#so i kinda just hope for some kind of new feedback on this or smth idk

[waywardsalt]

i think tomorrow ill post a link to peus

[joannaliangart]

Here; (is the only place) (2025) 2 x 10.5” (closed), 16.5 x 10.5” (fully open), 1.375 x 16.5” (pop-out accordion segment) 16 page accordion-fold book (+23 page pop-out accordion). Risograph-printed, ink and coloured pencil illustrations and poetry.

Here; (is the only place) features riso-printed ink illustrations and poems. The book connects childhood grief with climate grief through their shared experience of losing home and being swept into a future that threatens unbelonging. Depending on how the book is held, the openings cut into the pages become doorways to frame the past (pages) or only empty space— regardless, something has disappeared.

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My last crit at ECU was for this piece!! im graduating this May my god it still hasn't really sunken in yet

I got a lot of positive feedback for this work and my live reading of it and the colours turned out even better than I could’ve hoped :']

I’ve applied to a few zine fairs including VABF, so hopefully I’ll be able to sell these there! Otherwise I’ll look into maybe an online store or smth like that (spooky but exciting)

Oughh I don't know about new favourite (There Are Good Things Yet To Bury still pops off to me lol) BUT I think it's definitely been one of my favs to work on!! in terms of process n all that C: BECAUSE!! I got to try out my new dip pens and finally use those acrylic inks (that i got in 1st year cause they were on the class materials list and then we never fuckin used em. rip but hey now here we are full circle) and do some traditional illustration!!! New territory for me and it was really fun!!

I usually stick with digital illustration for all my finished illustration work (vs my traditional sketchbook is only rlly for studies or sketches/thumbnails) but oughhh my god this might change me. this might do it LOL

Maquettes / Ideation phase

I knew I wanted to do more cool stuff with windows after TAGTYTB + at the time I recently had a dream about my childhood home again. It's something I noticed a long time ago, and all poetic metaphor aside I do literally just. only really dream about my childhood house lol, or rather do sometimes dream of other imaginary places but I NEVER dream of the current house I live in (maybe like 1-2 times that I can remember in the 8+ years I've been living here). I also wanted to do a long skinny accordion fold guy. No particular reason than it was an idea that kept sticking to me lol; + I hadn't done anything with accordion fold+windows and AH there's so much potential there because of how every single page overlaps each other with that folding method!!!

So! That was the basis for my concept, and I started to fold n scribble on scrap paper to make these maquettes. I also started numbering them which was SO helpful thank god because I think I ended up with TWENTY OR MORE maquettes by the end wagh!! But oh my god these were so helpful to make so many of I really hit on something with this one below, 1 big rectangle and 2 circle windows... It wasn't even intentional, I just cut them into the paper and then started drawing/writing, and once I reached the flipside realized that you could see the words "this is my home" on one page, above the drawing of the house which was on ANOTHER page. WHAT!! literally so cool I'm so happy that happened it literally dazzled me:

Midterm / printed maquettes aka poem writing in affinity publisher

In my final crit, one of my profs asked if 'this is what I saw in my head the whole time' in a 'wow I can't believe it looks this good congrats' kind of way LOL which is like so oof but so fair because this is what my midterm presentation looked like LMAO:

I have a LOT of analysis-type notes I wrote down in my google doc so I can remember in the future all my intentions with the poems and its a pretty LONG list. One of the main ones is how the semicolon ; operates as the symbol of being inbetween a continuation, barrier, threshold, stop, doorway... ALSO it kinda looks like a lock+door handle (!!)

