Chiara Bautista and the Spirit of Mileven
My tumblr icon is an illustration by the incredibly talented artist Chiara Bautista. She’s an illustrator based in Tucson, Arizona and her work is a haunting combination of fantasy, reality, poetry and imagination.
Two of the characters she’s best known for creating are the Moon (a slender, pale woman with a bunny mask) and her love, the Star Wolf. The Moon is usually accompanied in Ms. Bautista’s artwork by bunnies, which in my opinion reflect Native American and Asian myth cycles that transform the shadowed craters of the Moon into rabbits, rather than a man’s face as is typical in Western folklore. The artist seems to be a fairly private person, so as far as I can tell, she leaves these interpretations up to the viewer.
As far as I know, Ms. Bautista has never told the full story of her characters. Rather, she hints at them in her artworks, giving little insights and snippets of their relationship through each work she creates.
Below are two of her works that touch me the most in the story of the Moon and the Star Wolf. They might appear to be excerpts from a longer story but they’re not - part of Ms. Bautista’s gift is her ability to raise the ghost of a bigger tale beyond what the viewer actually sees.
The next snippet tells what (might have) happened next and it always makes me teary.
So what does this have to do with Mileven? Nothing, I suppose - I was following Chiara Bautista long before I discovered Stranger Things. And yet everything.
In these images of the Star Wolf, there is so much Mike Wheeler, a boy who will do everything for the girl he loves. He will find her anywhere, protect her, fight for her... and if anyone ever tries to take her away, his answer is always, resolutely, “No.”
As for El, well... see below.
She’s forever tied to Mike. He saved her from the horror that was her life before and she’ll never leave him.
People see what they want to see in art. That’s what I see. Do you see it too?
Chiara Bautista is on tumblr, Facebook and the internet. Her artwork is beautiful and I’m so grateful for what she does.
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