Crafting Readers

Items

• The Wars Within / "The Bell Jar"
  My crafted object, titled "The Wars Within," captures the essence of Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar. Inspired by Plath’s sketch bearing the novel’s title, the lino print of shoes, a traditional and often critiqued symbol of femininity, pairs with a carefully typeset quote from Chapter 15. This pairing amplifies the novel’s exploration of identity and autonomy, underscoring the protagonist’s battle against societal constraints and the conflict between external expectations and internal desires. A dynamic collage surrounds the linocut and the quotation, adding further depth and dimension to the piece. This layered design evokes “the wars within,” symbolizing women’s dual struggle: resisting patriarchal values imposed by society while looking inward to confront and reject these forcibly ingrained beliefs. The composition of the crafted object bridges the novel’s critical investigation of psychological and societal conflict, inviting viewers to reflect on the enduring relevance of these struggles in the pursuit of self-determination. KALEV ADLER ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, the American writer and poet’s only work of fictional prose, offers an evocative exploration of madness and the oppressive effects of social expectations on women. Deeply rooted in Plath’s own experiences, the novel reflects her struggles with major depression, suicidal ideation, and time spent in psychiatric institutions. Driven by a desire to articulate these experiences relating to mental illness, Plath published The Bell Jar in January 1963, just one month before her tragic suicide at the age of 30. At the heart of the novel lies the metaphor of the bell jar, a suffocating, transparent enclosure symbolizing Plath’s and her protagonist Esther Greenwood’s sense of isolation in mid-20th-century America. For the past three months, I have immersed myself in creating a crafted object inspired by Plath’s text. The project and process culminated in The Wars Within, a mixed-media piece combining linocut, typesetting, printing, and collage, deepening my comprehension of Plath’s work and its enduring themes. By creating The Wars Within, I realized the true extent of Plath’s investigation into the suffocating aspects of life for women in 1950s America, a period synonymous with conformity. Through my crafting, I gained a newfound perspective on the psychological toll of cemented cultural conventions directed at women and the struggle for autonomy in a world designed to confine. As author Janet Badia discusses in the first chapter of Sylvia Plath and the Mythology of Women Readers, titled “‘Dissatisfied, Family-Hating Shrews’: Women Readers and the Politics of Plath’s Literary Reception,” Plath “devoted much of her writing time in early 1961 to her novel The Bell Jar. Having contracted for publication in October 1961, Heinemann released the novel in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas on January 14, 1963” (30). Plath chose to partner with the London-based publisher Heinemann after facing rejection from American publishers, likely influenced by the underwhelming reception of her earlier poetry collection, The Colossus, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Upon its initial release in England, literary critics met The Bell Jar with “a reception nearly as unremarkable as the one The Colossus had received” (Badia 30). It was only after her death that the novel started gaining traction, and, in 1971, eight years after Plath’s suicide, The Bell Jar finally made its way to the United States. In “A Note on The Bell Jar (1963),” Susan J. Behrens explains how “Plath’s mother, Aurelia Plath, and Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes, campaigned against publication of the US edition, … claiming that the identities of persons living and dead would be too obvious (and hurtful) all around” (239). Despite this publication delay, readers who had slowly become accustomed to her poetry in the years following her death flocked to pick up a copy. The delayed American publication coincided with the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s and marked a turning point for Plath’s reception. Readers began to embrace the novel as a foundational feminist text that critiqued patriarchal social politics. Since its 40th anniversary in the US, The Bell Jar has sold “more than three million copies” and been taught in classrooms worldwide (Gould). My creation, The Wars Within, allowed me to profoundly engage with Plath’s The Bell Jar, reshaping my understanding of its themes and the lived experiences it portrays. At the heart of my mixed-media craft object is a linocut of shoes, an object traditionally linked to femininity, highlighting the societal values and ideals imposed on women in 1950s America and beyond. This linocut not only symbolizes these oppressive expectations but also Esther Greenwood’s struggle to break free from them, as shoes can represent movement and the march toward a liberated future. To further connect my work to the novel, I