Indoor Voice
Conundrum Press, 2006
120p, Softcover, B&W interiors
Gilded Lilies is artist Jillian Tamaki’s first book of illustrations, drawings, and comic stories. 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. 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.