BUST Magazine #35 Oct/Nov 2005
The Guide: BOOKS
SPANIEL RAGE
By Vanessa Davis
(Buenaventura Press, 2005)
If it's brave to share your journal, how much more courageous is it to show self-portraits of your own big butt in polka-dot underwear for the world to see? Diarist-doodler Vanessa Davis has that kind of Chutzpah. Collecting odd moments of daily life on the pages of her sketchbook, she snags the unglamorous, doofy appeal of what goes on in any girl's head. Memories are made of this: hanging at the Wonton Garden with girlfriends, sitting at your work computer, spooning a Chihuahua, trying on boots, and reading your own sketchbook.
Although the many crushes on cute rock boys are not as interesting as her one sex-fantasy-with-clown, what distinguishes Davis's take is a reflective hunger for meaning and connection in the very mundane. I like the way she draws about drawing and thinks about thinking, sending out curious tentacles in search of identity. It's somber as well as quietly funny, since Davis's self-scrutiny encompasses every mood. The somewhat naïve drawing style has its charms-I especially dug the confused, crestfallen expressions on freckly faces. The narration, though, is tastier: "Sara says things to me that I wish boys would" or (hiding in the bathroom): "My 10-year-old cousin Max and I threw simultaneous tantrums, but his was over first."
And, about these drawings: "I don't know... I guess I am hoping some communication will come of this... She's definitely on the right track."
[FRAN WILLING]
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