{"id":4609,"date":"2018-04-17T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T06:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4609"},"modified":"2018-04-17T08:02:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T14:02:51","slug":"hello-lighthouse-a-visit-with-sophie-blackall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4609","title":{"rendered":"Hello Lighthouse<\/em>: A Visit with Sophie Blackall"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nI’ve got a review over at BookPage<\/em> of Sophie Blackall’s<\/a><\/strong> beautiful Hello Lighthouse<\/em> (Little, Brown, April 2018). That is here<\/a><\/strong>, if you’d like to read more about the book. <\/p>\n

Here at 7-Imp, Sophie visits to tell me a bit about the book, her research for it, and her process. I thank her for visiting and sharing lots of art. Let’s get right to it. <\/p>\n


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Sophie<\/font><\/strong>: This [below] was the lithograph which started it all. I bought it at the Brooklyn flea market, and it got me thinking about what it might have been like to live in a lighthouse. It stayed in a drawer until I figured out how I might make it into a book.
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\nI have always loved cutaways and had a poster of a cross-section of a house on my bedroom wall as a child. <\/p>\n

I painted this twice the size of the book, so I could get the detail in the tiny rooms.
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\nI made this paper to wrap a book I was giving to [editor] Susan Rich when I was selling her on the idea of a lighthouse book. Not exactly subtle, but she fell for it.
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\nBefore I could begin writing, I thought I\u2019d better go and stay in a lighthouse. I\u2019d been looking for an excuse for years. The one I chose was the Quirpon Island Light<\/a><\/strong> off the Northernmost tip of Newfoundland, Canada. It is visited by icebergs and whales and is full of stories. It had everything I was looking for in a lighthouse.
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\nI delved deep into coastguard archives and lighthouse museums, looking for visual references for fresnel lenses<\/a><\/strong> and keepers\u2019 uniforms and logbooks.
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\nI learned how important the supply ships or tenders were to life on a lighthouse. Tenders were all named after flowers. [Below] is the Tulip.
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\nAnd then I needed to find my family. I painted them posing for their wedding picture. This never appears in the book but helped set them in my mind.
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\nThese [below] were the first set of thumbnail drawings, where I figured out I wanted to alternate between exterior and interior views. I decided to keep the steadfast lighthouse in one place and have everything change around it \u2014 weather and seasons and light and time. And the interiors I drew in circular vignettes \u2014 to echo the round rooms of the lighthouse, the confined spaces which begin to expand through the book with love and life.
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\nWhen the woman goes into labor, the circle grows in the center of the book and fills the spread with the joy (and relief) a newborn child brings [below].
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“Inside the lighthouse, the woman walks around and around the room. Her husband boils water and helps her breathe in and out. He tends the light and writes in the logbook. …”<\/em>
(Click each to enlarge)<\/center>
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“… and notes the birth of their child.”<\/em>
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\nThe scene where the keeper falls ill and the woman takes over his work (in addition to her own) was an important one to get right. I wanted to convey the sense that she was \u201ceverywhere all at once.\u201d But I suddenly realized this book about a lighthouse was missing a view of its most dramatic architectural element, the spiral staircase that the inhabitants went up and down all day and all night long. I thought the stairs could do just as much as the variety of vignettes.
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\nBut I couldn\u2019t decide which view was more effective. . . .
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\nWe went back and forth and up and down and finally decided on this one. . . .
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“One dawn, the keeper begins to sneeze; by dusk he is terribly ill. His wife is everywhere all at once, running up and down the spiral stairs. She tends the light and feeds him broth and chips ice off the lantern room windows. She sits by his side and
writes in the logbook the minute his fever breaks.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread)<\/center><\/p>\n

[Below] was the original final scene of the book. The family\u2019s new house with all sorts of clues about their new life and, through the open door, a glimpse of the old lighthouse.
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\nBut we missed seeing the family. If you look closely, you\u2019ll find all the things from the endpapers and things they brought with them from their old life.
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\nThe cover is always the last and, sometimes, the most difficult part of making a book. I knew I wanted Hello Lighthouse<\/em> to look a bit like these 19th century gold-foil-stamped covers. I used them as inspiration for the composition and lettering on the cover.
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\nThere\u2019s a surprise under the dust jacket, but you\u2019ll have to wait and see!
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\nSusan Rich<\/font><\/strong>: It’s true that Sophie presented me with a book wrapped in a lighthouse. The painting now hangs outside my office:
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\nCan you spot the detail that sealed the deal?
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\nPlease don’t tell Sophie that I really don’t need any more wooing to publish her glorious work, as I still have some wall space to fill. <\/p>\n

Sophie<\/font><\/strong>: Ha! And I realize I have said “I, I, I” throughout those captions, which ought to be “we, we, we” \u2014 because this was in every way a collaboration, just like Finding Winnie<\/em>. [Ed. Note: See this 2015 post<\/a><\/strong>.] You won\u2019t be surprised to see the book is dedicated to Susan Rich \u2014 editor, friend, beacon of light.<\/p>\n

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Here’s Sophie, discussing the book. . . . <\/p>\n