BORN TO BE Tianxing Wan MICA Illustration Practice MFA 2017 Thesis Book
Table of Content 1 Introduction 2 Experiments 3 The end of being grandma, the start of being Meifu Zhai 4 Exhibition 5 The next step
Introduction I’ve always been interested in people in general. The loss in our lives, the concept of time, death, and the cyclical quality of life. Moments, memories and unintentional talks always have a huge impact on me, and I cherish the opportunity to learn things from other people’s unique perspective. Thus for the thesis project, I want to investigate more deeply into the significance of human relationships, memories, as well as how being mindful of those could bring more to our live. At the beginning I planned to make three zines based on my personal experience with my piano teacher who partially lost her memories because of a disease; my grandma, who feels lonely even being surrounded by families; and a Japanese calligrapher I met online who has just passed away recently.
After doing more specific researches on every piece, I got more interested and emotionally related to the piece on my grandma’s life. I used to think my grandma was born old. No one had ever talked about our family history—everyone is looking forward to the future and so it seemed that things were always as they were in the present. Whenever I would visit my grandma, she would tell me stories repeating them hundreds of times. These stories intrigued me, and caused me to look at her as a person other than just “my grandma”. This intriguing person had gone through so many life experiences that crossed significant historical events, such as World War II and the Cultural Revolution. Her name is Meifu Zhai and she grew up and became a doctor. She defied some traditions and followed others. She is courageous and funny. Getting to know her is also a process of getting to know myself. After numerous interviews and requests to see family photos, I feel deeper connections between me and the people with whom I share bloodlines, who came before me, who I have never met. I have learned that death is not the end point of discovering things about their life. We recognize our family—from someone’s description or unintentional talks. Energies are intertwined; we carry little parts from them in ourselves. As we live, they live with their lives passed on through time.
My thesis project has finally developed into several parts. One video with her portraits and some parts of her interview, a book that illustrates her life stories, a wall of old photos and key elements from the book, and three maps that show places in which she has been living during different time period. By using different media, I aimed to investigate the diverse ways to express feelings not only through twodimensional graphics but also through voice, and maps which is a more interactive way to engage the audience. In the Grad Show, the four parts work together as a whole to create a universal feeling of “grandma� instead of focusing on a specific person.
Experiments During the first semester, I spent most of the time working on the story about my piano teacher, Mrs. Sun, who’s in her 70s, gentle, sensitive and strict. One summer, I began taking piano classes at her home, and gradually developed an intimate relationship with her. I found her understand me better than anyone else and I treated her as one of my families. However, one day I learned that she was in hospital because of a disease that caused her almost lost her memories and became another person that I’ve never known. It stroked me so hard that I began to question what “death” actually mean to us. Will losing memories count for “death”? This short piece of personal narrative aimed at sharing the story with the audience and reconsidering the definition of “death”. Writing the script and storyboarding out the story was extremely challenging since I didn’t have much experience in making sequential art. I revised the script for four times in order to get the perfect tone for the story, and realized that it was tricky to decide what to say and what to hold back in the writing. After several critiques with the visiting artists, some of them gave me feedback that not much emotion was dictated from the comic itself, and they understood better from my talk.
“Try record yourself.” I got this comment many times and started to realize that maybe I shouldn’t hold back too much of my own thoughts and simply let them out in order to articulate better. As a result, I wrote in my own voice as I was talking to someone, and this way of writing became the most natural way for me to tell a story.
One spread from the zine. “No matter how old you get, the pride stays with you.�
Besides, I tried several different styles to illustrate the story.Vibrant color palette, or a more muted and neutral palette; watercolor or collage. Making models as a reference for a setting was extremely inspiring since the materials I used had different textures.
Model for the setting in the zine and the finished illustration.
Two different approaches to Mrs. Sun’s portrait on the first page.
Two versions of an illustration about what aspects do adults judge their children from.
Even though I focused more on the book Born To Be on my grandma’s life, the different materials and experiments that I used and worked on this piece had became a starting point and basis of my later creative process.
The End of Being Grandma, the Start of Being Meifu Zhai. I always sit with my grandma listening to her old stories when visiting her weekly, and every time she forgets that she has already told me her stories for over a hundred of times. Most of the stories happened in her childhood during the World War II, when she was living with her parents and siblings, then move to stories of her fleeing to other places far from home. I would get bored listening to her but then one day while the rest of the family was making dumplings on the New Year’s Eve she said “I feel like an orphan�. It was then that I realize that she is trapped in a foreign city far from her childhood home, and the loss of her parents and siblings is to her an irreparable loneliness.
