Lucy Rose Till-Campbell (she/her)
Sheldon Till-Campbell (he/him)
Forest Park, IL
Instagram: @lucyrosetillcampbell
Instagram: @sheldontillcampbell
www.tillcampbell.com
Chicory
2023-2024
Clamshell box with hand-illustrated paper cubes (edition of 5)
5×3.75×1.5″
Artist Statement
Chicory is a work of children’s literature that takes advantage of narrative and relational possibilities provided by unbound cube pages.
Lucy Rose began rendering the universe of these woodland characters as a way to communicate with our niece and nephews who live in the Czech Republic. This book took shape in response to our brother and sister-in-law giving birth to their third child. Each character in the book is based on one of their three children, and the book provides a shared space. It is hard to communicate with toddlers and babies long distance; they struggle to understand FaceTime calls and emails. But they have no problem understanding play and comics about a trio of greenish elves who live in the woods and go on innocuous and adorable adventures.
Chicory features four separate narrative arcs in the form of six cubes. Each side of each cube is one frame of one story. The reader can attempt to reconstruct them according to our intention or they can rearrange them at will. Of the remaining cubes, three include the faces of the characters, Cranberry, Milkweed and Chicory, in six different emotional states. The last three cubes are flowers, a tea set and various things found on the table in the acorn home where they live.
We worked at a delicate, miniature scale to heighten the gem-like character of the book and embody the richness of imaginative experience children encounter in very small locations or objects. The narrative world of the book is a sweet and beautiful one, free from peril, but suffused with desire and a quiet melancholy.