incorporated the poignant quotation “because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar,” capturing Esther’s inescapable sense of entrapment (Plath 236). The Wars Within, especially the collage elements, vastly enriches my dialogue with The Bell Jar by visually layering Plath’s protagonist’s multifaceted constraints. The fragmented domestic images, such as a set dinner table and a mother holding her child, underscore the overwhelming pressure of social models that historically and ridiculously defined a woman’s worth. These elements, deliberately fractured and overlapped, mirror Esther’s fractured psyche, symbolizing her mental disarray and rebellion against the relentless demand to conform. Through the combination of these images, alongside the quotation from the novel and the lino print design, the crafted object encapsulates Esther’s desire to reject social expectations and her inability to escape their pervasive influence. This interplay echoes Plath’s metaphor of the bell jar, with its transparent yet impenetrable walls, as the collage creates a visual representation of a world that defines and traps. Craft or multi-media object? Linocut, typesetting, or print? Choosing the correct term to describe The Wars Within is no simple task. While I previously referred to the collage elements within the object, The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 1919 definition defines collage as “An abstract form of art in which photographs, pieces of paper, newspaper cuttings, string, etc., are placed in juxtaposition and glued to the pictorial surface; such a work of art” (“Collage, N”). Therefore, to provide details of the history of my chosen craft practice, the term “Collage” accurately summarizes the process, the amalgamation of the linocut, typesetting, and printing of text onto one pictorial surface. Freya Gowrley, in the introduction to Fragmentary Forms: A New History of Collage, highlights that collage “is an art form that has been produced across regions and cultures since the invention of paper” (9). Yet, despite its diverse and widespread practice throughout history, collage has often been narrowly defined, focusing predominantly on works from the West and their association with the rise of modernism. Gowrley recounts the example of Jane and Mary Parminter, who used collage as a decorative technique in their 1790s home, A la Ronde. Nevertheless, she notes that “thanks to the low status occupied by women’s craft practices in the art-historical canon, collage produced before the birth of modernism has consistently been overlooked in histories of the genre” (9). Instead, the invention of collage was often attributed to figures such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque (9-10). This exclusionary framing mirrors Plath’s The Bell Jar, where deeply entrenched hierarchies subdue women just as the hierarchies embedded within art history diminish the influence and existence of early collage artists (10). Through its design and symbolism, The Wars Within challenges these hierarchies, pushing back against the limitations imposed on women and craft practices. As Hinda Mandell describes in Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats, “Craft can be accessible and complex, unique and diverse, intensely personal and powerfully linked to the greater world—just like the people who choose it to harness their own activist power” (xiii). Therefore, collage, and crafting as a category, is “a tool that transcends geography and time. It is a tool of change—and for change” (xiii). Creating The Wars Within has significantly intensified my appreciation of collage as a medium for artistic and social critique. Through its ability to contrast, fragment, and reconstruct, collage captures the essence of dissent, offering a powerful way for artists and makers to challenge established norms. Throughout the semester, I have developed a profound appreciation for the parallels between the act of crafting and Plath’s narrative of confinement and rebellion. The process of assembling disparate elements into a cohesive whole allowed me to reflect on Esther Greenwood’s internal struggle to construct an identity beyond the rigid confines of societal expectations. By immersing myself in the physical act of carving the linocut, arranging the collage, and typesetting the quotation, I engaged directly with Plath’s themes, experiencing firsthand the tension between self-expression and a lack of control over the outcome. As a medium and a metaphor, collage powerfully underscores the novel’s critique of the restrictive roles imposed on women while simultaneously offering a space for redefinition and reclamation. The Wars Within serves as both a tribute to Plath’s work and an exploration of the enduring struggle for autonomy and self-definition, demonstrating how the concept of making fosters understanding and provokes meaningful dialogue. Through this project, I not only came to understand the timeless relevance of Plath’s far-reaching critique but also recognized the transformative potential of crafting as an act of resistance.