Also this might've been before my midterm, but I went back to my childhood home area and ough. I'm glad I did cause I got inspiration for the illustration imagery when I saw how big the trees had gotten. I literally said out loud "oh!" aough my god. I don't know I just hadn't expected it... I think I had even noticed it a few years ago when I visited but forgot and I just. augh. Included the experience in one of the poems in this book "I looked for my grief / I looked / for disappointment [...] and still i was / startled / by the / bigness of the / trees [...] it's just such a relief / to know that something grew / up with me"

ILLUSTRATION TIME BABEY

this whole process was FULL of stress but like GOOD stress. I was on my fuckin grind dude All my text/poems/windows layout was all formatted in affinity publisher, and then I printed that out (at staples, I was gonna use the library but they couldn't print tabloid size paper rip) and just pencil sketched right on those. I COULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS DIGITALLY I DON'T THINK. Because it involved cutting out the windows so I could PHYSICALLY take the paper and see where the images would line up on other side. which was fun as hell

Then I took to staples again and made photocopies (so I didn't fuck up the original pencil sketch), and then traced the tabloid size + windows onto my nice paper. Also look at my setup !! We have this glass table in my house, and I had the kickass idea to put a bright light underneath as a DIY lightbox yippee!! It is however a very low table and while I had a lil stool it prob wasn't great for my back or legs lol (sidenote why are lightboxes so expensive its just a box with a light in it man)

inking time! dip pens ouh my goodness... Still trying to get used to them but they give such nice results.. I'm surprised at how much I like how the illustrations turned out tbh but I am really enjoying this kind of weaving, vignette/snapshot/overlapping almost collagey kind of vibe it has, especially with the text. Similar to the poems I also have a list of all my illustration symbolism/analysis kind of thoughts. it's a shorter list, but one of the main things on there is how I kinda in the moment ended up creating these visual rhymes: The door hinge = rollerskate wheels = moth (plucked wing) = pine cone scale; representing how things follow you from past to present in different forms, things changing but into what? I did separate layers for lines and colour, main book and pop-out accordion. The colours were fun because the acrylic inks came with a dropper and I'd drip bits of ink from real high up to get a lovely splatter !! and also used a straw to blow wet ink around all around a good time I used a sheet of plastic to protect the paper with the lineart on it from the wet ink/water going onto the colours layer. The lightbox was good but defo less effective with the colours layer because the water would warp the paper and lift it away from the table surface (so I couldn't see the lines below rip) Oh my gosh and I used pencil crayons for more texture!! forgot about that lol but it really really helped, and I did some frottage of my childhood house's key+traced its outline; I really wanted the key to be as "real"/"connected to reality" as possible (+yes once again that is a truth in the poems, I do still have it because before it was sold someone broke in and completely destroyed the door handle/lock. we assume with a crowbar.)

also my cat would sit behind me on the couch while I worked sweet creature... (ouh and I know there's Himi Gouache in that one image but I didn't use gouache lol I was considering it but didn't) I worked on the illustration every day of reading week from morning to night to get it done in time for risograph printing hoowheeee

Scanning and Prepping for Risograph Printing

I scanned my lineart and colours with my school's fancy scanner (which I'm gonna miss once i graduate augh it scans soo nicely staples scanners dont do shit for detailed scans)

I knew how to do it in photoshop already, but Managed to figure out how to split my colours so I had files for just blue, just yellow, etc. Ended up with SO MANY FILES!! i love you risograph printer even if I had to prep and print 16 files and redo 2 masters lol

I checked how all the colours looked digitally but you really can't exactly predict how risograph will look until you print it, and I was trying to extrapolate and imagine how the prints would look based on these digital mockups lol.

Lucky for me, they actually turned out BETTER and brighter than I was imagining!! Except for pop-out accordion side A, which looked wayy too busy and forest-green for my liking lol. So I had to redo the master and ended up doing NO blue colours, only blue lines which I think turned out ooo yummy tasty speaking of redoing masters, I also had to re-do the teal in the main book too because it was WAY darker than I was expecting and making the text too hard to read waaagh but I'm so very glad I fixed it because it made a world of difference in legibility. In total ended having to buy 4 new masters to redo orz

