Fragmented Fairytales

This series began trickling in at the edges of my experimental drawer-ly cyanotype practices. I’ve always been fond of depicting whimsical creatures, and I’m so grateful to have climbed over some nodules of shame to indulge in cuteness and strangeness, letting them ooze out. Many in this series were begun during my trip to Italy in July 2023, my first-ever world travel experience. Cyanotypes made during my stay served as the springboard from which these beings appeared via gel pen.

These feel like a gesture of a story. A snapshot of a world. When I was eight, I was obsessed with making little adorable creatures, trying to make them as cute and strange as possible. It is such a delight to dip back into this practice with twenty years of skills added to my hand. Play is so crucial, and imagination is powerful. There is so much in this world that forces us to believe that silliness and play and sweetness is a foolish waste of time. But it is precisely because our imaginations are vital and dangerous to the rigidity and captivity desired for us.

Another influence for these that I’ve neglected to acknowledge until this moment is Sketchy Sunday. I host this bi-monthly drawing event at Saint Pizza Lounge here in SE Portland, where I offer fun and low-pressure drawing prompts. These naturally generate a sense of play, and I’m always amazed by seeing how differently each person can interpret their randomly chosen combinations of adjective, noun and verb. This chaos magic helps unhook people from their beliefs that they can’t draw, and just baring witness to this magic, and occasionally having time to step away from hosting to make my own doodles, has directly impacted my abilities to Yes-And in these drawings.

There is something special about the cyanotypes as the starting point. What begins as a mundane capture of a plain glass vessel can serve as a sort of petri dish for who knows what! This practice has helped me let go and dive in when starting off with a plain white or black gessoed surface, which is why I’ve included an assortment here. I just love a wordless story in picture form.

If you’re curious about how these were made, consider joining me on Patreon where I share all kinds of behind-the-scenes process magic!

began September 2023, updated February 2024