Brookline artist gives form to grief in ‘a walking lament
In 2017, artist and musician Deb Todd Wheeler’s 17-year-old son died; a virus stopped his heart. Less than a year later, her brother died of suicide. Some months after that, her husband was diagnosed with cancer. In the otherworld of inarticulable grief, Wheeler was drawn to the Lost Pond sanctuary, 30-some acres surrounding a kettle pond in Brookline. There she walked, losing herself on the paths, by the bog, under the trees, by the flowered shrine that’s emerged from the earth for her son Lucas. The wildness of grief, its heaving irrationality, the way it widens, deepens, clarifies the connection with all things, puts one at the edge of civilization, on the outskirts of the tame and fixable, and this is the place where Wheeler was. She began making field recordings and recorded a series of songs and placed them in a geo-located audiowalk along the trails, and she began bringing people with her on the walks. And from this series of walks, with family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, she’s made a book. In text and image, “Radio Silence: A
Book of Walks” (LENNYcollective) is a memorial, an elegy, a “walking lament,” an exploration of absence and presence. She wrestles with the biggest questions that we can face: “how to be so afraid, and still keep moving”; “what is loving distance?”; “does this help?” Lost Pond becomes “a habitat for groundlessness” and Wheeler writes of an anger that feels “sacred, holy, elemental, dangerous.” Photographers Kelly Davidson and Elijah Mickelson capture the charged sanctity of the atmosphere. Sunlight exploding through trees, patchy dirt-grass along a path, vines snarling over a metal fence. The words imposed over certain images — silence space chasm abyss estrangement resentment connection antidote tone descend — create visual poems, speak to the unspeakable. The project shows what’s gone — a person, the future as you knew it — and what’s still here, whispering, thrumming, weeping, singing in a language we don’t know we know. This volume exists in a different pitch, and echoes in the ear (and deeper in than that) long after an encounter with it. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Children’s Room in Arlington. For more information visit debtoddwheeler.org.
A photograph from “Radio Silence: A Book of Walks,” a new book by Deb Todd Wheeler that moves through deep grief.
Exhibition at Eric Carle Museum shows how picture books are made
A new exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art tells the story of how picture books get made, covering a century of the history of illustration. “Alphabet Soup: How Picture Books Are Made, from A to Z,” which opens on Jan. 13 and runs through June 2, shows the materials and the processes, from initial sketches and storyboards, to printing blocks and layout roughs, the stuff you don’t get to see when you pick up a finished book on the shelves. Curator Ruiz Cano sifted through the 9,000-piece collection, selecting 80 examples that highlight 26 picture book concepts, each for a letter of the alphabet: B is for book dummy, for example; O is for orientation; S is for storyboard; V is for variant. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making picture books, from a hundred years ago to today.
Boston Comic Arts Foundation announces monthly event series
The Boston Comic Arts Foundation has announced a new in-person monthly event series. On the first Monday of every month, “Picture + Panel” will bring graphic novelists from around the United States paired with New England-based comics makers to discuss what ideas and inspirations spark their comics. The first event will include bestselling science writer Rosemary Mosco, and Dan Nott, whose graphic novel
“Hidden Systems” was longlisted for the National Book Award. They’ll be talking about nature and infrastructure and “the things we miss in the world around us.” That’s on Monday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. at Aeronaut Brewery in Somerville. It’s free. For more information, visit bostoncomicarts.org/events.
Coming out
“The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History” by Manjula Martin (Pantheon)
“Portrait of a Body” by Julie Delporte, translated from the French by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle (Drawn & Quarterly)
“Beautyland” by Marie-Helene Bertino (FSG)
Pick of the Week
Kari Meutsch at Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock, Vt., recommends “How to Be Eaten” by Maria Adelmann (Little, Brown): “Adelmann reimagines classic fairy tale characters as contemporary women who have experienced trauma and have been brought together for weekly group therapy sessions. Can they ever truly own their own experiences and have their real stories heard? Or does the media control everything? This one kept me thinking about news consumption long after the last page.”