was actually Stefan Sinclair from Two Hands that put in the dividing wall in the main space when he was working there. Eventually we began to put on exhibitions and later on the occasional punk show by bands such as Street Chant, Two Wolves and the Raw Nerves.

A high point for me was live-streaming an interview with Aaron Rose the curator/director of Beautiful Losers who I’d met in Sydney. There are no photos from that as everyone that was there was literally transfixed. It was crazy, the cops showed up and everything was so chill, they just told us to carry on!

When the various artists of YGB [Young, Gifted & Broke] started hanging out on mass in preparation for the launch of the YGB app, things started to slip away from me. Although I got put down with YGB as this proceeded, I would drink for a ‘good time’ but then try to get control of what was happening in the space by lashing out and it just wasn’t working anymore. I was personally in a really negative place trying to support my much younger partner through a heavily publicized court case for allegedly writing Gosus and the studios got to be too much. Some days there would literally be 20 dudes I didn’t know in the space and they weren’t listening to me, I was drinking out of control, couldn’t collect rent and it was all a bit of a mess really. Most people in the Hip-Hop community probably only know the space as what it became after that point/after I left i.e The Carwash Gallery). But it ticked over from 2009-2014 as Method and Manners.

For a long time I thought of this as it not working out. But I can see now my time with it was just done and I was just holding on waay too tight, haha.

I’ve taken some time out, my business is not everyones business and am trying to figure out who I am sans drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, graffiti, gluten, meat and dairy, haha. Rather than trying to ‘help’ a community I’m trying to help myself by making the most of what I have, which will in turn (hopefully!) benefit the community. It really seems that in order to be positive in a community, you have to look after yourself and make the most of your talents, I’m sure you know all about that! So anyway I’ve just been figuring that out and it got me the opportunity to show with Deborah White. Have you always been around art? I was always encouraged to do art. My grandma Diana was a florist for over 30 years and my mum always painted and still paints. I loved it and was a geek about it all the way through school. I was consistently in the top of my class for art and art history. When the Frida Kahlo and later the Keith Haring exhibition came to the Wellington City Gallery, mum somehow took my sisters and I to see it and we travelled as a family to Europe for church and she made sure we went to the Louvre. A damn fine education. I left [high school] at 17 and intended to apply to ELAM but was told by my art teacher when I was leaving that I’d never get in without bursary so I just never applied. Instead I just went to Freelance Animation school and started doing graffiti. I moved out of home and it was rough! Looking at 18 year olds now I’m like, they’re not living out of home doing graffiti and going out every day, taking drugs every other night, what was I doing?!

It’s crazy thinking about it but jumping forward, what I learnt from graffiti plays such a huge part in how I construct a composition. Particularly in regards to creating a strong silhouette, being considerate of line and painting from the back to the front. All elements of Hip-Hop rely on a personal rhythm, that’s where your style comes from. When you express this with your body, your mind, your movement and that ‘something else’ you are communicating on more than a physical level.

I attended a Rongoā Māori course in Manurewa last weekend, and it blew my mind. I’d thought we would look at plants and learn their active properties but the tohunga were talking about different relationships between and [how] whakapapa is not just a linear thing but an inter-connectedness of all things through their shared elements past, present and future. There was such truth in that. It was very close to things that I have read about in other philosophies and other religions and not at all what I expected to learn about from the paper I’d done in ethnobotany and my own readings. And the energy from these ātaahua wāhine and being in a room with other people was so much more powerful than any book I have ever read.

What about being a female artist today, being from the male-dominating sub-culture graffiti scene?

As a female artist there’s this other layer where you’re supposed to be hot as well and people seem to think it’s fair game if you don’t maintain your appearance. But unless I’m feeling myself I CBF! The work is way more important. The way I got into the arts was through different sub-cultures in the 90’s. For a woman to be involved in these sub-cultures, which were even more male dominated then, you had to really prove your commitment to the culture by doing something! It wasn’t enough to just show up and be hot or to wear the appropriate thing, you had to actually be doing something or people would just be like, ‘what the fuck are you doing? Fuck off!’. Even though I was pretty active - not to be up my own arse, not saying I was good - but I was active for a long time where I did a lot of...stuff [laughs], I would still get grief. People would imply or straight out tell me that I was only of interest because of who I was dating or because I was a girl. It was definitely something that I took on board and wanted to challenge personally. Like all artists I want my work to be valued regardless of my gender. For a long time I didn’t want to paint anything that would be considered ‘female’ and I still feel kind of stupid when I wear a dress or do my hair. When I was a kid I dressed like a boy as much as possible and didn’t like dolls and stuff and being a tomboy put me at odds with everyone. So painting plants and flowers and kiwi is really liberating for me. Just because these things are beautiful. It doesn’t mean they are weak. I feel really good about being able to tap into my masculine and feminine sides. I’m an artist first so I channel all energies and gender as a concept is really a restrictive construct that puts us against one another.

I have days when I feel really at odds with how women show their bodies on the internet – I’m not really a believer in feminism to begin with – as a term ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’ feminism only describes the stages of (mainly anglosaxon) female liberation in America. Princess Nokia’s ‘urban feminism’ is really smart and cutting and well timed and the work she is doing by just sharing her personal experience is really powerful.

