More than Enough for an Orange

More than Enough for an Orange is a project I did with Arbitrary Ink, a public art collective based at Stanford that I co-run with its founder, Rima Makaryan. It's really more a rag-tag team of 3-6 artists of all different kinds, trying to figure out how to make art truly collaboratively, like a jazz band. We started out just trying to tell a story -- which then evolved into a story about an orange from outer space, falling into an earth with no plants whatsoever, befriending a dog named Clive, and then sacrificing itself to help out the sad citizens of this plantless world.

It started a photoshoot, wherein members of Arbitrary Ink dressed up as aliens coming down to earth. Then each of us came up with a response to the photoshoot, and one of them ended up being a story about oranges. We then kept brainstorming, brainstorming, writing a story, storyboarding, re-storyboarding, until we were happy with the final product. The story itself is entirely co-created. There's no one part that is "owned" by anyone -- we came up with it on a whiteboard together.

Then it became a children's book, which is what you see on the wall. Rima Makaryan, Arbitrary Ink's founder, and I were in charge of translating all of that story into the final product. I designed the characters and Rima designed the spaces. Then, it was pretty much just being wholed up in a room and frantically drawing until we were too exhausted to keep doing it anymore. 

You can see a snippet of this whole process in these photos, which are chronological. (It was a lot messier than it sounds, trying to decide what the orange should do and look like.) It was displayed at On Call Cafe, Stanford's only student-run cafe, in April of 2024. There's a Stanford Daily article on it.

Huge props to Rima -- this would never have happened without her.

The final product was drawn on Bristol paper, 12"x12" panels. Feel free to read the final book -- it has no color, so you can print it and color it yourself!