LETTERING AT PLAY

Art&Culture

Illustrator Cielle Graham forms the alphabet through the twists and turns of dogs chasing a ball.

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LETTERING AT PLAY

WORDS BY Julia Gessler

All great syllabary books assert the guiding principle of lettering: that the shapes come in multitudes, creatively varied but cohesive in style. In Cielle Graham’s illustrated book, An Alphabet of Dogs, each letter takes the form of a small shiny ball surrounded by a cast of dogs with fixated eyes, and can be read as a sweetly entertaining language of play as much as a character of sound. “Somehow I started wondering if there might actually be enough dog breeds to create something more considerable,” says the Montreal-based artist, whose project began with a single drawing simply titled, The Ball.

Graham regularly creates worlds of entangled animals, where the limbs of hyenas and the long tongues of okapi curl and tumble together. “Animals really [make] sense to me,” she explains. “Their language [is] clear, without reservation.” The intricately inked Alphabet of Dogs is filled with unshakeable determination high on competitive spirit and a singular purpose, but there’s also an air of quiet humour that pervades it. The nearly 200 dogs in her book are, in a sense, more frolicsome, searching for that happy ending—a ball caught—with joyful intensity.

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All artwork courtesy of Cielle Graham
ciellegraham.com
@ciellegraham

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