• "A terrible newspaper headline" / "The Bell Jar"
  This artificial newspaper reconstructs the clippings that recount Esther Greenwood’s suicide attempt in Plath’s novel. For the collages, I took the newspaper images described alongside the headlines in the text and portrayed them in a conceptual manner that incorporated the novel’s central themes. I typeset the headlines by hand, printed them on UVic Libraries’ Vandercook printing press, and then scanned everything to arrange it digitally into the form of a 1950s newspaper’s front page. Crafting this newspaper urged me to meditate on the symbolism of print media in The Bell Jar, as Esther struggles with her ambitions for the future, her mental health treatment options, and the social demands on young women to be modest and domestic as well as sexually enticing. This newspaper represents Esther’s metaphorical bell jar and the media’s reality-distorting role in producing and maintaining that bell jar. BECKY TURNER ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: Using methods of collage, typesetting, and digital arrangement, I crafted this 1950’s newspaper that recreates the clippings recounting Esther Greenwood’s suicide attempt in Plath’s novel (The Bell Jar 198–99). The crafting process reminded me of the subjectivity of media; every decision I made—about type font, which magazines to use, and which images looked best together—influenced the overall presentation and its perception by viewers. Typesetting was very enjoyable, but it brought to mind the invisible decisions that go into the production of a text. To Esther, her portrayal in the magazines told her she was nothing more than a “scholarship girl” in fancy clothing (198). Much of Esther’s sense of self is tied to the magazines, newspapers, and tabloids she reads, which contributes to her distorted perspective of reality. In collaging the images, I had the opportunity to think about the pressure on women to be attractive, healthy, happy, and maternal—or, in other words, to be the perfect housewife. By synthesizing these demands into the collages, I created a newspaper that represents the reality-distorting, metaphorical bell jar over Esther’s head. Through my crafting journey, I explored the history of printing, the origins of collage, and the connections of these crafts to The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath’s own life. Historically, printing was a field dominated by men. Women were told that their “professional incompetence,” both physically and intellectually, barred them from being able to compose lines of type or operate a letterpress (Betts 21). This rationale was completely false, as the records we have of women in printing prove that they had no such problems (21); however, because women were rarely allowed to be in official unions or have their printing recognized, there is a historical lack of these records documenting women’s work (Battershill 13). When women were allowed into the occupation, it was often because their husband or father had died, and someone was needed to replace them (12–13). Moreover, women were rarely paid fair wages (Betts 23). As printing became more automated, it developed a reputation as an artisanal craft (141) for the women “who were denied access to [it] for centuries” (13). The modern letterpress community relies heavily on group support and sharing to preserve the knowledge needed to restore and operate machines. Today, we can learn how to engage with this historically masculinized craft in a feminist, amateur way (Battershill 10). Through engaging in the generative printer-press relationship that is inherent in the use of a letterpress (Betts), we can honour our own participation in the process and the legacy of women forgotten by history. A collage is “a work made by assembling various forms to create a new whole” (Adibi 1). It was invented alongside paper itself, but since then has utilized many crafting forms beyond paper, including painting, wood work, architecture, and music (2–5). Nowadays, most collage work is conducted by hobbyists. Collaging requires its creator to trust the process and take risks as they paste images together. It is a messy, imaginative, and inspiring process that opens up pathways to think about images and themes in texts and the ways in which they can be portrayed. This form of invention boosts self-confidence and creativity (7), and allows for the creator to develop a more critical view of spaces (13). It also led to the art of décollage, in which layers are torn away to reveal something underneath. In décollage, the artist must trust themselves to rip and tear the paper to reveal a better final image. The idea of stripping away parts of oneself can be either toxic or empowering, in the same way that pasting layer upon layer can create either a beautiful culmination of art or a mess of secrets. In this way, collage becomes a metaphor for growth, development, and the formation of identity. Sylvia Plath was a talented American poet who struggled with her mental health, and one month after releasing her first novel, The Bell Jar, she killed herself (Poetry Fndn 4). The novel was originally published in 1963 in England under the pseudonym “Victoria Lucas.” Plath’s mother fought the publication of The Bell Jar in the United States until 1971, fearing that it would upset those who had inspired characters, and some accounts say that even Plath did not think of the novel as serious work (Smith 92). Once it did become available in the US, the novel quickly rose on the New York Times best-seller list and has remained popular since then, although the initial reception in England was only modest (93–94). Plath discusses gender roles and social expectations for a young woman’s career, relationships, and