Illustration and art direction:
Jennifer Ray, Irma Puškarević
At the beginning of 2022, Jennifer Ray and I received the Artists to Authors fellowship, a fellowship offered by Arts Partners in collaboration with Storytime Village and the Wichita Public Library. The objective of the fellowship was to develop a culturally relevant book focused on increasing K-2nd grade literacy and social/emotional skills.
Jennifer and I had a clear idea about what kind of book we wanted to make from the very beginning. We knew we wanted to incorporate the process of producing fotogramms, experimental typography, and bilingual content. With the help of Jeremy SaxmanJerm Thomas, an amazing children's storyteller, we focused on the issue of environmental quality.
Project description:
Crabbylegs and The Three Shells / Patitas de cangrejo y los tres caparazones is a children’s book that tells the story of an eponymous hermit crab, living on a polluted beach and using a soap dispenser pump as her shell. We follow her on an ocean journey to find a real shell, meeting interesting and helpful creatures along the way. Artistic play, experimentation, and collaboration underpinned our illustrative process for Crabbylegs. We produced all of the imagery in the darkroom, mostly as fotogramms. We used trash collected from our neighborhoods and other humble everyday objects to create our illustrations. Despite being the entry point for many beginning photographers into working in the darkroom, the process is underrepresented in art, and, in our research, has never been used to illustrate a published children’s book.
This display offers a glimpse into the process of developing the illustrations: the vitrine shows some of the materials we used to create our characters, settings, and letterforms; the wall collage is comprised of our darkroom tests, experiments, and failures; the QR code links to a video of behind-the-scenes clips and short demonstrations.
This project will be featured at the Faculty Biennial Show 2023 at the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS.
Book preview photo assistance: Maddie Bowron Devin Jay Carter
The illustrations from this story were made using a technique called fotogramms (photograms). These are made by placing objects on top of light sensitive photo paper. When this is exposed to light, areas that are covered up stay light and blank areas will turn black. Sometimes we shine light through translucent materials using a big machine called an enlarger, which makes the projected image look bigger.
We used various household materials and lots of trash collected from our environment.
Many of the materials we used were items that would otherwise end up in the trash.
Many of the materials we used were items that would otherwise end up in the trash.
Materials used: honey, sea salt, sugar, coffee grounds, masking tape, wire, ferns, lettuce, tracing paper, orange and lemon pulp, soap bottle pump, lightbulb, broken glass bottle, bubble wrap,
plastic wrap, water bottles, jello, shredded plastic bags, cedar leaves, styrofoam take out containers, soap foam, whipped egg whites, broken glass, crystal glass vases, petroleum jelly, corn syrup, food coloring, grass, hyacinth, lily flowers.
plastic wrap, water bottles, jello, shredded plastic bags, cedar leaves, styrofoam take out containers, soap foam, whipped egg whites, broken glass, crystal glass vases, petroleum jelly, corn syrup, food coloring, grass, hyacinth, lily flowers.
