When comic artist Wallis Eates saw an ad from Headway East London looking for an artist in residence for the charity’s art studio, she knew she had to apply…
Headway’s East London studio provides a place for members, who all have acquired brain injuries, to create artwork.
Eates’ own line of work leading up to this included autobiographical comics, and digital storytelling with prisoners.
“I’d been looking for ways to help others share their stories or collaborate on story-sharing,” she tells NR Times.
Eates applied for the artist in residency, outlining in her application that she’d like to do comics of Headway members and incorporate their work into them. Eates’s application was successful, and she spent six weeks going into the studio three times a week.
“I was allowed to mill about, sit at the desk and ask what they were up to. They’d share their work with me, and I’d tell them about my project,” she says.
“They’d share experiences with me that I’d remember when I was looking at their work online, later, to see how I could combine it all.”
Eates says the experience made her feel inspired, and she came away with a strong feeling of the sense of community she saw in the studio.
“It was such a vibrant atmosphere,” she says. “I knew everyone was managing all kinds of stuff in their lives, stuff connected with their brain injury, and they were coming to the studio and creating incredible pieces of artwork.
“It reminded me of when I was in school when we did art and I wasn’t precious with it, I was doing it for the love of it. That’s what they were doing in the studio.”
The experience made Eates think about the individual and the collective, and she wanted to explore the dynamic between the two via shared experience.
Eates was taken up by Unbound, a publishing platform that supports people to crowdfund the funds to publish books. She’s currently halfway through her crowdfunding, before her finished book, Like an Orange, is published.
She says the name of the book came from several inspirations.
“One of the members I spoke with, who’d fallen down the stairs, said the brain surgeon he worked with said that the head is like an orange. That’s all he told me, but I assume he meant the elasticity, the texture.
“I later spoke to someone else who said the surgeon told her her brain was growing tumours like Saville grows oranges.”
Eates didn’t know anything about brain injuries before going into the project – and she’s learnt several lessons she hopes to pass on to readers of Like an Orange.
“I kind of knew brain injuries would affect everyone differently, and I went in with that agenda, ensuring the uniqueness of each member comes through.
“The biggest lesson I learnt was when we went on a daytrip to the Tate museum and I saw how invisible disabilities can be. Some of the members had nothing visible about them that suggested they were having a challenge walking down the road, but I knew they were,” she said.
“That really brought home to me how, when we go out onto the streets, we don’t know who we’ll be sharing that space with, we don’t know what’s going on with anyone who’s around us.”
“One chap kept going in front of the road or walking in front of people. At any time, we could be walking down the street and passing someone with a brain injury.”
Eates was also surprised to see such a positive atmosphere in Headway’s studio.
“Two members said they wouldn’t go back to life before their bran injuries,” she says, “because the lessons they’ve learnt have been more valuable since before then. It was extraordinary – I want to share these things in the book.”
Eates is looking forward to the members seeing their work in the final book.
“Most of them didn’t work autobiographically, they did artwork for the pleasure it, for escapism, focused concentration, and the joy of applying colour,” she says.
“It will be interesting for them to see how their artwork and their stories have inspired others.”
