Files
Download Full Text (8.8 MB)
Publication Date
2-1-2015
Keywords
artists'books, Student Artists' Book Contest, first
Disciplines
Book and Paper
Student Status
Undergraduate student
Year of Graduation
2016
Major
Illustration
Faculty / Course
Tia Blassingame, Artists' Books
Materials + Techniques
Xerox transfer, ink, gouache, book board, book cloth, rives bfk, embroidery floss, gold leaf
Student Narrative
This artists book urges readers to take a closer look at fairytales made ubiquitous by children's media. A story hundreds of years old is scrubbed and sanitized to fit neatly into our modern perceptions of what is and is not appropriate. The little mermaid, for us, ends with marriage, not with suicide; Rapunzel begins with long golden hair, not with rape. This book seeks to expose what's lost when literature is so thoroughly cleansed, opening the potential for their possibilities- of magic, of sexuality, of female complexity and agency - to be reclaimed. The reader may move through the book seeing only snippets of heavily censored story and Disney-princess kisses; or, they can pull out tabs and manipulate pages, revealing the hearts of these stories in all their weird and provocative glory.
Recommended Citation
Ehsan, Layla May; Library, Fleet; and Collections, Special, "Fairytales" (2015). 1st Student Artists' Book Contest 2015. 11.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/specialcollections_bookcontest1st2015/11