Happy spring!

Here in Vancouver’s West End, the ducklings and goslings are out, and the heron chicks are chirping away in their nests. It’s a beautiful season to be deep in creative work.

Before I share project updates, that on May 4, my kids and I sadly said goodbye to our beautiful old Queen, Reina. Her niece, Mary 🐈‍⬛ was there with us too. We’re deeply grateful to Dr. Ritchie and Lifting Stars for the gentle and compassionate home visit. It was peaceful, loving, and reassuring. The grief is poignant and gentle. But it is hard drawing now without Reina lying directly on top of the paper, demanding cuddles while I tried to work around her.

And now, onto Potato Nose: 1977.

Last night completed the full layout for the 16-page comic. This short work moves backward in time, from the present day to the original 1977 diary entry. The comic will serve as a companion piece to the larger graphic novel, which will focus more deeply on the diary itself.

As I have been developing the comic, the project themes have evolved into something much larger than I first imagined. What began as an exploration of my very innocent teen diary has opened into questions around memory, autonomy, personal archives and history.

One of the strongest themes emerging is place. Each page in the 16 page comic is rooted in a specific moment in time, which means recreating Vancouver locations as they existed then. The work has become part memoir, part historical reconstruction. I have been researching old hospitals, clinics, neighbourhoods, and medical spaces connected to my life, trying to rebuild fragments of a personal history that was partially lost when my medical records from 1977 to early 2000s disappeared after a clinic closure. So in a way, the comic has become a way to regain those lost records by piecing together clues. At the Vancouver Public Library, I even found a book written by one of my former BC Cancer Agency doctors, complete with photographs connected to that era. It feels like uncovering pieces that vanished long ago.

My diary was simply a place to record the days and quiet my thoughts. But revisiting it now, I find myself asking: who was I writing for? My future self? Future readers? Only myself in that moment?

That idea of autonomy continues to sit at the center of the project. As I wrote recently in my post “Reclaiming Autonomy,” I have been thinking about the ways systems hijack our sense of self, especially during vulnerable moments in life. The comic traces some of those experiences backward through time, including moments where my selfhood and my role as a daughter intersected in difficult ways.

My goal is to complete the 16-page comic by August and then to printers (limited run of 100 copies). Right now, I am moving into storyboarding and gathering historical reference material. It’s a process very similar to what unfolded while creating Salt Green Death… following threads and allowing the research itself to shape the narrative. So many Ah-ha moments!

On the health front, I recently received MRI results and have been referred to another specialist because of the complexity of my condition. That journey continues dancing with the Potato Nose project. The project is the perfect companion and the current health path is perfect research and retracing of steps!

I have also submitted an application for a small grant with the Vancouver Heritage Foundation (the Yosef Wosk Publication Grant) to support printing the comic. The application process itself  (with no attachment to outcome) is a tool to help sharpen the focus of the project even further, especially around Vancouver’s historical locations and how my personal memory intersects with the city’s changing landscape.

On a bit of a just do it! whim, I also applied for a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Literary Journalism: Memoir. Whether or not it happens, the application process itself again was so valuable because it helped me define the next stage of the work: shaping the full 150-page graphic novel manuscript, including revisiting and retranslating the original Swedish diary entries.

Love Katarina

P.S. I will be at the Vancouver Art Book Fair this coming weekend at the Roundhouse at the Conundrum Press table, in particular on Saturday, May 16, from 11am–6pm.