I try not to judge but I generally stop following people that put up nude/near nude photos because I just don’t want to see that. I’m not a prude and when I was younger I got asked to model a bit and even rode a horse naked for a commercial advertising an exhibition from the Tate. I just wonder if the art for some people is making themselves ‘attractive’ or if it’s the work they are doing. The blurring of this line might seem fun and exploratory but it’s pretty dangerous. The algorithms used as framework for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, are based on a popularity system. Permanent high-school. We each have value intrinsically; we are all inter-connected and combined actions that move us further from this truth only breeds resentment.

Anyway it’s a weird time to be making work and to think that you can spend months making a picture and you put it online and then it’s right next to someone’s butt. It’s kind of depressing. So trying to bring the audience back to the gallery or into printed matter or into engagement with one another, into conversation, is really important.

Last time I heard, you were working at The Depot? Yeah I was there for years as well! The Depot was a real turning point because I realised how little I knew. In the past I was always ok in saying, “I don’t know” but while I was there I realized that I need to go out and learn about where we are and how I fit in just for myself. Y’know? What does it mean to be a pakeha? Why did previous generations of my family come here and where from? Even when I try to think about just my personal history, it’s a mess! I have learnt more about the history of Aotearoa New Zealand by studying ecology than I ever learnt in school and TBH my parents didn’t know it to teach me either. Many people see history as issues of the past but it speaks too about inter-generational development and manifests in contemporary life. There was an exhibition called He Whakaputanga Mai o te Rangatiratanga at Depot Artspace which travelled down from the Hokianga. It featured 13 artists making contemporary work about their relationship to this landmark document and the United Tribes flag. In my role as editor for publications I was set to work laying out a publication which featured writing and images by the artists and I was mind-blown. I had never even heard of it before. I never even knew that there was that flag or anything and I was like, ‘OMG this is terrible!, everything I ever knew was wrong!’ I then realized that if I lived my whole life saying ‘I don’t know’ about these things, not only would that be acceptable but it would be encouraged in ‘polite’ society and I’m just not OK with that. My relationship with the Depot was definitely tumultuous to say the least but it was also invaluable. I learnt so much during my time there about relationships, cultural development, and about myself. I just got to a place when it was definitely time for me to go and be more directive in my learning. Other than my one year of study at animation college in 1999 I had no tertiary education and as I still have to make commercial/client work to support myself I tried to find flexible papers specific to my interest in the natural environment of Aotearoa. I couldn’t really find anything THAT specific but there was one paper with Open Polytechnic that was on plants and people. An introduction to ethnobotany which looked at plant identification but also an entry level into cultural uses. But to do it I had to get a student loan to pay for it, because paying for everything is hard as well when you’re an artist. So I enrolled into a Diploma in Environment and Sustainability. I did a bunch of papers that I didn’t know I’d be that interested in but I definitely see now that having a more overall understanding of the environment locally and globally aids the more specific knowledge I have been seeking. I ended up joining the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network (a great online resource) and they were advertising a summer school paper in Practical Field Botany by The University of Canterbury which took place at the Cass Field Research Station centred around learning how to identify alpine plants by seeing them in the field! After a year of studying by myself that sounded amazing. Looking at plants in the field, the mountains, in the summer…then I got down there and it was a degree level paper crammed into seven days with hardout academic students and workers from botanical gardens all around the country. So the anxiety that I would normally feel spread out over a whole term was crammed into these few days. Plus you’re sleeping in a room with strangers with no personal space and 7am starts. I was popping sleeping pills and freaking out and then I was like, ‘Y’know, well, whatever happens, happens and I just got to take in what I can take in and just try and enjoy being here. It’s real work [to think like that].’ Rita Angus used to go out [to the Cass Field Research Station] when it was just a shack to look at plants, it’s very romantic, the tussock grassland. We’d do day trips to DOC [Department of Conservation] land not normally accessible to the public to photograph specimens, learning about key characteristics and how to differentiate between family groups and that sort of thing. So I took in a lot and forgot a lot but it was a really good learning experience. It was only 10 days but so intense, I really thought I was going to fail but I got a B! [laughs]. Well, I’m glad that I’ve managed to catch you before your solo exhibition at Whitespace Contemporary Art. How did that relationship come about?

Justin Jade Morgan who I worked with at Depot Artspace, recommended me to take over his role as Central City Event Co-ordinator for Artweek Auckland, which Deborah White founded. She got in touch with me and I really enjoyed working with her and Marlaina Key for four consecutive Artweek programmes in that role.

This year however, I insisted that I was actually going to show my work and wouldn’t have time to do both. I didn’t have a venue but as I’m pretty used to finding unusual spaces to exhibit I was confident it would happen. I was just going to go hire a warehouse or something and put the work in there like what I would normally do. I’m not used to having any support really, I’m very DIY in that way and it’s always been like that.

Sometime after this had been arranged, she contacted me to say that although their main gallery space was full, they (Ken and Deborah) wanted to offer me the ‘salon’ side to host my exhibition. This was completely unexpected and a really wonderful breakthrough for me. They [Whitespace Contemporary Art] really have their eyes open to what’s happening and a lot of it has to do with Deborah’s work and her commitment to the arts. She got a medal, did you know that? A New Zealand Order of Merit from The Queen just a few weeks ago and she wasn’t even expecting it.

After my exhibition opening, an older couple were looking at my work in Whitespace while I was there and they were quite familiar with the species as they had studied biology and botany. I asked if they were involved with Auckland Bot Soc (botanical society) but they were from Canterbury.  It turned out they courted while at the Cass Research centre and he would wait for her in the train station before they went on hikes together through the forest and tussock grasslands.

Erin’s exhibition at Whitespace Contemporary Art ends Sun 22 Oct.

(Images: Brendan Kitto, 2017)