GILDED LILIES
published by Conundrum Press, 2006
120p, Softcover, Black & White interiors, ISBN 10: 1-894994-19-1
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Gilded Lilies is artist Jillian Tamaki’s first book and collects many of the incredible illustrations she has done for high profile magazines (New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, CBC, The New Yorker) as well as new drawings and comics. It reprints her first mini-comic City of Champions, a stream-of-consciousness ode to the city of post-Gretzky Edmonton. Tamaki paints a portrait of a city populated by “cautious optimists” and “resigned cynics” and filled with accidental street theatre. The feature comic is The Tapemines, an 80 page wordless scroll about feral children in forests of cassette tape. Other comics celebrate her Brooklyn neighborhood. Her inspirations include German expressionists Georg Grosz and Otto Dix, as well as Japanese and Inuit printmaking. Although gifted with the brush Tamaki’s comics and drawings are character driven and focus heavily on observational narrative. Her unique style often celebrates the inherent beauty in the grotesque. Gilded Lilies is a break out book from a huge talent.