Tourist of Heaven- Poem/Comic

Here’s my little comic that I created for Static Fish’s Fall 2021 Anthology.

I decided to illustrate a poem I wrote back in 2019, which you can see on this other blog post from back then. I’ll include some of my thoughts below.

I was experimenting with a black “Sharpie Peel-Off China Marker” that I found outside on the ground, scanning the drawings I made, then changing the color and adding text digitally. The anthology this semester had two color schemes, one light and one dark. I decided to use the light color palette to cover a topic that is not necessarily ‘light’, but something I feel like I would read aloud in a ‘light’ way.

I wrote this poem as a reflection of growing up in The Bible Belt as someone who is nonreligious and was a bit ashamed and secretive of that fact as a young child. I would go so far as to tell little white lies when someone would ask if and where I went to church. At most I would attend services with my friends during sleepovers and holidays (Catholic and Methodist), or with my girl scout troop on ‘Scout Sunday’ (Baptist). I even participated in handbells and a church orchestra for short stints, alongside my friends at their respective churches. Looking back I am fine with the fact I didn’t really have a religious upbringing within my family, while also having gained exposure to different types of services along the way.

Thanks for reading!