Happy New Year!

I have just returned from ringing in the beginning of our new decade with family and friends, and I thought this might be the appropriate time to post one of the last pieces of 2009.  Fittingly, the subject of this illustration is a party scene.

This illustration was commissioned by Saint Mary’s College of California, and art directed by Bob Ciano, who was a pleasure to work with once again.  A couple of months ago Bob contacted me to create a theatre poster for a Word For Word production of three short stories by Virginia Woolf at Saint Mary’s.  Each story takes place at a party, and they were presented together on the stage as selected moments from the famous fictional party of Mrs. Dalloway.

Being that I am a literary-minded person with a great interest in theatre, this project was exciting to me on multiple levels. It was my first chance to read any of Virginia Woolf’s work, and I was entranced by her use of language, particularly by her repeated references to water.  Each of the three stories center around a different woman’s experience at the party, and each of the women is at some point caught in a struggle, swept away in a social situation that rises out of their control, and left struggling – almost drowning – in a sea of necessary propriety and social expectations.

The entire story created a wonderful opportunity to play with watery colors and an aqueous environment, and I really enjoyed exploring all of the possible concepts in the sketch process.  Sometime in the future I may come back and edit this post to share some of the thumbnails.  The final piece was well received, and ran as a theatre poster advertising the show’s run during the end of November.

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