Transcription
Uh, my name is Tilly Walden. I'm a cartoonist. Sometimes I call myself an illustrator, which I only do because I saw other cartoonists put that in their bios, but I'm not an illustrator. I'm a cartoonist and I make graphic novels and comics and I've been doing this for more than 10 years.
So, right now we're in the Henry Sheldon Museum. We're working on this exhibit which is called Drawing on the Archive. I was just double checking. Drawing on the archive, uh Tilly Walden's Charity and Sylvia. And this exhibit is about uh two real women who lived in Vermont in the 1800s, Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. And this is an exhibit um to kind of celebrate their life together as as two women who were um in a samesex relationship. It's also an exhibit that is examining the how I, as a cartoonist, took their story and turned it into a graphic novel. So, not only are we going to be surrounded by actual objects and things from their life, I'm also drawing on the walls and and showing parts of my process to show how I took their story and made it into a comic.
So this is their silhouette and you can see it was on two different pieces of paper. And so I don't know if the silhouette artist realized he was in the home of lesbians because these lesbians, Sylvia and Charity, then put their portraits next to one another looking at one another. And then we don't know who did it. We suspect Charity because she was a a more advanced seamstress um cut some of their hair. And you can see it's two different colors of hair. So, it's the both of them. And braided it around the silhouette um in the shape of a heart. And then they hung this in their house just to say to their community, you know, by the way, we're two women and and we're in love. We believe that this is Sylvia and this is Charity. There's the evidence is shaky, but but I think we can we can have some mild faith that that's Sylvia and that's charity. looking at one another for eternity.
This is the whole reason we know what their lives were like is Sylvia's journal uh from about 1820 to 1830. I had to try and understand their whole life story while only having a piece of their life. Um because this was the only time in their lives when I was able to get a lot of detail. And then through context like letters and poetry, I was able to get a little bit of texture on their later life. But this is this is the story. Sylvia wrote down everything that they did. It was so fun to be reading this while also being not far from where they were. Cuz oftentimes I'd be sitting here reading the journal and it would be snowing outside and then I'd read like a severe snowstorm. Like so I would think, oh, okay. like 200 years ago, Sylvia was sitting a few miles away from where I am right now, exper looking out the window at the same the same kind of snowstorm. And I was very happy to be able to take a lot of words directly from what Sylvia said and put it in the graphic novel because it felt important to be true to how she actually spoke.
This is a letter um from Eli Moody to Charity Bryant and he was the reverend at the Waybridge Congregational Church. He's really significant in their lives because he was one of the first religious leaders to really justify their relationship. Um and the way he did that was by becoming very good friends with them. It really signaled to the wider community that um their love was acceptable and there was a a Christian explanation for it. He often referred to them as sisters in Christ.
I'm Reverend Karen Esridge and I am the pastor at Waybridge Congregational Church. Religion and faith were big parts of Charity and Sylvia's lives. They were a member of this church. They were both members of Waybridge Congregational Church. Their names appear constantly in the church records. They um were serving leadership roles. They were raising money um for many purposes. One of which was actually to build this this space, this sanctuary, um which was built in the 1840s. So I I feel a really deep connection to to them and I'm grateful for what they did to build up this faith family that is still changing and growing and in existence today.
So as I was getting to participate and contribute to this project um at the Sheldon in their archive, I found one document that's in the exhibition which is a list of slips um slips And the way the document is organized, there's a spot for people's name, a number, and then a dollar amount. So, they were paying collecting payments for something to do with the church. This was found in the church's records. It wasn't initially clear to me what slips meant. It ends up that that was a word that they would use sometimes for pews. So, um, paying money for a pew was not not exactly like you pay the money and this is your specific pew. was more like a way to contribute to the church. Um although the pews were numbered at that point. Unfortunately, we don't know. I don't haven't found a map yet or a description of where exactly that would have been in the space. But um on there is a line in that list of financial contributions that has um C. Bryant and S. Drake um together.
What I'm most excited about for people to see in this exhibit is to see the interplay of like art and illustration with the reality. So seeing something like me drawing these women on the walls as I imagined them, but then also very much seeing their hair braided together in hearts, seeing the cradle that they would lie in and seeing the place on the cradle where one of them had their hand so frequently. There's a groove in the wood. So, I'm excited for people to see the objects they left behind and and get a sense of what life was like for them. Um, because in their lifetime, this was this was normal. This was modern. This was all they knew. Um, and I want people to try and like step back in time a little bit in this exhibit and try and sort of be with them where they were.