Description
This one, for me, is less of a a literal description than an illustration of a though process I've been going through in the past few months.
Kiln image based on ancient clay kilns, and glaze in final panel based on images of modern glazes I could find, but everything else imagined.
Description
This comic was made based on some of my museum experience. So many artifacts need special handling based on their own stability, age, and special circumstances. And while there’s education for that, learning how to handle myself has been a much larger learning curve.
Citations
Panel 1: Red Coiled-style ware, from memory; all other pottery imagined
Panel 2: Yellow Beaker People ware, from memory; Glass inspired by personal collection; all other pottery imagined
Panel 3: Based on images of broken storage jar, Hecht Museum
Panel 4: (clockwise from left) Based on the Portland Vase, cameo glass; Cage cup from the Musei Civici di Padova; Based on charred pots; Based on supported spindle bowls
Description
So much of learning about something I've had my whole life has been going back and remembering all of the moments from the past. A distant school memory, from near the start of my clear memories, comes back frequently. I might have been a clueless child circling the netball courts, but I was listening nonetheless.
Citations
Panel 2: 3 legged cooking pot, from memory; Coiled-style vessel, from memory; Kylix, various inspiration
Panel 3: Pottery sherd, possibly Limoges ware, personal collection
Panel 4: Amphora, from memory; Random cooking pot, from memory; Puzzle jug from the St Bartholomew Hospital Museum and Archive; Decorated vase from memory
Panel 5: Decorated ware inspired by Beaker People ware; Drinking glass, 20th or 21st century, personal collection
Panel 6: Venus of Willendorf; Kouros from the Delphi Archaeological Museum; Aztec "Kneeling Goddess" from the Museum der Kulturen, Basel*
Description
Diagnosis with a chronic illness has had me deeply rethinking my relationship with my body, a vessel I am sometimes at odds with, and at other times I am grateful for the effort it makes in containing me. This comic is the first of a series I am creating to explore some of my ideas about bodies, being, and chronic illness through the eyes of a collections manager, trained archaeologist, who didn't think she like pots that much.
Comics post monthly
*This item I believe to be held in the museum's collection but could not find it on their online catalog (caveat, I do not speak German so probably missed it). My illustration is based on the work of Elizabeth Brumfiel, p. 159.
Description
The power of words surrounds most of our lives, and when it comes to describing things, be that ceramics or illnesses, that power is always evident. The shock of the words that could be used was not one I was prepared for when it came to diagnosis, and establishing my own relationship with those words was more important than I could have understood before.
As a museum collections manager, poor object descriptions are the bane of my existence, and yet I also often come against the way we have changed how things are described. The acceptability of so many words that are used have changed, and certainly will change over time even further.
"And yet, despite all the labels, here we remain."