sexuality through a realist lens that accounts for the sociopolitical world of the 1950s. As feminist reviews of these concepts became more popular, Plath’s own life was conflated with that of her protagonist (95). Her suicide greatly influenced this reception of her book (Poetry Fndn 6). Feminist interpretations of the novel as a biography, as well as psychoanalytical readings, were not without merit, as Plath’s writing illustrates her struggle with depression. At the age of 20, she attempted to kill herself by swallowing sleeping pills (4). She survived and was treated with electroshock therapy, just like Esther in the novel. Mental health aspects aside, the novel expertly describes the pressures of “the mutually exclusive options of career and marriage/motherhood” in the 1950s and ‘60s (Smith 99). Plath likely experienced many of the same internal and social conflicts as Esther. There are four collages included in my mock newspaper. The first, under the headline “SCHOLARSHIP GIRL MISSING. MOTHER WORRIED,” is described as a “tarty” photo of Esther in her scholarship-money clothes, looking false and extravagant (The Bell Jar 198). The deconstructed face represents the lack of clarity and connection Esther feels with herself. Each of her idealized features is the epitome of beauty on its own, but together they form a monstrosity. The subtitles allude to her dissatisfaction in striving towards the unattainable ideals of womanhood. In another magazine from her time in New York, Esther looks as glamorous as the other girls in the program as she wears an evening dress and drinks a fancy cocktail (207). However, the image is posed and false, for she comments earlier that it is the sort of photo that would make everyone think she “must be having a real whirl” (2). The other collages employ ransom note-esque qualities with their cut-up letters. This technique draws attention to the demands that society makes of young women, and their harsh, threatening quality, such as the emphasis on marriage as the ultimate goal in the second collage. Esther worries that “maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterwards you went about numb as a slave,” for this is the image of marriage that surrounds her (85). The third collage contributes to Esther’s glorified perception of her disappearance with its storybook image of a search party in the woods, and the last collage deals with her suicidal tendencies, using the motifs of inadequate healthcare and escapism. “Crazy,” with a giant question mark, embodies the question marks that are “all [Esther] could see” at the end of the novel (243). She is healed, but will she stay that way? Her body is represented by a mummy that is interlaced with features of the ambulance; in this way, Esther becomes her own saviour. “I am, I am, I am,” declares “the old brag of [her] heart,” illuminating Esther’s resolution to continue despite everything (243). In creating this newspaper, I was able to understand the influence of the media on how mental health, social ideals, and stereotypical demands are depicted to the public. I came to appreciate the invisible efforts required to produce print media and the rich legacy behind such media. The precise order and organization of typesetting juxtaposed with the chaos and ongoing process of collaging reveal the different ways that form can relate to content. As Caroline Levine suggests in “The Affordances of Form,” we can understand the unpredictable consequences and reader interpretations of different forms colliding (8). I hope that in my exploration of media and social themes in The Bell Jar, I have guided readers to an understanding of issues from the 1950s that are still present today. Returning to the question of The Bell Jar as an autobiography, we might now consider Levine’s idea of treating “fictional narratives as productive thought experiments that allow us to imagine the subtle unfolding activity of multiple social forms” (19) and imagine Plath’s novel as the experimental representation of social conventions that she observed in her own life.
• The Life of a Hyena / "A Little Life"
  This art project is double layered. On the first layer, there is a collage that depicts the novel aesthetically, with images from magazines, newspaper, printouts, and the bible. Jude St. Francis, has religious trauma from a man named Brother Luke at the monastery he grew up in. I thought that bordering the collage with excerpts from the Gospel of Luke would be a powerful statement. Other images depict mental health, NYC, and hints of his community. The second layer consists of string art. Jude envisions his life’s tormentors through the motif of hyenas that rip apart his mind. The hyena string art has different threads leading away from the center, depicting the different people that inflicted harm on Jude that led to his deep rooted trauma. The artwork overall is haphazard and messy, but that was my intention. The novel is lengthy and filled with so much passion and pain that I found it made sense for my craft to emulate this chaos. RIA SHEORAN ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara was published in 2015 by Doubleday Publishing. It was nominated for twelve notable awards. Through learning about the impact of crafting on my understanding of a text, I have gained insight into the structure, point of view, and emotional themes of the novel. Upon publication, the novel quickly snowballed in popularity, with significant reviewers talking about its substance and impact. The New York Times reviewed the novel in September of 2015. The review explained that the novel is ripe with trauma and consists of a “relentless downhill trajectory” that could have been made more powerful and less predictable if Yanagihara had focused on less traumatic events. They proclaimed it to be “the most talked-about novel of the summer” and praised the novel’s substance, while also acknowledging that it is longer than it needs to be and deserves both negative and positive reviews. Jeff Chu wrote a review for Vox in December of 2015, stating, “A Little Life is the best book of the year. