Ariel Bordeaux - March 2022
Ariel Bordeaux makes comics, zines and paintings exploring themes of daily life, parenting, relationships, emotion, self-image, identity and food. After graduating from The Museum School in Boston, MA, she self-published a minicomic series titled Deep Girl, which launched her career in comics. Her latest work, Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir (Fieldmouse Press, 2022), is an 80-page graphic memoir about a sexual assault incident in childhood, the mind clutter of memories, and processing childhood trauma as an adult. She attended the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT, and lives in Cranston, RI.
Instagram & Twitter: @arielbordeaux
Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir
on view at the Main Street Gallery, 498 Main St, Warren, throughout March
Memory clutters our minds and often makes it difficult to experience the present moment. The medium of comics allows me to put some of those memories away in neat little boxes, clearing the brain chaos — at least a little bit. The pieces shown here are all pages from Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir (Fieldmouse Press, 2022), an 80-page graphic memoir which I began in 2010 while enrolled at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT, and finished in 2021 after putting the project aside for several years. Working in gouache, I often use color to express emotion where words fail me, and words to explain what I can’t quite depict visually. Writing and drawing from life experience has always been a healing process for me, and my hope is that this book might open a space for dialogue about sexual violence and perhaps offer some small comfort to folks who have experienced trauma.