Creation
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
New life and opportunities arise from the wreckage of a north american city urban renewal at what cost?
A new mother takes us on a tour of Hamilton, a Rust Belt city born of the Industrial Revolution and dying a slow death due to globalization. This mother represents the city’s next wave of inhabitants—the artists and young parents who swarm a run-down area for its affordability, inevitably reshaping the neighborhoods they take over. Creation looks at gentrification from the inside out—an artist mother making a home and neighborhood for her family, struggling to find her place amid the existing and emerging communities.
While pushing her child’s stroller around Hamilton, Sylvia Nickerson shows us the warehouse filled with open barrels of toxic sludge, the parking lot where the city’s homeless population sleeps, and the refurbished Victorian house (complete with elegant chandeliers) that is now a state-of-the-art yoga studio. Creation presents the city as a living thing—a place where many small lives intersect and where death, motherhood, pollution, poverty, and violence are all interconnected.
Drawn in evocative watercolor, Creation is unafraid to leave questions open-ended as Nickerson wanders the city and ponders just where the personal and the political intersect, and where they ought to intersect.New life and opportunities arise from the wreckage of a north american city urban renewal at what cost?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nickerson chronicles her life as an artist and single mother in Hamilton, an aging industrial city and "the armpit of Ontario," with honesty and imagination. Alternating between self-examination and social engagement, she searches for direction, as does the city, which suffers simultaneous decay and gentrification as its population of blue-collar workers, transients, and starving artists is pushed out to make way for wealthier residents. The death of Nancy, a local homeless woman, becomes a focal point for Hamilton's identity crisis. Meanwhile, Nickerson juggles dealing with her parents' failing health, raising her young son, and remaining active in the local art scene. While hosting visitors to her art studio, she worries that "I've turned into a baby cooing, babbling, brainless, child-centric bore." Nickerson's art depicts city life in impressionistic black-and-white ink wash. The human characters appear as blobby, Keith Haring like figures, while the busy streets, apartment interiors, and crowded skylines are drawn with jittery detail and personality. Multipage spreads of people and animals lost among clouds, smog, park corners, and broken glass suggest the chaos of a city struggling to survive. Nickerson's study thoughtfully considers the connections between people, places, and artistic expression. (Sept.)
