The Tough Ones
posted:
Every so often a topic comes along that demands a depth of empathy that I find extremely painful to take on. These topics, although rich with possibilities, force me to the reality that these stories we are illustrating are about real lives and events. I'm so eager to have a topic I can get dramatic with that sometimes I have to remind myself that these human condition stories that I seem to get so often represent the experiences of real people. My biggest fear is of creating soul-less sensationalized images rather than delicately balanced provocative ones. Keeping the real people at the core of these stories in mind is an emotional burden that I find difficult to pick but impossible to put aside. This is made even more clear when the topic involves children. For me, these stories hit too close to home.
So last week when Josue Evilla at the Boston Globe Magazine called, I felt the bitter sweet sense of excitement rush over me, "here comes a great topic, damn". After all, the last assignment was for a story about a park ranger chaplain who comforts a dying moose after it was fatally struck by a car (previously posted but shown again below). This assignment was particularly tough to tackle, being a parent of two young boys. The article, entitled "Return To Me" by Stacey Chase, discussed the difficulties that parents must face when a child goes missing for years on end, most-often never to return. How do they continue day to day suspended in the artifacts of the child surrounding them at every turn? I did a handful of sketches for this one, but ended in agreement with Josue on the iconic element of a neglected and unused tricycle partially sunken into the yard. In the back is a slightly open gate door.
A while back I got a call from Diablo Magazine in SF. Tim Luddy (now at Mother Jones) had an assignment that really nailed me. It was a story about a father and a selfish stepmother who repeatedly abandoned their 5 and 10-year-old boys over long weekends while they snuck out for romantic getaways. What's doubly cruel is that the 5-year-old is autistic. If there's a silver lining, it's that the 10-year-old was an amazingly gifted caregiver, beyond his years. He fed and bathed his younger brother, dressed him, and consoled him. After his parents returned from a 5-day New Year's Eve trip to Las Vegas the boys were found safe and sound and taken into protective custody by relatives. The parents were put in jail. Being a father of two young boys (Julian 5 years-old and Andrés 6 years-old) I had a particularly difficult time with this one. The image below was the product.
An assignment for Northwestern Law Review questioned the right to die for death row inmates who have decided to refuse the appeals process in leu of immediate execution. The state argued, I think insightfully, that although to John Q citizen the notion of granting the inmates' wish might seem like a no brainer, they argued that the jury should consider the entirety of the inmates life not just the resulting crime for which they were sentenced. They felt that a prisoner's upbringing, in this case one of catastrophic mental and physical abuse, prohibits them from looking out for their own well being. Consider the offender when he was a child, what that was like, and how it formed his sense of self esteem. I am personally opposed to the death penalty, even more so after reading the argument in this article.
The subject of the rising trend toward medicating our children with anti-depressants and other mood altering prescription made for a tough assignment from Forbes as well. What will history recall about this generation-med and the parents who are caught between legitimate medical advances and the lure of a panacea for problematic behavior?
So last week when Josue Evilla at the Boston Globe Magazine called, I felt the bitter sweet sense of excitement rush over me, "here comes a great topic, damn". After all, the last assignment was for a story about a park ranger chaplain who comforts a dying moose after it was fatally struck by a car (previously posted but shown again below). This assignment was particularly tough to tackle, being a parent of two young boys. The article, entitled "Return To Me" by Stacey Chase, discussed the difficulties that parents must face when a child goes missing for years on end, most-often never to return. How do they continue day to day suspended in the artifacts of the child surrounding them at every turn? I did a handful of sketches for this one, but ended in agreement with Josue on the iconic element of a neglected and unused tricycle partially sunken into the yard. In the back is a slightly open gate door.
A while back I got a call from Diablo Magazine in SF. Tim Luddy (now at Mother Jones) had an assignment that really nailed me. It was a story about a father and a selfish stepmother who repeatedly abandoned their 5 and 10-year-old boys over long weekends while they snuck out for romantic getaways. What's doubly cruel is that the 5-year-old is autistic. If there's a silver lining, it's that the 10-year-old was an amazingly gifted caregiver, beyond his years. He fed and bathed his younger brother, dressed him, and consoled him. After his parents returned from a 5-day New Year's Eve trip to Las Vegas the boys were found safe and sound and taken into protective custody by relatives. The parents were put in jail. Being a father of two young boys (Julian 5 years-old and Andrés 6 years-old) I had a particularly difficult time with this one. The image below was the product.
An assignment for Northwestern Law Review questioned the right to die for death row inmates who have decided to refuse the appeals process in leu of immediate execution. The state argued, I think insightfully, that although to John Q citizen the notion of granting the inmates' wish might seem like a no brainer, they argued that the jury should consider the entirety of the inmates life not just the resulting crime for which they were sentenced. They felt that a prisoner's upbringing, in this case one of catastrophic mental and physical abuse, prohibits them from looking out for their own well being. Consider the offender when he was a child, what that was like, and how it formed his sense of self esteem. I am personally opposed to the death penalty, even more so after reading the argument in this article.
The subject of the rising trend toward medicating our children with anti-depressants and other mood altering prescription made for a tough assignment from Forbes as well. What will history recall about this generation-med and the parents who are caught between legitimate medical advances and the lure of a panacea for problematic behavior?
