In which my family discusses future holiday plans.
My best books of 2021
Last year I didn’t read as much as I usually do, what with one thing and another, but I ended up with some good ones. Here are the highlights.
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman: Recommended by pacificleo, it was one of my best books of the year.
Voices of Dissent by Romila Thapar: This essay puts today’s responses to resistance in perspective, by charting out the history and evolution of dissent from the vedic times. A worthwhile read, even though the language was quite academic. (If you buy from Seagull, you can choose your version of the cover, designed by the brilliant sunandinibee.)
Among graphic novels, I read some beauties: Japanese Notebooks: A Journey to the Empire of Signs by Igort, The Winter of the Cartoonists by Paco Roca, Hostage by Guy Delisle, Leonard Cohen: On a Wire by Pilippe Girard and some more that I shared in Graphic novels by women.
Last year I also updated my perspective on feminism with We should all be Feminists by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie and Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria.
Some other books that I enjoyed were Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, Daybook by Anne Pruitt and The Pursuit of Art by Martin Gayford.
In fiction The Startup Wife by Tahmina Anam was enjoyable and different, as was Crudo by Olivia Laing and No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.
Our best pastime was drawing with Making Comics by Lynda Barry that Guto and I used throughout the year.
I thought I hadn’t read much, but now I’m getting tired just looking at this list. Oh well, life is short, and my eyes won’t last.
Daybook: The journal of an artist
One of my best books last year was Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, by American artist Anne Pruitt. I wasn’t familiar with her work before and not even sure how I came across this book, but I enjoyed it immensely.
The book is a collection of Ms. Pruitt’s journals over multiple years, and she touches upon so many of the dilemmas we ourselves have felt. We, as in, anyone trying to balance motherhood and artistic or creative pursuit, to begin with, but also, for any artist who has ever questioned intuition, instinct, and flow in their own work. Here’s a map I was making while reading the book.
Her thoughts on art are highly conceptual, and she articulates them beautifully. Ms. Pruitt was a psychologist before she became an artist, and maybe that’s one reason she is able to tease out details of her experiences and subconscious thoughts with such great clarity, and in such elegant prose.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book –
“The meaning of our experience is held in the infinity”
Anne Pruitt
…which is about how we derive meaning from the short intervals between our sensory perceptions. As usual I drew it in my sketchbook.
By the way, WordPress was a bit of a letdown while making this post, and readers you may have some challenges here and there as well. First, the WordPress iPad app got stuck multiple times and so I gave up drafting there and used my laptop. And now there are other issues with the standard post format that I tried to resolve for the last half an hour. Oh well, tech.
Happy new year!
So it’s yet another new year and I am still alive. Sometimes that’s a magical thing.
Despite everything going on around us, I’ve been lucky to have a good enough first week of 2022, filled with things I cherish, and was really looking forward to this weekend.
So here’s the journal drawing I did last night –
For the curious:
I’m in the middle of my first book of 2022, which is Agnisambhab, a Bengali novel by my aunt Reeta Basu. I’ll write a more detailed post when I’ve finished it but suffice to say that I’m feeling very lucky to be reading it.
Finally, for the past year I’ve been helping jdallcaps publish the DesignUp newsletter. If you’re interested, do subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/jdallcaps
Here’s wishing you all more resilience for 2022, and a year filled with personal meaning.
The path to your artistic voice
Where does your artistic voice comes from? It’s your story – and your story could have anything, from memories, obstacles, truths and morals. It’s important to know yourself and listen to yourself – even though it hurts. And also, hours and hours of craft and expression so the craft becomes part of your body and your expression can break through. the journey to finding your voice comes with a lot of risks and failures – but trusting that you will always find the way to your voice.
These are the resources that I’ve found useful – The Artist’s Way, Find Your Artistic Voice (which I may be quoting above), and doing Lynda Barry’s exercises.
Graphic novels by women
We don’t often hear about graphic novels written by women. It’s not that they’ve not being made, but it’s just the usual process of whitewashing over women’s achievements by simply writing them out of history. We’ve all been there, in corporate work culture you would have heard of it as the Matilda effect.
It’s not that I have anything against Seth, or Guy Delisle, or any of the other authors we hear about. But sometimes we all like to be reflected through media. It validates our existence, it makes us feel seen. It universalizes us.
Over the last few months, I unearthed some gems by women authors – Overeasy by Mimi Pond, Make me a woman by Vanessa Davis, This woman’s work by Julie Delporte, and a number of books by Posy Simmonds.
Mimi Pond is super funny, as I heard in this podcast episode; and so is Posy Simmonds with her biting commentary on British society. Julie Delporte ingenuously talks of some universal but not often articulated concerns with the challenges of motherhood and creativity.
Here are some other popular women artists whose graphic novels I’ve been inspired by, you would know of them: Marjane Satrapi , Eleanor Davis, Lynda Barry and Rutu Modan.
Journaling in the age of social media
A few years ago I was finding it very difficult to be on social media.
I’d always used social media as a kind of journal to some extent, but with different identities crafted for each network, it was no wonder that I was feeling stretched.
I felt a constant struggle of selves, between authenticity, and the carefully crafted brand images everyone seemed to have.
Ultimately I followed Steve Jobs’ strategy when he took over Apple the second time (hahaha) – to cut back and simplify, and focus on the fundamentals.
Curious though – have you felt this way? How did you deal with it?
Days in a week
Random journal entries from last year. Watched Aranyer Din Ratri – one of my favorite Satyajit Ray films – and read a bunch of Emily Dickinson.
Design after all is a process of inquiry…
Not islands, but a life
Finally this year, the travel bug bit me hard. As we have all discovered, one can only do so much within the confines of one’s own home, and so I started reading travel books.
After finishing Around the World in 80 Trains, I read From the Alleghenies to the Hebrides by Margaret Fay Shaw. She was a folklorist, a collector of Gaelic music, and an early photographer, and in this book she shares how it was, living in the remote Scottish island of Uist between 1925 – 1935.
The book was so detailed it was as if we were right there, looking over her shoulder. I think she must have kept diaries to be able to remember in such great detail.
Here’s a sketch that I made while reading about what they usually ate there.
“Don’t watch it being made, or you’ll never want to eat it again!”
Every once in a while you end up reading something that you don’t usually read, and this was one such book. Ms Shaw’s voice comes through joyously through the pages after all these years, and I ended the book thinking that she must have been quite a nice person to know.
From The Garden of Life
Whoever buys a book and opens it fifteen years later…and finds it an absolute gem? The Garden of Life is one such discovery I made a few weeks ago.
It’s beautifully illustrated with original miniature paintings made specially for the book.
The page on hibiscus reminded me of the hair oil, Jabakusum, my mother would apply on our hair as children. Though effective, it was pungent, and we hated going to school with such smelly hair…
Looking back now, I don’t know if Jabakusum is still sold, but the packaging was very memorable, with quite an aspirational illustration, you might agree…
inktales 