This week brings a third installment of rough layout sketches of illustrations for Lucy's Dance, a picture book about Yup'ik culture by Deb Vanasse. At this point in the book, Lucy's small Alaskan village has decided to host a Curukaq, or potlatch dance festival, in order to satisfy Lucy's demands and cheer up Lucy's apa (grandpa).
Traditionally, Curukaq involves competitive gift giving that requires months of prior handicraft and collecting of materials.
Lucy's family members work to collect and their gifts, but Lucy does not have money to purchase or skill to build much for anyone. Instead, she hunts around the house for gift-able items--beneath her bed, in a closet, in her mukluks, and in her backpack. Lucy finds three items: a tuft of animal fur, a piece of antler, and a swab of tundra cotton. I have always approved the of the practice of poking around the house for anything I can reuse or give away. I have a pesky feeling that there are a dozen different uses for dryer lint that no one has considered, though I promise I have not tried to give it as a Christmas present . . . yet. Lucy's foraging is a fine allegory for subsistence living, for doing what one can with materials at hand. Stebbins, Alaska, the town that inspired the book, considers itself a subsistence town. It began as a migrant hunting and fishing village, and permanent residents still draw a good deal of their sustenance from the waters of the Norton Sound.
The subsistence lifestyle is reflected in the foods at the festival--dried salmon and akutaq, also known as Eskimo Ice Cream, a concoction made of fish, fat (traditionally whale blubber or seal fat, though now Crisco is used), sugar, and berries. The book also mentions fry bread, though I'm curious as to the source of flour for the bread in a subsistence tundra setting.
Of course, I also include 2-liter bottles of soda, because nearly every school gymnasium party in the world, subsistence or otherwise, involves 2-liter bottles of soda.
Debra Vanasse and I recently discovered that Curukaq festivals are not held in the gymnasium in Stebbins as we thought, but in the local community hall (a simultaneous basketball game is now held in the gym during Curukaq season). However, after some discussion, we decided to portray the gym as the festival location anyways, as it might seem more familiar; gymnasiums are often the sites of native arts celebrations.
My visual research for this entry involved break dancing and line dancing, for Lucy's village practices a mixture of modern American and traditional Yup'ik culture. Lucy's brother "spun on the floor, showing off moves someone had seen on TV." Lucy's sister and cousins "made a line, dancing like they’d learned at school." "Story songs and dance sticks," are conspicuously absent from the festival, though the people beat the traditional drums as best they can. Overall, the festival is a scene of compromise, of retaining what pieces of the culture people can remember and merging them with the new.
For the record, the woman in the bottom-most drawing, Aunt Martha, is dancing and drumming on her newly-received set of pots using a spoon. I don't want anyone to think that she's just keeping all the akutaq to herself, though that's not a bad idea.
Traditionally, Curukaq involves competitive gift giving that requires months of prior handicraft and collecting of materials.
Lucy's family members work to collect and their gifts, but Lucy does not have money to purchase or skill to build much for anyone. Instead, she hunts around the house for gift-able items--beneath her bed, in a closet, in her mukluks, and in her backpack. Lucy finds three items: a tuft of animal fur, a piece of antler, and a swab of tundra cotton. I have always approved the of the practice of poking around the house for anything I can reuse or give away. I have a pesky feeling that there are a dozen different uses for dryer lint that no one has considered, though I promise I have not tried to give it as a Christmas present . . . yet. Lucy's foraging is a fine allegory for subsistence living, for doing what one can with materials at hand. Stebbins, Alaska, the town that inspired the book, considers itself a subsistence town. It began as a migrant hunting and fishing village, and permanent residents still draw a good deal of their sustenance from the waters of the Norton Sound.
The subsistence lifestyle is reflected in the foods at the festival--dried salmon and akutaq, also known as Eskimo Ice Cream, a concoction made of fish, fat (traditionally whale blubber or seal fat, though now Crisco is used), sugar, and berries. The book also mentions fry bread, though I'm curious as to the source of flour for the bread in a subsistence tundra setting.
Of course, I also include 2-liter bottles of soda, because nearly every school gymnasium party in the world, subsistence or otherwise, involves 2-liter bottles of soda.
Debra Vanasse and I recently discovered that Curukaq festivals are not held in the gymnasium in Stebbins as we thought, but in the local community hall (a simultaneous basketball game is now held in the gym during Curukaq season). However, after some discussion, we decided to portray the gym as the festival location anyways, as it might seem more familiar; gymnasiums are often the sites of native arts celebrations.
My visual research for this entry involved break dancing and line dancing, for Lucy's village practices a mixture of modern American and traditional Yup'ik culture. Lucy's brother "spun on the floor, showing off moves someone had seen on TV." Lucy's sister and cousins "made a line, dancing like they’d learned at school." "Story songs and dance sticks," are conspicuously absent from the festival, though the people beat the traditional drums as best they can. Overall, the festival is a scene of compromise, of retaining what pieces of the culture people can remember and merging them with the new.
For the record, the woman in the bottom-most drawing, Aunt Martha, is dancing and drumming on her newly-received set of pots using a spoon. I don't want anyone to think that she's just keeping all the akutaq to herself, though that's not a bad idea.
Great sketches - full of action and life! I love the connection between Lucy's search and the subsistence way of life. And that dryer lint idea...will have to give that some thought.
ReplyDeleteOn second review. I concur that the first one is best. I love the way the shadow projects from the bed and at the same time it transforms into a shadow. It is also drawn with a nice level of opacity.
ReplyDelete