Becky Hawkins
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🕑 Added 2021-11-05 18:13:07 +0000 UTCHi Patrons,
I finally figured out how to arrange a store, a church, a swing set, a bench, a Benson Bubbler, a gazebo, three protagonists, a cookout, and a double dutch game into a two-page spread! I'm so excited to start inking this! But first, I wanted to give you a sneak peek, and tell you about a couple of things I learned about while putting this page together.
The building with the cupola is modeled after the Hill Block Building in Portland, Oregon. It was demolished in the late 1960s, but the cupola was preserved and eventually used as a gazebo in nearby Dawson Park.
I knew that the Hill Block Building wasn't around anymore, but I didn't know the full context. The building was located in the Eliot neighborhood, once the center of Portland's Black community. In 1969, when cities could get federal funding to "address urban blight," Portland demolished 22 whole blocks of Eliot to expand the nearby Legacy Emanuel Hospital. It displaced a ton of people, many of whom had been displaced by the Vanport flood 20 years earlier. To add insult to injury, the city ran out of funding after knocking down the homes and businesses, but before the hospital expansion was finished. So for the last 50 years, the former Hill Block Building has been an empty lot next to the hospital. I've biked past it a ton of times! So I wanted to include that history in the background of this page.
When I looked for reference photos of children jumping rope, I found some photos from 1941! That's what gave me the idea to have a double dutch round that spans the 1941 and 1988 worlds. Russell Lee and Edwin Rosskam were two of the photographers sent by the Farm Security Administration to document life around America in the 1930s and 40s. You can see these photos (and thousands more) in the digital collection of the New York Public Library! This photo is from Chicago:
Drawing and looking at so much double dutch made me super nostalgic for my elementary school playground before the bell rang. But I also remembered how long the inexperienced jump ropers like me had to wait in line for their turn, just to get immediately tangled and have to get back in line 😕 It was like playing Nintendo with the friends who own the games.
As always, thank you for supporting this project (and all the other artwork I get up to) on Patreon! It really means a lot.
-Becky
Comments
Emily Siskin
Very cool knowing some of the history behind your art. And what an amazing piece this is! All. The. Things. Wowzie!