{Portraits}
I began doing research on my grandma through old photos and had a strong desire of getting to know her as a person other than just “my grandma”. What exactly happened in the past? How did she grow from a child like me to an elderly woman with her silver curly hair flying in the air? What was it like to live during the wars? How did they affect their lives? How was the house life like when the generations of my mother were born? Questions and questions appeared in my mind which led me to further research. History always makes me curious since I believe that our lives are somewhat repeating themselves, not to mention the history. People who are in their 20s, such as myself, surely have plenty of confusions and different thinking towards their lives. Some of them may not look back and ask the elders for their experience since they might be considered to be “out-of-date”, while I still believe that there are treasures in the elders’ memories that are worth knowing about, treasures that will prevent us from losing our purpose in life or making mistakes. Therefore, I decided to make my thesis project completely about my grandma’s life and the outcome and significance of getting to know a family history.
The first part of the project is a collection of portraits based on four of her old photos during different time period in her life. Instead of doing a finished painting, I painted over 50 portraits of my grandma on a variety of paper, such as drawing paper, watercolor paper, rice paper,Yupo paper, etc.
I considered the whole process to be an action of me expressing my feelings towards her, and all of the love, and the moment when I was thinking of her, would be sealed in every piece. I was thinking of one person’s life, and how he/she goes through every special period in their lives. I could even see myself in the portraits when my grandma was a child; and someone who’s our families’ friend commented that she could see a bit of my mother’s shadow in some of the portraits.
Working out the layout of the portraits for Fall Show 2016.
{Video} The feeling of time passing is equally important as the portraits, so that I decided to make a short video with the drawings to suggest the changing of time. In making the video, I played with the scale of the portraits, and tried matching their eyes in the center to create a sense of morphing, and an illusion of her growing up gradually. At the end of the video, the portraits flipped back in an increasingly fast speed and stopped at the very first one, which symbolizes that life is somewhat a cycle and it always returns to the beginning.
I chose the sound of a train to suggest her travelling aroun the country, and some parts of my interviews with her as the background sound effect. She was talking exactly like always, and her soft voice, her giggles, along with the loose quality of the paintings, successfully evokes a general feeling of everyone’s “grandma”. Her identity became less specific and turned into a universal image.
{Maps}
Imaginative map of grandma’s home in Beijing in 1930s.
During the interviews, I realized that there were several places which were very important in my grandma’s life, therefore, I decided to create three maps of these places, and map out her stories for the audience to have a geographic understanding of both her personal life and the bigger historical environment. Besides, the map form also encourages the viewers to look for details themselves. The first imaginative map is about grandma’s home in Beijing approximately in 1930s. It was the house in which she was born and spent her whole childhood. The house was full of her memories of her father, mother and siblings. When she talked about this place, she was full of love and joy. While most of the people who used to live in the house has passed away, and many of their old collections of paintings and crafts has been destroyed in the history, this map was entirely a sad lost land for her.
The second map is about grandma’s family being displaced from Beijing to Sichuan Province during World War II. She went to middle school during that period of time. Most of the stories here enabled the viewers to get an idea of life during the war as a common child. It was such a special perspective to see the history from a more personal view.
The third map is the home grandma now is living in, also the place I know the most. As a doctor who has been retired for years, this new home reveals many of her interests and personalities, such as her talent in Chinese traditional painting, and her hidden feeling of missing her families who has passed away.
Compared to laying out the position of elements and adding written details, the most challengwwvwing part of the process was figuring out the color palette. At the beginning I was planning to use limited colors, but later I played with colors other than local colors to balance the whole map. Instead of carefully rendering every detail of the elements, I used wet on wet watercolor technique to create shapes with softness.
{Book} Since the stories were the most crucial part of this project, I wanted to create a graphic novel that contained all of my grandma’s memories, at least as a record for our family regardless how much of them were close to what had really happened. Similar to the maps, the book not only provided a personal perspective for examining the history, but also shared an unknown lifestyle to the younger generations. I started with traditional sequential art format, but then, inspired by some graphic design layouts, I presented the illustrations and the hand-lettering part in a grid system to demonstrate that everything was stuffed in a memory box. Still, I played with scales to create an interesting rhythm within the boxes.