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.” He says that the prose is “so stunning that it would stop me, pushing me back to the beginning of a paragraph for a second read.” The content of the novel is so harrowing that he cautions readers to be wary before attempting to read it. Goodreads, the popular reviewing site open to the public, racked up many contrasting reviews. One reviewer rated the novel with one star, writing, “The writing is actually gorgeous. I can see why many, many people like this book. Really, Hanya Yanagihara knows how to use language. Unfortunately, the story she told was not worthy of it. The longer I read this book, the more I dreaded reading it, the worse my feelings got as I read, and the more I hated it for existing.” On the other end of the spectrum, a positive review states, “Its brilliant writing, its broken characters, and its bleak, unforgiving story dug into my heart, into the very pores of my skin.” The consensus from top readers and reviewers seemed to be that though the novel is heavy in content and hard to read without preparation, its writing is phenomenal and deserves the popularity it has gained. The craft project I undertook consists of two layers of work. The first layer is a collage depicting the novel and how I see it aesthetically. The second layer is an attempt at string art, depicting the face of a hyena, with different threads leading away from it signifying the people who traumatize Jude St. Francis through his life. Collaging originated all the way back in 200 BC in China. The technique slowly made its way through medieval times, and artists used materials such as gold leaves and gems. In the nineteenth century, it turned into the art form that it is today, using newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, text from books, and a jumble of photographs and objects glued together on a canvas (Adibi, 2021). Because collage is such an old and versatile art form, I knew there was a lot I could garner from using it in my project. String art was originally meant to aid the education of mathematics. In the 1800s, a mathematics teacher, Mary Everest Boole, used it to explain geometric concepts to her class. The nature of the activity and the final result made it a popular crafting activity in the twentieth century. Open Door Enterprises created string art kits in the 1960s that skyrocketed the technique into an art form (Ross, 2024). Given the length of the novel, I originally struggled to allow myself to focus on specific parts. Using collaging seemed like a beneficial way to incorporate different elements of the text to see how they worked together aesthetically. I had two questions going into the collage that I wanted to answer: How did happiness and sadness work together in the text? And how did point of view work in shaping Jude St Francis’s character? For the first question, I realized that they did not work together and were in fact the same thing within the novel. Sadness overlapped with happiness in a way that was hard to conceptualize, but by physically placing papers on top of one another through the collage, I could visually represent this overlapping. Feeling one emotion at any singular time is rare because the human body tends to feel more than one at any time. Jude’s mental health constantly reminds him of his pain no matter how positively he manages to shape his life. The novel’s point of view is narrated in the third person, occasionally switching to the first person. Harold Stein, Jude’s adoptive father, is the only character who speaks in a first-person point of view, and it is interesting to see how his contribution is solely for the purpose of shaping Jude’s character. Given this information, I was prompted to use images that reminded me of Jude as the only member of his community, which is how he sees himself from his perspective on his life. The third-person point of view explores different characters’ lives, and using a collage to show elements of a community physically depicts the scope of how many characters are actually integral to the story. Jude’s poignant mental-health struggles led me to add a second layer with string art. Using hyenas as a motif for pain was a concept that stood out to me as highly important in the novel. Despite all that Jude suffers, there would be no story to tell had he not been irreparably traumatized by the events in childhood. His deteriorated mental health was an important concept to follow, and, by physically depicting a hyena, I made sense of the way that he thought of his abusers. Through my art project, I led five lines of string away from the hyena to single out the abusers in Jude’s life. At the starting point, they overlap with each other slightly. This overlapping was not intentional, but, upon reflection, I realized that despite his abusers targeting him at different times in his life, when he thinks about them, they are all grouped as the same. Having them overlap within the string art of the hyena made sense because the hyena became a depiction of Jude’s mind to me. The scattered and messy nature of the strings represent his mind as a jumble—and, through his perspective, we see this jumble. The strings that lead away from the hyena show that, when viewed from a different perspective, each instance of abuse impacted him differently, whether physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.
