about the project

Shape Becomes Story: Collected Pages for In-betweens is a companion to the research and artwork created by Carmen Ribaudo as the 2021-2022 Creative Fellow at the Providence Public Library (PPL). This digital reading room presents a variety of works from PPL's Special Collections as well as the zine library at Queer.Archive.Work (QAW) that have figured in Carmen's artistic process while working on her project for PPL's Spring 2022 exhibition "Tomboy."

This reading room provides a glimpse into a broader universe of art and writing spanning time and place that houses Carmen's work. Our goal for this project was to place older materials contained within PPL's archive in conversation with work by contemporary queer artists and zinemakers. In curating and designing this reading room, we focused on building a thematic throughline of wonder—for the world, the self, and the body. We invite you to reflect on your own stories and build your own throughlines as you peruse this space.

Shape Becomes Story was developed collaboratively by Carmen Ribaudo and Kate Hao, with crucial support from Angela DiVeglia, Janaya Kizzie, and Christina Bevilacqua. Please see the credits section at the end of this page for a full list of the works displayed here. If you like what you see, all these materials and more are available to view in-person, either through visiting PPL's Special Collections or at QAW's Open Library Hours!

Thank you for stopping by!

using the reading room

For functionality, this site is ideally viewed on a larger screen. Images with small text can be opened in full size. Image descriptions & transcriptions are linked adjacent to the scans. Hovering/tapping on over certain images may lead to different views — and there are hyperlinks embedded throughout the text & page scans that will take you to different sections of the room as well. In other words, there's more than one path you can take while exploring this space!

SHE IS ELECTRIC

"living btwn the lines" by Andriniki Mattis (2019) | image description | expand image

paper cutouts of a white pair of scissors, a black bolt of lightning, and a white hand reaching up

i walk this rod / of a body / attracting lightning / at every turn

—Andriniki Mattis

But it is when the electric matter flows quietly toward the heavens, and takes for its pole the body of man himself, that the spectacle is truly marvelous.

—Thunder and Lightning

from Thunder and Lightning (1875) | image description

Photo of the beginning of the chapter titled 'Sheet Lightning' from 'Thunder and Lightning'

If ordinary lightning has lost its harmonious character it is because it has approached nearer to us. Either it has assimilated some of our imperfections, or the harmony, in too close proximity, escapes our feeble reasoning powers.

—Thunder and Lightning | image description | expand image

SHE IS CLOUD

Scans of a fold-out comic panel with a collage of green trees in front a blue sky with white clouds and the rising sun

Scans of a fold-out comic panel with a figure sitting on a moon-like shape, suspended by ropes like a swing and in front of a wave of green water

by Carmen Ribaudo (2022) | image descriptions | expand images

A scan from the Illustrated Library of Wonders that reads: 'Appearance and Motion of the Clouds'

STORIES OPEN & FOLD

Manila envelope on a bright pink background with an illustration of a sticky note that reads 'PLEASE TAKE.'

A blank white page with teal text printed around its perimeter

from Please Take (Prompts) by Olive B. Godlee | image descriptions

from Heads, Bodies & Legs

by Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping (1946)

Image from 'Heads, Bodies & Legs' that alternates between two different illustrations of torsos when clicked

Image from 'Heads, Bodies & Legs' that alternates between two different illustrations of legs when clicked

PLEASE CLICK!

image descriptions

Large yellow sheet of paper against a bright pink background with teal text and a drawing of a person lying in a tub

from Please Take (Prompts) by Olive B. Godlee | image description | expand image

PROCESS IS PLAY

white spiral-bound notebook page that reads 'LOOK THROUGH WITH YOUR EYES & TAKE A PICTURE & DRAW IT' in purple bubble letters

white spiral-bound notebook page with two images and handwritten text in purple ink

white spiral-bound notebook page with an image of a figure in a desert and handwritten text in purple ink

white drawing of a hand holding up a sheet of paper with a triangular cutout in the center, like a viewfinder

Inspired by, and dedicated to, artist, educator, and social justice advocate Corita Kent, Slow Looking: These Views Are Our Tools is an invitation to practice a different way of seeing our world. In this artist book, Lukaza Branfman-Verrisimo offers us prompts, coloring pages, and 2 dicut viewfinders, as tools for slowness.

from Slow Looking by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, published by Childish Books (2021) | image descriptions | expand images

"We can start with random shapes that don't mean anything, and just through the act of touching them ... you can make stories."

Photograph of a projected text on material play and embodiment. Full transcription in linked image description.

