"Conversations with Ma" is my response to a project where I had to choose something and do it daily for a semester. As a precursor to my final project for university, I attempted to just talk to my mother about anything and everything for the semester. To begin this project I attempted to have natural conversations that started from nothing at first, but I quickly realised that wasn’t going to go anywhere. Our conversations would just revolve around “how was work” and “how was school” and touch up on random topics. That wasn’t good enough for me to drive the project with, so I decided to formulate as many questions as I could on a various topics that I wanted to know about my mother. With this approach we finally had some in-depth conversations that I got a lot more from. I took a quote from each conversation that revealed something new about my mother to me and captioned it for myself why it’s so important to me. All of this was becoming into a bit of a story about my mother’s life, and even though we couldn’t cover all of my questions, it felt best to capture it in a book.
Books are such personal objects to me. When I buy one, it becomes mine. I smell it, I hold it, I flip each page, and I get to know the story that makes the object. I wanted to encapsulate this journey into something so personal that when I picked it up, smelt it again, held it again, and flipped through it again, it would bring back that time with my mother. In that way, I tried to capture as much of it’s likeness as possible. The size of the book is small. because the time spent talking to her was incredibly precious. The paper is handmade, because the nature of things we talked about was rather delicate and fragile (as memories are). Each page is folded, because her life has been hard, but she is a rather soft shell. The binding was stitched, because she loves sewing and views it as an art passed on from her mother. The quotes were in Filosofia, not only because her own handwriting reflects such craftsmanship, but because she is a rather traditional woman. My captions are in Brandon Grotesque, because I am not quite so refined, and definitely more modern and direct. The little flourishes and the larger pattern are elements of her favourite flower, an Oncidium orchid. They hold everything together because she absolutely loves plants and has been on occasion known to come home worried about her children... the green ones. Every detail of this book is a reflection of her and our talks.
2013 - OCAD University Fifth Year Graphic Design 5 Project