• Souvenirs / "The Little Prince"
  This series of postcards, letters, and photos represents an imagined collection of correspondence between the Little Prince and the Rose. Scrapbook, collage, and letterpress techniques transform the abstract lessons the Little Prince learns on his journey into tangible memories. The Little Prince collects and carries with him various items that represent his shifting perspective on life and willingness to grow. Each lesson embodies how wonder, connection, love, and loss can be felt and remembered through sensory experiences, whether through the physical act of carrying a letter in one’s pocket or the creation of a new bond. The meticulous act of deconstructing previous material into a new item (collage) and carefully typesetting letters together (letterpress) reflect how important life lessons require endurance, patience, trust, and the bravery to challenge preconceived notions. This series emphasizes how tactile engagement deepens our understanding of life’s most essential truths and provides souvenirs to carry with us. MELANIE TURUNEN ON WHAT THIS CRAFTED OBJECT TEACHES US: What we feel shapes how we understand the world—but what about what we touch? In The Little Prince, author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s poignant messages about love, friendship, and loss remind us that we can only truly see the world with our hearts, not our eyes. My project explores whether we can also perceive the world through our sensory experiences. Using postcards, letters, and photos, I create an imagined correspondence between the Prince and the Rose, employing scrapbook, collage, and letterpress techniques to transform the abstract lessons of his journey into tangible memories. Ultimately, my project explores how physical representations of emotional experiences help us better understand and connect with intangible concepts like love and wonder, offering deeper insight into the meaning of Saint-Exupéry’s text. The Little Prince was first published in French and English (translated by Katherine Woods) in April 1943 by Reynal & Hitchcock. Initially, The Little Prince received a modest reception, spending just two weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, compared to the success of Saint-Exupéry’s earlier work, Wind, Sand, and Stars. Critics were divided on whether the novella was meant for children or adults. Despite puzzled reviews, Reynal & Hitchcock claimed that the novella “[changed] the world forever for [its] readers” (Castronovo), and British journalist Neil Clark called it one “of the most profound observations on the human condition ever written” (Clark). By 2024, The Little Prince had sold over 140 million copies, making it the second-most-translated book in history, with over 550 translations. Adapted for film, radio, ballet, and other media, it remains celebrated for its deep reflections on love and life. The novella’s themes of imagination, wonder, and emotion lend themselves to various art forms, including scrapbooking. Scrapbooking originated in the sixteenth century with the album amicorum or “friendship book,” used primarily by “male aristocratic university students” (Day 564) to document their travels and studies. The “commonplace book,” another precursor, served as a personal repository of knowledge, quotes, and letters. By the late nineteenth century, with the rise of photography and the manufacture of decorative elements like ribbon and lace, scrapbooking evolved from a “predominantly textual to a more visual practice” (Day 562) used to document significant life events such as births, marriages, and travels. Scrapbooking enables artists—both historical and contemporary—to preserve fleeting moments, explore personal narratives, and experiment with mixed media. Through scrapbooking, I transform the Prince’s intangible feelings into concrete forms. When the Prince realizes he does not know how to love his Rose properly, he journeys across the universe, discovering the true meaning of friendship, love, and loss. I reimagine these themes as physical mementos kept in a travel scrapbook. Like the “commonplace books” of the past, my scrapbook becomes a repository of memories and emotions, combining pieces of the Prince’s journey (collage and letterpress) with my interpretations of the novella, much like how our memories accumulate and shape our understanding of the world. Just as the Prince learns that “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly” (Saint-Exupéry 87), my scrapbook invites viewers to engage with my project not just visually but also through touch and emotion, bringing abstract lessons to life in a personal and tangible way. Moreover, letterpress printing allowed me to explore the physicality of communication. Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century, letterpress printing revolutionized communication by enabling mass text production. All writing had previously been done by hand—a time-consuming and expensive process—but Gutenberg’s printing method made books, pamphlets, and personal letters more accessible. By the eighteenth century, letterpress printing was integral to communication, with organized postal systems supporting broader social correspondence and creating “communities of interest […] which previously would not have been possible to exist” (Meaney 6; Anderson). The physical impressions left on paper allow viewers to feel the texture of text and image, fostering an intimate connection between creator and recipient. The Rose’s letter to the Prince makes the lessons of love, connection, and growth tangible. The Rose reminds the Prince that he must “endure the presence of two or three caterpillars if [he wishes] to become acquainted with the