Hibiscus, the flower in grandma’s name. The first version of the cover design for the book.
Through illustrating the book, I found that the book was actually less about my grandma but more about myself. The book contained three chapters: Chapter 1 Born to Be, which indicated the reason why I was interested in knowing my grandma’s stories; Chapter II The Interview, which emphasized on telling her stories based on the interviews, and Chapter III The Blood, which was my thinking on the significance of knowing the family history. The whole process of writing and illustrating the book actually enlighten me to know what has been passed on from early generations and make me like me now. I’ve never met my great grandfather, but through listening to the descriptions from grandma, I found several similarities, and we even shared the same pen name. At that moment, I was stroked by this coincidence and realized that death is always not the end.You will live in others’ memories, and your energies will be passed on to others and live forever. Even though the past was buried and no one talked about them anymore, you could still uncover them if you have the desire, and the connections will always be there.
Watercolor and screen printing approaches to the illustration in the spread.
One spread in the book was about the severed hands and legs hanging up on the trees during the bombing in WWII. Grandma mentioned it lightly but never goes deep into this subject matter, and I never ask about how she felt when she saw them as an adolescent. It was so hard for me to imagine seeing these parts of the body on the tree in daily life, but it was simply amazing to know that someone had seen it with their own eyes, that it actually happened and it was disturbing to even imagine it. When we talked about this, it was definitely the moment I felt the power of history. It alarmed you to be aware of how devastated the world could be, and it was so impressive since it came from someone who was so close to you.
Exhibition
When laying out the exhibition, I considered the whole project to be one installation that contained a book, a video, three maps and a wall of old photos and elements from the book.
I wanted to create a space that had a sense of family, intimacy and tenderness. The wall color played a huge part in delivering those feelings. Besides, I looked for an old end table, a piece of lace cloth, and a violet vase with white roses as a symbol of “grandma�.
With the help of my fellows, I managed to get a variety of frames and create a photo wall that could be found in anyone’s home. In the middle of the photo collection was a painting I did based on the traditional Chinese painting my grandma did in memory of her younger brother, which was still hanging right in front of her bed now. Additionally, I did a horse painting since she was born in the horse year as I was, and I strongly felt that she shared both the energetic and phantasmagorical qualities as a horse. Besides, I added some plain fabric, piece of lace, and two pieces of my abstract paintings to suggest a landscape of the future, and a symbol of tenderness.
I struggled a bit to decide whether to lay the maps out on the table or to hang them on the wall. Finally, I chose to lay them on the table because it was the traditional way of looking at a map, and would create a more intimate experience by being able to point out places on the map, as well as following the routes.
The feedback from the audience was definitely a meaningful part of the project for me. In fact, I couldn’t anticipate the reaction of the audience to the whole project, which was about a completely stranger, a foreigner, who didn’t even speak the same language. What’s the point of knowing her life if we are not related at all? It made me think about the importance of being faithful to your idea and always keep going without questioning yourself too much. As a visual artist, I draw as I think. In the process of making the book and maps, I did nothing but to speak from my heart. It was something that is indescribable. I guess it was a gentle, soft, empathetic attitude towards life.
In the guest book, I got so many touching comments. Above was the one that moved me deeply. I finally realized that all what I did was to tell stories. My grandma told me stories, I told the stories of hers, and then people who saw them started to tell me their stories. And as the person who left the notes said, “I hope it can grow.� We don’t have to reluctantly search for meanings sometimes. We should believe it will grow itself.
The Next Step I split the whole book into two section, and had self-published the first part. Until now I have sold many copies both in several comic festivals and via online shop. I could definitely see an interest from readers. Throughout the two years I’ve been studied at MICA, I developed a better understand of storytelling, zine-making and small publications. Even though it won’t be widely accepted, I still enjoy making and share them with people whoever interested, or are feeling the same way. I believe that loneliness can seriously kill a person, therefore, sharing stories are actually one simple and beautiful way to reconnect people, and kill the loneliness itself.
Special Thanks Studying in Illustration Practice MFA program has been an amazing experience. I’ve never thought I could meet these unique and talented people before. New thoughts and inspiration are everywhere in the studio and during the seminars, and some parts in us may awaken because of the communication. Thanks to my family who support me as always, Whitney Sherman, Kimberly Hall, all the visiting artists and every fellow artist in the program.