Description of the work

Palimpsest is the process of using old parchment to create new work. It includes allowing the history of the old work to seep through.

This book is created in and over the top of an existing book. The original book was about nature, ecosystems and the seasonal dance of life. It includes images of insects and other fauna. It felt fitting to make use of a book about the wonder of living things that are born, live, then die to describe the ritual process for creating a mythical Watcher creature.

The visual narrative motifs are borrowed from occult traditions and practices, used to describe the process and alchemize an inanimate watcher moth to life.

The story behind it

This story was created as part of a visual narrative design assessment for my Master of Fine Arts. This work achieved an A+.

The task was to take a story and collide it with a picture book related to a specific subject area. The goal was to use the images, rules and parameters of the illustrated book to re-frame and re-imagine the story. A collision of ideas, concepts and imagery to create a whole new story. The process we used was called the “Wheelhouse Exercise”.

I chose a story written by a friend who decided to watch and describe people and creatures she observed while on a picnic. It was a humorous account of human and other species interactions, the ways we do or don’t notice each other, and the wonder of nature, life cycles and the circumstances that shape our existence.

I drew on two visual narrative sources to inform and corrupt the original story:

• a 1970’s book about puppet making
• a book of witchcraft, magic spells and alchemy

From this collision a character, novel story and world was born.