Artist Book Launch: Mama D’Lo and Missy G Under the Sea

As part of the series RML3 Undercurrents and Folds, an edition of artist publications for Reading the Migration Library, I am thrilled to launch a new artist book!

This book / zine is inspired by a traditional Trinidadian / Caribbean folk tale featuring Mama D’lo, a mermaid with many powers. This book revisits and reimagines that story, introducing a cat who is thrown into a pond in Newfoundland, and rescued, or transformed, by Mama D’Lo, into a mermaid herself. The main “story” is a watercolour painting of Mama D’lo and Missy G, inside an accordian book—the characters touch each other through seaweed, rum bottles and detritus. A smaller accordian book “The Bluest Claw“, is a handwritten story telling how Missy G learns about the other mermaids and Mama D’lo’s list.

I call it a form of remediation of stories I heard as a child, some terrible, some fantastic, some true, some not.

RML3 Undercurrents and Folds includes publications by six other artists: Leah Decter, Peter Morin, Sarah Shamash, Candie Tanaka, Tania Willard, Clare Yow, and myself. I am delighted to have been working with these artists, as well as with artist/scholar Lois Klassen as a co-host for this project.

Reading the Migration Library is a long-running artist project that has produced events and publications in the theme of migration and displacement. Learn more about the project, the artists, and the books on the RML site.

I will give an artists talk at CentreA on Friday September 27th, 2024 at 5pm with Candie Tanaka, Clare Yow and Lois Klassen.

The entire project will officially launch at Word Vancouver on September 28th, 2024 at UBC Robson Square. Details below.