Drawing Turner Family Stories: An Interview with Ezra Veitch
Drawing Turner Family Stories:
Interview with Ezra Veitch
Turner Family Stories, a forthcoming VFC book, brings together cartoonists and oral history to share the family stories and personal experiences of Daisy Turner of Grafton, Vermont, with new audiences.
The Turner Family Stories project connected a group of New England cartoonists including Marek Bennett, Francis Bordeleau, Joel Christian Gill, Lillie Harris, Robyn Smith and Ezra Veitch with the Turner Family Collection in the Vermont Folklife Center Archive. It is a part of our larger effort to explore non-fiction cartooning as a way to share our Archive collections and ethnographic research with the public.
To learn a little bit about how the cartoonists themselves reflect on their participation in the project, we spoke with them about their work. This post is the second in a series exploring the artists’ side of Turner Family Stories: A Graphic History.
Cartoonist Ezra Veitch was raised in Grafton, Vermont, and was familiar with Daisy Turner from childhood. Ezra shared how he incorporated this rare vantage point to create a framing narrative that linked together the six chapters of Turner Family Stories. This interview was conducted over Zoom, which allowed a discussion of Ezra’s comic pages. The text has been shortened for clarity and brevity.
What were some of your initial impressions when hearing about the idea?
So Andy [Associate Director and Archivist at the Vermont Folklife Center] and I had actually already been introduced. We knew each other. I was discussing a project that I was working on with him, and he was just kind of giving me some ideas. And he mentioned this project and mentioned Daisy's name. And I was like, “Oh, I know Daisy Turner. I grew up in Grafton and one of my friends rented a house across the street from her. And, you know, I met her a couple of times.” ... And that led to the idea that because I'd actually met her at a point in my childhood, maybe that I could, kind of, tie the whole narrative together with a story that was created, you know, all the other stories in the book will be Daisy's own words.
Rather than a chapter, you composed a “framing narrative.” Could you elaborate a little bit more, for us novices, about what this is?
So Daisy's got hundreds of stories that she archived with Jane [Beck], and the goal was to take three, four or five of those stories and put them in order and then find a way to connect them all because her lifetime was so long and some of these stories take place before she was even born. How do you connect all of this information that's connected through her but not really? There's just so much in between. How do you do that? And so we decided to do short, little -- two, three, four pages in between each story that would just take a moment to look at the story that was just told and then try to frame the next story that was coming in.
How common is it to create a framing narrative in non-fiction cartooning?
This was completely different for me. This wasn't something that I normally do. I think that was the challenge was, you know, to have a story within these stories or “This is the story and all the stories are within this story.” But not have it in front of the stories that Daisy tells. Because that's the real story -- she was one hundred and four years old and she had all of this history that she had kept for her whole lifetime and been able to relate pretty much right up to the day she passed. She could recite these stories and songs and was so passionate about it. You know, I didn't want to try to write another story. I just wanted to be able to introduce and each artist's rendition of her stories.
Were you able to work off your childhood memories of Daisy Turner for this project?
The way I remember her is a little different than this, my experience. She always had her hair up with the -- I don’t know what you call it -- just like a scarf. Yeah. The whole time I knew where she didn't walk very far anymore. She was pretty isolated to her house. Luca's parents would help her with things and they would do shopping that she needed. And, you know, I don't know if, I don't believe the house had running water. I think it was really, you know, very, very, very primitive. I don't even know if it had electricity, to be honest... I remembered her sitting on her porch. There was a little porch that came off the front of the house and I remember, you know, going by the house many times. I remember talking to her. I remember being really afraid of her at one point because she was -- I don't know what the description is -- she was intense! And when you're like a 10 year old kid, it's it's pretty, you know, when somebody is trying to get your attention and you're not really sure who that person is, it's...So I had this experience, those experiences, but my family was very close to Luca's family and my mom was really close to Daisy. I never went in her home. My experience was pretty much strictly from the street, you know.
How did this experience influence your work and process?
