The Waiting Place | designjane

The Waiting Place - Australian Catholics Magazine

In late 2020 I was approached by Australian Catholics Magazine about creating a custom illustration for the cover of their Schools Edition for Autumn 2021.

Project process:

1. We discussed the four main project points:

WHY - why create the artwork, what purpose was it serving?
WHAT - size, placement, colour, medium? type/style of illustration?
WHO - who would see it and who does the client want to engage with it?
HOW - digital or hand created. Deadline? Budget?

2. With prayer I became aware this was a perfect way to serve poverty // help create awareness as an illustrator.

3. I worked with the editor to ensure I understood the visual elements needed for the illustration. Elements can be thins such as barbed wire, people, boy / girl, refugee camp. We shared photos and examples of illustration styles; the illustration style we agreed on has a 'grunge' / dirty texture to fit with the reality of refugee camps.

4. I kept returning to prayer through the process and created a rough illustration and shared it to ensure he was happy before progressing with more of the fine details.

5. The final illustration was given more detail, shading and colour.

The high resolution file was supplied for print. The layout with text for the cover was completed by Australian Catholics (I created the Illustration only).

This piece also won a ACPA Award for Best Original Artwork in 2022.

I hope this connects us to those waiting in poverty—we are never alone...

~ Jane

The Brief // Theme: The waiting place

Between the death and resurrection of Jesus, there was a time of waiting. Jesus’ followers had experienced the death of their teacher and friend – the lives that they’d lived with him were gone. They felt lost, they may have felt abandoned. They didn’t know what would come next.

‘The waiting place’ is familiar to most of us. There are time in our lives when we experience a great upheaval. We know that our lives have been changed forever, but we’re uncertain yet as to what the future might bring. It can be a time of fear and sadness, but also a time of hope and creativity. For some – like refugees, or the poor – the waiting may go on seemingly forever. Others – like those who are expecting a child – know when the waiting will end, but still not what lies ahead for them. The COVID-19 pandemic has been itself a time of upheaval, and we’re still in our waiting place – not knowing when and if the danger will pass, nor what world we will build in the aftermath.

The technical term for this experience is ‘liminality’. In anthropology, a ‘liminal space’ is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that takes place during a rite of passage. During this stage, people stand at the threshold ‘between their previous way of structuring their identity, time or community, and a new way, which the competing rite establishes’. ‘During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.’

In this edition we want to explore the ‘waiting place’, between death and resurrection, between one way of existing in the world and another.

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