Preface to Issue 6

The theme of this issue of Torchlight is ’Library and Art’. We have explored this theme from a number of unusual and fresh angles: some of the articles are related to education; some, are connected tangentially to libraries but all are linked to art in one form or another. Jyoti Sahi discusses explicitly how words and images are inextricably linked and both are rooted in how we experience the material world. Nina Sabnani describes how the collaboration of artists of many kinds  –  a traditional painter, an illustrator, a designer, a story-teller and an inspired publisher –  came together to create a book that blends seamlessly so many elements and gifts.

Liz Kemp explores how words can generate images which in turn give rise to words.  She describes her gentle and ‘fluid’ facilitation of Visual Arts Skills workshops where all are invited to cross a threshold of diffidence and self-consciousness to discover the joyful possibilities of image making.  Rhea D’Souza further elaborates on how this process works by sharing an experience of a Guided Drawing Workshop with a group of community educators in Madhya Pradesh.  The energy and enthusiasm of the participants are captured in a video that shows how reading a story from “Night Life of Trees” (Tara Books) evoked an amazing range of pictures.

A number of the articles focus on the visual form itself such as in Milan Khanolkar ’s discussion on her creation and relationship with spirit dolls that stretch and reach out beyond their material form to communicate. In ‘Listening to images: the experience of working with tactile illustrations’ Junuka Deshpande describes how she struggled to evolve a way of creating tactile experiences for visually challenged readers that would be meaningfully interactive. She had to start afresh to understand a different way of ‘seeing’ through touch that turned all her assumptions about the making of images upside down.

A number of the articles look at the way image and word complement each other. Venantius J. Pinto demonstrates powerfully how the verbal image, so integral to the Haiku form, in itself can generate a visual representation. The relation of word to the image in picture books has been described as a conversation between two equal but essentially different dimensions. “A picture book is a dialogue between two worlds: the world of images and the world of words.” ^[i] Picture books have a unique role in providing an entry point for children to relate to books from their own perspective. Jennifer Thomas traces how her four-year-old son has strong responses to the visuals of the book but often not in the way intended by the author! It is a gradual journey to make sense of text and image together where author and viewer are connected “on the same page” and in the same story!  Samina Mishra follows through the many stages of this journey through sharing the experience of ten books with her son from babyhood to adolescence. Each book, no doubt, remains distinctive and memorable for adult and child.

Kamlesh Joshi discusses a similar theme in Hindi but suggests novel and exciting ways for teachers to use images to enrich children’s experience of the narrative.

Aniruddha Sen Gupta opens the world of graphic novels – even for the uninformed novice in this field. He gives us a comprehensive overview of how this form has evolved in diverse ways within the Indian context since the early days of Amar Chitra Katha up until the present time. He touches on the span of genres within graphic novels that includes new interpretations of myth, biography, social realism, political comment and analysis, humour and adventure. He also introduces us to the unique way that the graphic novel allows the reader to see the outer action but be engaged simultaneously with the inner workings of a protagonist’s mind.

The voice of the practitioner is heard in a video where Sherna Dastur, a film-maker shares her total involvement in the making of a book. She talks of “the space between the pages” and the sensitivity and focus needed to pace a book.

As with the other issues, the invisible but palpable Team of Torchlight have brought vague ideas and mere glimpses of possibilities to life through sound, word and image. The travails of the creative process are vividly depicted by Alia Sinha’s comic strip entitled, ‘A Comic Readerly Problem’!

Jane

^[i] Leonard S. Marcus , “Ways of Telling”