Trimming folding binding

This was kinda irritating lol .. I didn't realize I guess the stack cutter in the comd studio cuts at a bit of an angle or smth cause the size was slightly smaller than I wanted. which is a problem because I need my windows and folds to line up as precisely as possible and the slight size difference kinda fucked that up :(( but ah well. it doesn't get super in the way of experiencing the work but I'm a little miffed lol I also had to score and trim all the pop-out accordions one by one waghhhh Look at this pile orz

I'm SO glad I scored all the fold lines for these though that was so smart of me thank god because I could not have folded them without those guides holy shit it would've gotten so misaligned. AND it made it soooo satisfying to fold along a score line, like with the gentlest pressure it folds perfectly right where you need ouh chefs kiss cutting the windows is tedious sigh but!! I'm very happy with the circle cutter I bought just for this project (and for future window cutting in future projects ofc). I actually bought 2 circle cutters but the first kinda fuckin sucked when I tested it out rip. You can't see where you're cutting and it's fine for Cutting A Circle but not for when you need to cut a circle in a SPECIFIC spot like I do lol. Olfa Compass Circle Cutter for the win babey (not sponsored. is that even a thing on tumblr posts. lol) also when you grab a handful of the folded pop-out accordions it makes me feel like I'm grabbin a bunch o fun caterpillars C:

Final crit!

I was really strugling with figuring out where or how to install this thing, but thankfully my profs had booked a space that once I took a look (I'd never been in that room before lol there's still so many rooms I probably don't even know exist at ECU) ended up working really well ! I borrowed a blanket/tablecloth from my supervisor at my workplace when I was talking about my project and wanting to find a fitting tablecloth, and the pic they showed me of it was p much perfect very colourful !! yaaay thank goodness I was able to haul a plinth over to the room and set it up by the window C: natural light and near the rooftop garden, very good! And set up a bunch o chairs so people could sit while I did my reading.

The reading went very well!! I actually lol its soo funny I had practiced a bit at home and had always held the book out to my right, but on the day of I held the book to my left n as I started reading realized "oh no. unexpected flip I can't see some of the words as good" LOL but once I got to the pop-out accordion I kinda had an excuse to switch to holding it out to my right haha and it went smooth The class really liked my performance and the work overall which I'm awaughhh :'] like TAGTYTB people were really into the "choreography/architecture" of the windows, as one person described which is SUCH a good word for it o my goodness

And 5 people bought a copy!!!!!! oh my god!! tbh I thought maybe 1 or 2 ppl might but 5!! I'm not particularly close with any of them either, I'd consider like 2-3 I'm more familiar with but even then oh my gosh. awaa ;;w;; was so so lovely and gave me a lot of confidence in the piece I printed 100 copies! don't know if i should print more or not seeing as it was so successful... my energy is pretty spent now and I wanna take a while to recover lol now that the semester is winding down. But I'm gonna lose studio access to the comd risograph printer soon so i dunno... ah sigh

Now the grad show is my next big thing. my application is submitted and the due dates gone n passed, but this crit gave me the confidence n idea to do a reading of the book(s) I'm showing...... I sent an email if there's any way I could add some kind of scheduled event to my application but idk it's been a week since the due date so it might be too late to make changes rip

other fun stuff

It's now in the ECU artist book collection!!! I was so spooked by it but my profs recommended I look into it and the process was way easier and the person I emailed had the vibe like they did this all the time lol???

🎶 Music I was listening to while writing the poems to try and catch the vibes I needed:

Virgina - Boys Go To Jupiter

Claw Machine - Sloppy Jane ft. Phoebe Bridgers

Death Throes Of A Struggling Romance - (formerly Maryknoll)

Copacabana - Harvard Dn & Tonics acapella with Soloists Elio Kennedy-Yoon and Andrew Courtney

No More Birthdays - Sophie May

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl - yeule

wish u were here - Boys Go To Jupiter

Lovers Always Lose - Boys Go To Jupiter

Ankles - Lucy Dacus

+like the whole Meet Me After Practice album - Boys Go To Jupiter LOL i love it soooooo fuckin much