When I started this project, I was doing life drawing once a week. So I was really focused on realism again. I'd been working on a book for about three years. It was complete fantasy with, like, monsters and winged demon creatures and, just, you know, sword and sorcery stuff. And so was an interesting approach for me to think about the level of realism and I was always tossing it back and forth because I would sketch cartoon, like my thumbnails would come out very cartoony, but then when I would start doing my finished pencils, the detail level would kind of go way up off the chart and I'd have to look back at it and go: “Well, but it still looks like a just a really detailed cartoon”, you know, like, “how do I balance, especially now I've brought in reference photos”...But I really enjoyed this process because as I started to use -- I'd never really just worked from photo. When I do life drawing, it's you know, you have a model or a still life. And you do a study or you work from a mirror and you study your own face. In this, I was incorporating photos. So I'd like again, because there was such a broad range of reference material that I could take from video, I could look at these videos and watch her speak and then go: “That's the reaction, that moment is what I'm looking for.” So I would screenshot that and bring it in. And then I would just work right over that and I wouldn't pencil it. I would just ink directly over the screenshot. And I really enjoyed that process. It was interesting.
Can you share more about the role the two young boys play in this comic, in this case yourself and your friend Luca?
I wanted there to be a dynamic between Daisy, who's her age, and these two kids who are obviously young. That's a difficult question to answer, because as I was approaching it, I was thinking about it as,“What was my experience?” So from the beginning it was always framed in my mind that it was going to be a couple of kids that were this age, whether or not it was going to be me or a fictional character. I didn't want a story about me. I just wanted it to be kids that could have this interaction. And I think it's important because comic books are -- they're not just for kids, they're for adults, they're for everybody...I wanted it to be able to frame the story, the history, the educational part of everything that she's telling and her experiences. And to me, that says, “Hey, you're going to learn something.” Usually you’re a kid, you're in that moment you're having that “aha” with somebody. And I think you see it, like they start out kind of, they're kind of like “she's scary.” We're keeping our distance. By the end of the book, they're sitting on the doorstep that they don't want to leave. It gives the kids, you know, it just gives everyone -- introduces everyone to each other.
What would you want the reader to learn about Daisy Turner and her life through this project?
I think it's really important that people have the opportunity to learn about her life and to hear her stories, because there's a lot to be learned from what she had to say, her experiences as a woman, as a black woman. The foundation of a lot of empowerment for people. It's really incredible stuff. In a day and age where we are now, we're still struggling with these things. My own life, I've had my own issues struggling with this stuff, you know, I've had my own experiences that are incredibly eye-opening and changed me forever, you know, that I never would have thought were a part of my life until I experienced them. And it's hard for me to tell that story, but to hear her tell it, it's really incredible what she went through and some of the challenges that she faced and the experiences that she had with her family. I feel really lucky to have been able to be a part of this project.
The car as a catalyst for Daisy’s introduction
I started working from photos and tried to establish, you know, her face based on the photos that I had and the fourth panel is setting the scene for the story that I was working with, which was across from her, how she always had this old -- it was a junk car that was just kind of sitting in the brush. And I loved cars growing up like anybody who had a car in their backyard. I would go out and I'd check it out. I'd try to get in it. I tried to figure out what was going on with it, you know, because they were all there. Everybody had a junk car when I was growing up, everyone had one in their background. So I was fascinated with that car. And so that became the catalyst for the story. And that was how I tried to introduce us to Daisy.
Cartoon vs. Realism
I did feel that was really important with the work that I was producing because, you know, I'll work cartoony, you can see a little bit of it in here, like with the kids especially. Sometimes they'll get a little more on the side of cartoon versus, kind of, realism. But I really, once I started to work with a photo, it just made so much more sense to me because she's so expressive, her face has so many beautiful expressions and she has -- her face is really interesting to draw too. So it just allowed me to look through all of this content and find things that I thought suited the moment while she was telling the stories.
Putting a bookend on Alec Turner’s life
There's been so many ideas that we started with that have completely morphed into other ideas. It was a very long changing process as the artwork and the stories were created by the other artists. I'm really happy with the way it looks. I really like the way the story evolves because it gives you an opportunity -- A lot of the artists, I think, focused on Daisy's father's life. And it allowed us to kind of resolve some of that storytelling because that wasn't in those stories. So we were able to tell, we were able to kind of put the bookend on his life so that the reader will know, you know, not only does he know or do they know how he came to Grafton and the experiences that he had coming here. But you also get to see how his family helped him as he left and then moved on to the next great beyond. So for me that, I think, that was probably the most important aspect of how I was working on the story. I didn't really want it to be about me specifically. I use my name and I use my friend Luca as a name because we were the people involved in my initial interaction with Daisy.
Thank you Ezra for speaking with us!
To learn more about the recordings of Daisy Turner that inspired Turner Family Stories, visit this page.
Ezra Veitch is a cartoonist and illustrator who lives in New Hampshire with his amazing, talented family. For more on his work, visit http://ezraveitch.com or follow @ezraveitch on Instagram
