copies are available for sale now!
Hardback, bound with terracotta linen, and foil stamped with gold.
About the book
My husband and I were ad-libbing silly stories to each other in the car on our way to photograph a client. I told the story that would later become Ankaret Ilhaam and we looked at each other and said, “Whoa, that one was actually kind of good.” I refined the story over the next few years, and turned in into a rhyme. I’ve spend the last year and a half illustrating it, going into far more detail than I originally intended.
Each illustration panel is framed with a series of hieroglyphs that I designed from the constellations. Each one represents a sound, and you can read the entire story in the borders of these illustrations. There’s a language decoder in the back of the book.
The story is a tale of the birth of emotion, shadow, and feeling. It shows the contrast between the efficiency of a life without emotion, and the beauty of a life that is full of the messy and complicated feelings that give our lives shape, depth, and meaning.
I was deeply inspired by my travels in the middle east and Turkey, and the stories told to me about the lives of my friends in those places.
A sneak peek at the illustration process for Ankaret Ilhaam…