butterflies” (Saint-Exupéry 40), teaching patience through hardship and uncertainty. I did not originally intend to incorporate letterpress into my project. However, as I typeset and inked my quote, I realized how letterpress—like love—requires us to arrange and rearrange, embracing mistakes and clarity to create something meaningful. Throughout the Prince’s tumultuous journey, he overcomes most caterpillars, “except the two of three that [he saves] to become butterflies” (87), showing how carrying a physical reminder of his strength helps him persevere. While emotions are immaterial and ephemeral, written communication allows us to physically hold onto them. Printing this letter showed me how tactile communication and engagement help us reflect on how we connect and grow through our interactions. Furthermore, collage demonstrates the Prince’s journey as he assembles new perspectives from old ones. While collage techniques date back to 200 BC, when paper was invented in China, the art form emerged in the tenth century when Japanese calligraphers “[applied] papers glued together to write poems” (Adibi 1). Collage spread to Europe by the thirteenth century, gaining popularity in the nineteenth century for creating “memorabilia such as photo albums and books” (Adibi 2). Collage allows artists, past and present, to explore human experiences by using fragments and layers to create visual narratives that reflect how our experiences shape our identities. Collage is central to my project, reflecting the Prince’s journey of transforming narrow, materialistic views into deeper lessons while preserving his innocence and wonder. By the end of the novella, his perspective is a collage of lessons, love, and loss. The two collage postcards represent the lessons that the Prince learns on his journey. The postcard from Asteroid-330 reflects the Geographer’s lesson on exploration and self-reliance, with the surreal image of making a bed in space symbolizing how the Prince must face challenges with wonder and courage. Upon arriving on Earth, surrounded by a vast desert, he realizes that “what makes the desert beautiful […] is that somewhere it hides a well” (Saint-Exupéry 93), illustrating how hidden challenges can be enlightening. The postcard from Asteroid-325 shows how the King’s authoritarian nature teaches the Prince that true connection requires understanding, not power. The gathering of people symbolizes how growth depends on friendship, connection, and seeking help. My project evolved as I worked on it, with the final addition being the collage letter from the Prince to the Rose. Made from cut-out letters and words, the letter demonstrates how time spent with something deepens our understanding of both the world and our relationships, whether with a loved one or a story. The letter is both a collage of the Prince’s personal growth and my journey of getting to know the novella through crafting. The larger collage image of the Prince and the Pilot symbolizes how the Prince’s final lesson about friendship is intertwined with loss and longing. The Pilot “lived [his] life alone” (3) before crashing his plane into a desert and meeting the Prince. Over eight days, they explore how the desert—representing life—can be both “beautiful (70) and “a little lonely” (72). As the pilot repairs his plane and the Prince’s journey ends, they realize that relationships require growing together, sometimes in different directions. The black-and-white collage background symbolizes Earth’s isolating and disenchanting nature, while the hole in the centre (a result of their friendship) allows colour and life to emerge. Together, the Pilot and the Prince overcome loneliness, filling their lives with imagination, innocence, and love. Tearing the magazine to create this photo was intimidating at first, but it soon taught me how the loss of something can lead to the creation of something else—something beautiful, meaningful, and full of potential. Lastly, the collage Polaroid of the Prince and the Rose captures the Prince’s realization that the Rose “has tamed [him]” (80), highlighting the deep emotional connection with and responsibility he feels toward her. The Prince’s love for the Rose develops gradually as he reflects on their relationship and the lessons from his travels. While my project focuses on making the intangible tangible, the Polaroid echoes the idea that “what is essential is invisible to the eye” (87). Despite being photographable and composed of physical matter, the night sky remains vast and unknowable. The silhouettes of the Prince and the Rose are cut from a night sky, displaying how their love, though represented through sensory experiences and physical correspondence, cannot be fully understood through mere sensory perception. The Prince and the Rose’s bond exists beyond the visible world, where true connection transcends sight, touch, and articulation. While love can be explored through collage and letterpress, it ultimately resides in a space that only the heart can truly understand. The collaborative nature of my project reflects the Prince’s journey of piecing together lessons, mirroring my engagement with The Little Prince. By assembling fragments into a coherent whole, my scrapbook helped me explore how sensory engagement can deepen our understanding of complex ideas and uncover insights missed in previous experiences. Through my transforming the Prince’s emotions into physical objects, the abstract concepts of the novella became more concrete to me, from the nature of love to the value of hands-on, tactile learning. As we learn to love our own Roses, it is through caring for them and attempting to make the night sky a bit more tangible that we may come to grasp the depth and ineffability of love.