{"id":4441,"date":"2017-09-10T00:01:54","date_gmt":"2017-09-10T06:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4441"},"modified":"2017-09-13T07:48:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T13:48:14","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-551-featuring-shawn-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4441","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks #551: Featuring Shawn Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“… Let’s think about and discuss the fact that this is the largest sculpture in all the land, and the most iconic symbol of the United States of America. Let’s talk about the fact that this statue has welcomed millions of visitors and immigrants to the USA.”<\/em>
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\nI’ve a visit this morning from artist Shawn Harris<\/a><\/strong>, who is sharing preliminary and final images from his debut picture book, Dave Eggers’s<\/a><\/strong> Her Right Foot<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Chronicle, September 2017). This one puts a lump in my throat every time I read it, and it’s a book Leonard Marcus has described as “one part stand-up routine, one part ode to the values that we as a nation have long held dear.”<\/p>\n

This 104-page book starts out by laying out the history of the Statue of Liberty, and midway through it shifts to posit a theory. The iconic statue’s right foot, Eggers notes—“her entire right leg,” in fact—is in mid-stride. Where is she going? he wonders. Is she heading to a record store, to grab a panini, to Trenton? She is, he suggests, heading straight toward immigrants, “the poor, the tired, the struggling to breathe free. … She must meet them in the sea.” And that’s because …<\/p>\n

“Liberty and freedom from oppression are not things you get or grant by standing around like some kind of statue. No! These are things that require action. Courage. An unwillingness to rest.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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After all, Eggers notes after explaining in the book’s first half how she was created in France, the statue is an immigrant too. <\/p>\n

Harris’s colorful cut-paper illustrations are striking; he plays with perspective (get ready for some close-up views of Lady Liberty’s base) and masterfully keeps up with the book’s slight switch in tone, midway through. His focus on immigrants in the book’s second half—uncluttered spreads showing people of all skin tones—is just right. Spreads showing the statue striding through town (and even, as mentioned above, in the sea) will give you happy chills. <\/p>\n

I thank Shawn for visiting today to talk about his artwork for this book. <\/p>\n

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Shawn<\/font><\/strong>: I’m going to sit myself straight in the hot seat: How is this 100-odd page, absurdist textbook turned socio-political picture book for Dave Eggers and Chronicle Books my first picture book? <\/p>\n

Well, the morning I got the call to work on the job, I was just a normal Dave Eggers fan, finishing the last chapter of his newest novel, Heroes of the Frontier<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, like any other normal Dave Eggers fan. It was a fantastic chapter and, possibly, my favorite last sentence of any book ever<\/em>, and I was just basking and reeling, as one does when they emerge, changed, from a book. It was actually not a call that I got but an email, and I was actually camping, so it was some hours after finishing the book that I got service and read the email, but for the sake of drama, let’s go back to truncating this timeline. <\/p>\n

I’d done some illustration for McSweeney’s<\/em> short-lived, but pretty brilliant, newspaper-syndicated activities corner for kids, called The Goods<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, but mostly I illustrated and designed posters and records for bands and record labels. I happened to be friends with Dave’s editor at Chronicle, and they were looking specifically for an artist who could work in cut paper for Dave’s series, as Her Right Foot<\/em> was meant to be a companion to a book Dave wrote called This Bridge Will Not Be Gray<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which was illustrated in cut paper by an artist named Tucker Nichols<\/a><\/strong>. I said, yes, of course I can do a book using cut construction paper.<\/em> Then I rushed home a day early from my camping trip to make sure I wasn’t lying. This sample ended up in the book.
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“… Ask your friends and even your teachers if they knew that before the Statue of Liberty was assembled in New York, she was first constructed in Paris. Your friends and teachers will be astounded. They will be impressed. They might think you are fibbing. …”
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\nThis one didn’t.
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\nThis was one of the first sketches, which I ended up using as a title page, and it also shows up wordlessly in the middle of the book — with a sort of cinematic, two-spread, left-to-right pan that serves as one of the pivot points when the text transforms from a casual textbook tone to this really heartfelt editorial tone that few writers other than Eggers could execute successfully.
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\nHere it is, cut and pasted.
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\nMy sketches helped me plan out how many different colors of paper I would need to illustrate each scene. This scene used 15 pieces of paper.
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“Wait. No. She is facing south<\/em>east. So she is not going to New Jersey.
But she is going somewhere. But where? Why is she moving?”<\/em>
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\nThis one only needed two.
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“But few talk about the foot that is so obviously in mid-stride. About the fact that her entire right <\/em>leg is in mid-stride. What does this mean? What does this mean that
we often forget about this right foot, this right leg?”<\/em>
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\nThis one took the longest to make.
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“It never ends. It cannot end.”<\/em>
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\n\u200bIt was such an intricate cut-and-paste that I pretty much forewent the sketch and just felt it out with the X-ACTO blade.
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\nOh, here’s the cover …
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\n… and here’s an earlier version, in which my New York City looks more like Miami. My favorite color is Salmon<\/a><\/strong>. I try it on everything, no matter how inappropriate it is for the subject matter.
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\nAnother sketch and finished piece from Her Right Foot<\/em>:
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“She is not content to wait.”<\/em>
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\nI also got to design the broadside and some postcards, which Chronicle printed on beautiful stock, pleasing me to no end. They’re sending them out to anyone who pre-orders the book here<\/a><\/strong>.
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\nIt officially comes out September 19th.<\/p>\n

Here’s a little video we made with some time lapse of my process, working on the pieces:
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