This month in Open Studio, artist Andy Gouveia created a story sequence on six large wood panels on the front porch of The Walt Disney Family Museum. The panels featured a series of line work illustrations telling an adapted version of the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. The series of illustrations served to focus the viewer’s attention to the key storytelling moments of the plot, and encouraged the viewer to imagine one continuous story from the first panel to the last.
Additionally, visitors were invited to create stories of their own invention using activity sheets on which a series of panels were drawn. Telling a story in six images challenges an artist and storyteller to determine the most important moments of the story, as well as requires the artist to decide what visual cues are needed to make the story coherent and interesting.
These visual storytelling activities relate to and bring to life the current exhibition Camille Rose Garcia: Down the Rabbit Hole. The exhibition features the artwork Garcia created for her adaption of the Lewis Carroll classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As a means of engaging with Garcia’s work, Open Studio intended to show how stories can be told using pictures, such as they might on a storyboard, graphic novel, or comic book.
Alyssa Carnahan
Open Studio Coordinator
at The Walt Disney Family Museum