Awakening

Donna Wolfe

Interview by L. Valena

So first of all, can you tell me what you responded to?

A beautiful passage, almost poetic. To me, it actually feels like a chunk of a much bigger picture. I feel like if I were reading this in the New Yorker, I would be anticipating that there be a book coming out and this would be a chunk of the book.

I felt it was a snapshot of a moment in time that was going to be built on- a reverie. I definitely felt the callow youth, and hanging out of the car, and the throwing the head back on the sticky hot Ferris wheel; the avoidance and the draw of the boys. Like they were pulling them but they were avoiding them. I definitely felt they were kids. Even though they were in a car, so they had to have a license, I felt that they were adolescents in their minds and that this was very bleak. Although ostensibly they probably had pretty good lives these girls, it was a very bleak adolescent empty scene. Out in the carnival, basically a field where these carny guys would put all the rides together and maybe those little shacks where you throw balls at something to win a prize. Those cynical carny people running it, and the cynical guys hanging around. That adolescent feeling of the girls only being able to laugh, and wear long pants on this sweaty scene. I really loved it and I really got into it. But when I drew it, it seems sort of naive and cartoonish, and I didn't need it to be but that's just my style.

What happened after you read the piece?

I pictured the landscape. I knew that they were hiding behind a dumpster or a shed, and they were laughing. The laughing to me was total nervous laughing as a result of being in this scene of mundane American suburban youth. That's where I went. Definitely, right away, I had one of the girls with their heads slept flung back laughing and the other one, not so much. Right away, it was like, I know those girls, you know what I mean? I knew there was a camaraderie. I had one of them reach out and hold the shoulder of the other. I thought of them as being tucked away in a corner with all that's going on around them and trying to make sense of it.

Isn't it so interesting how everyone just has to kind of figure it out as they go in that way? We just get kind of thrown into the deep end.

No kidding. Everyone has to figure it out, and it's really hard. It was a great moment because there wasn't anything that happened. Things were happening, but nothing was happening. That's the whole point. This is my life, and nothing's happening. That's how I felt as a high schooler.

Yes, and seeking drama or something.

Oh god, they don't even know what drama is! They're not even old enough to know what drama is. But they're definitely seeking something. I was right there. Mine was probably like a bowling alley. I grew up in the North Shore, in Wakefield. It's very suburban, we were very naive. We'd go to a bowling alley in let's say Medford, and oh my god the kids were so tough! The people that were there scared the shit out of me. I definitely understand the girls in this piece.

I wanted it to be dark. But I definitely couldn't see the girls in like emo black. They were not those girls. So I had them dressed in something not too bright, something you could buy at Marshall's. And then I wanted to have the sky starry, with a little bit of stuff cranking in the background and the row of the little booths that would be set up so that people could play games. And then those ghostly nasty boys with their lit cigarettes. When they're inhaling their cigarettes, there's the red at the end of the cigarette, which is mentioned in the written piece.

How does this relate to the rest of your work?

I've two ways of doing work. I draw things out of my head, and I draw things that are in front of me. Yeah, so I do a lot of drawing what's in front of me, and I dare say that those things are more realistic. It's the stuff that I do that comes out of my head that comes out much more illustrative. I'll do a drawing of my granddaughter jumping on a trampoline. It's certainly not anatomically correct; it's more lighthearted almost. Like an illustration for a children's book. So I could have sought out people and had them model for me, but this is basically a sketch that was a fantasy of mine, based on the prompt.

I do love that there is that innocent kind of quality to it.

Yeah, that's what I want. They are innocent. They're dour, and they're emo, but they're innocent.

I remember that time as being just like suddenly beginning to come to grips with my place in the world and being like, 'oh no.'

I remember being in Baltimore as a kid and going to a pool that was integrated (which is not going to happen in Boston). I was absolutely blown away by the Black people and their beauty, and also the music. Boston with playing like Lawrence fucking Welk, and I was down there with the Black people playing their music. I didn't even have a station I could tune into to get it! That's part of my history, like nine and ten years old, with my portable radio under my pillow tuning in to New York stations so I could hear Black music. And it was like a secret. I had to like tiptoe around school, and I would get a vibe from someone, and not very many! And go, “you don't happen to know this song, do you?” I had to like slip into my secret world. It was like porn. But I felt that same way, that awakening. I felt the same way as those girls.

I did three or four different angles of this, and I couldn't get away from making it look as though the girls were lovers. And I really did not want that, because I felt that this was not about that at all. It was not about their experience together, it was about their shoulder to shoulder experience looking out at the world. If I were to do it over, I might have the girls way off-center, have the guys be the figures that are the main part of the page, and the girls just tucked behind a dumpster or one of those booths. But then it became all about the Ferris wheel.

Call Number: C40PP | C42VA.woAwa

Donna Wolfe is a life-long sketcher, currently staying relatively sane in pursuit of joy. BFA UMASS Amherst. Hospitality emeritus. Funky grandmother.