The First of my Thesis Pieces

As our second year in the MFAI program is moving merrily along, I am finally knee deep in thesis work. I didn't explain it in depth in my previous post but my thesis revolves around the idea of the six word memoir. If you're curious about the subject I highly recommend visiting www.smithmag.net, the editor of all the Six Word Memoir books, an awesome website where you can create an account to write, comment on, and favorite as many six word memoirs as your heart desires. They choose pieces from the website to appear in their books so you never know when you might write a winner!

I've been slightly obsessed with these minuscule stories ever since taking a memoir writing class with Betsy Boyd (a lovely and talented Baltimore based writer) at MICA and this seemed like the perfect fit for my thesis here at SVA. I'll be illustrating at least twelve memoirs that I've either chosen from Smith Magazine's database or written on my own, giving me the perfect opportunity to practice hand-lettering paired with imagery. At the end of the year (expect this in April) I will be compiling all these pieces into a book to be shown in our thesis exhibition.

In the last few weeks I've started sketching out numerous memoirs that I'd like to work with, drawing alphabets and words, and I have officially completed my first spread of pieces...

Remember the tiny parasailer? Now you know why he was needed. Anyway, these two pieces will most likely appear in the book with the lettering on the left page and the image on the right. Some spreads may combine the image and text while the rest, like this one, will be separate.

I'm currently about 95% done with my next two pieces so check back in the next few days to see what I've been busy with! It might make you laugh...