Animation of small shapes being rearranged into a grinning face and then a car with trees

from Carmen Ribaudo's Animated Art Talk at the Providence Public Library (May 14, 2022) | image descriptions

A large oval-shaped cutout of yellow paper against a light salmon pink background. The image flips upside-down when the cursor hovers over it.

SHE LIGHTS UP

It is incontestable that these strange phenomena are not entirely contrary to physical principals, and that philosophers and sages might be more or less favoured by the hidden lights of nature. Nothing prevents our supposing that nervous impressionable individuals, as the interpreters of dreams and visions generally are, may be such good conductors of electricity as to occasion these spontaneous discharges of electric fluid.

—Thunder and Lightning

Light green page on a lavender background. The page features a print in red ink of a paper-cut epigram by Patricia Lockwood.

from Elastic Capacity by K. Laster (2021) | image description | expand image

Light yellow page on a lavender background. The page features a print in black ink of a paper-cut epigram by Audre Lorde.

Yes, there is no doubt of it; history attests the fact; the earliest nations thought that the stars were animated, living bodies. In their eyes the heavenly bodies were superior beings, good or bad deities, friends or enemies, and ever ready to engage in conflicts of which the issue might be favorable or injurious to mortals.

—Meteors, Aerolites, Storms, and Atmospheric Phenomena

WE ARE FULL

Black and white illustration scanned against a red background. The illustration's text reads, 'All flowers in time bend toward the sun'

from ROT #9 by Arthur Katrina | image description | expand image

Will the sun rise again?

Will our beloved aurora return?

Will the powers of the night be conquered by the god of the day?

Photo of the first page of the preface from 'Meteors, Aerolites, Storms, and Atmospheric Phenomena'

from Meteors, Aerolites, Storms, and Atmospheric Phenomena (1876) |
image description

Two-page, black and white spread two winged figures locking hands over a cracked surface. Large text along the top and bottom of the image reads 'CAN'T CRUSH OUR SPIRIT'

from ROT #8 by Arthur Katrina | image description

Photo of a page from the preface of 'Meteors, Aerolites, Storm, and Atmospheric Phenomena'

from Meteors, Aerolites, Storms, and Atmospheric Phenomena (1876) |
image description

Scan of a two-page spread against a red background. The left page has a black and white pattern, and the right page contains capitalized text that says 'ADDRESSED TO RUNAWAY GIRLS OF ALL GENDERS & SEXES'

from ROT #9 by Arthur Katrina | image description

The Aurora, or Dawn, itself was one of these divinities, and the most charming of them. Always beautiful with freshness and youth, she was ever saluted and hailed with gratitude, because she it was who came the first to announce the defeat of the powers of darkness and evil, and each morning, like a tender and faithful messenger, awoke the sons of men.

A collage of paper cutouts showing a brown landscape, a patch green evergreen trees on the left, a white road shrinking into the distance, and a large white and gray sun taking up most of the sky. The horizon cuts horizontally across the image's center.

Scan of a two-page spread against a red background. The left page has a handwritten table of contents, and the right page shows an illustration of the Moon tarot card.

from ROT #8 by Arthur Katrina | image description | expand image

Photo of the title page spread from 'Wonders of the Moon.' The left page has a large, detailed image of the moon in a black sky, and the right page lists the book's title and publication info.

from Wonders of the Moon (1873) | image description

Gif made from a clip of Carmen's 'We Are Full' animation

from We Are Full by Carmen Ribaudo (2022) | image description | see full video

credits

from the Q.A.W. zine library:
living btwn the lines by Andriniki Mattis. New York: Belladonna*, 2019.
Please Take (Prompts) by Olive B. Godlee. 2019.
Slow Looking by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo. South Portland, ME: Childish Books, 2021.
Elastic Capacity by K. Laster. Oakland, CA: National Monument Press, 2021.
ROT #8 by Arthur Katrina.
ROT #9 by Arthur Katrina.

from PPL Special Collections:
Thunder and lightning by W. de Fonvielle. Translated from the French, and edited by T. L. Phipson. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1875.
Meteors, aerolites, storms, and atmospheric phenomena. Translated from the French of Zurcher and Margolle. by William Lackland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1876.
Wonders of the moon. Translated from the French of Amedee Guillemin by Miss M.G. Mead. Edited, with additions, by Maria Mitchell. New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1873.
Heads, Bodies & Legs by Denis Wirth-Miller and Richard Chopping. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1946, reprinted 1955.

collected pages for in-betweens