Sapling #112 — Nest
It was an old project of Jurgen’s, the first spark of shared intrest that ignited between us, somewhere by a swimming pool in the south of France: a discarded graphic story about magpies building a nest high above a landscape blasted into oblivion, somewhere on the WWI front. The project never made it into a book, but the love stayed true. For the magpies, for the images, for the stubborn urge to build, cherish, live, among so much despair. Today, the drawing challenge #inktober2022 served the participants the prompt ‘Nest’. The occasion was too beautiful to let it pass us by.
The birds’ silhouettes, cut from newspapers or made up of words entirely, were my starting point for adding yet another layer of meaning… For what do we do every day but try to make sense of what seems hopeless, to cherish warmth for the sake of the future? Sometimes, words are really all we have as a means of connecting across a void of space or time — a truth more poignant than ever in this digital age.
An airlift bridging the centuries.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
