Pale Star

In the hectic lead up to Christmas I didn't get a chance to complete a special book art project for Jack. It has become something of an annual tradition, and a nice way to show how much I appreciate Jack's writing, so I was unhappy about missing a year. Still, figuring that it's better late than never, I made time over the past couple of days to make a little something inspired by Jack's poem about Katherine Mansfield. This is the text:

Pale Star
K.M., 1923

(after Xu Zhimo)

Unintentionally imitating Chinese style
her hair was pitch black & straight

Her features seemed to me
like the purest Indian jade

or pristine snow in the Alps
Her brightly-coloured clothes

might have aroused some criticism
had they been worn by anyone else

on her they looked becoming
like green leaves on a flower

Her figure was so fragile
that a man standing beside her

felt his breathing to be too coarse

(Jack's amusing account of how this poem came about can be read at our Pania Press blog)

For this design project I wanted to try something similar, but much less detailed, to Jayme McGowan's spectacular 3d papercraft scenes that you can see by visiting her blog, Roadside Projects.

I based my illustration on a grainy photograph of Katherine Mansfield (shown above) taken in 192o in her writing studio at Menton. She is seated at a table wearing a jersey with a wide striped collar and she's holding a cup of tea. The wall behind her is papered in a nice geometric print with dashes and dots. Here's a photo-narrative of the project:

I really enjoyed making the 'Pale Star' picto-poem, so much so that I'm going to try something similar with one of my sister's poems next...