ETC

Journalist Spends Four Years Traversing India to Document Crumbling Subterranean Stepwells Before they Disappear

Across India an entire category of architecture is slowly crumbling into obscurity, and you’ve probably never even heard it. Such was the case 30 years ago when Chicago journalist Victoria Lautman made her first trip to the country and discovered the impressive structures called stepwells. Like gates to the underworld, the massive subterranean temples were designed as a primary way to access the water table in regions where the climate vacillates between swelteringly dry during most months, with a few weeks of torrential monsoons in the spring.

Thousands of stepwells were built in India starting around the 2nd and 4th centuries A.D. where they first appeared as rudimentary trenches but slowly evolved into much more elaborate feats of engineering and art. By the 11th century some stepwells were commissioned by wealthy or powerful philanthropists (almost a fourth of whom were female) as monumental tributes that would last for eternity. Lautman shares with Arch Daily about the ingenious construction of the giant wells that plunge into the ground up to 10 stories deep.

Vintage Dragon Ball poster (1989)

Bio: I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin with lots of siblings, a pet crow, and Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County.

(Liam is a cartoonist at The New Yorker and his work has also been featured on the cover of the The Guardian’s Saturday Review. Liam has a picture book called FISH coming out next spring, published by Neal Porter Books, and he is currently working on a graphic novel called Red Scare).

Find this print and more here.

Tools of choice: I draw with a mechanical pencil and a size 2 Winsor & Newton Series 7 brush of finest sable. Higgins Black Magic Ink, Pelikan Drawing Ink, Copic Opaque White, and a cheap set of well-worn Princeton brushes for wash. But–and this is a very big but–tools don’t matter: it’s all about what you do with them and how often you do it.

Tool I wish I could use better: I wish I could use all my tools better. As is written in Hagakure, The Way of the Cartoonist, “It is a mistake to put forth effort and obtain some understanding and then stop at that. At first putting forth great effort to be sure that you have grasped the basics, then practicing so that they may come to fruition is something that will never stop for your whole lifetime. Do not rely on following the degree of understanding that you have discovered, but simply think, ‘This is not enough’.”

Tool I wish existed: Something to reduce wrist, back, and eye strain. Everything else has a solution.

Tricks: For a long time I was trying too hard to leave white areas bare, now I finally discovered opaque white. I love my light box. Also, listening to a good audiobook seems to help keep me in my chair (of course this doesn’t work when you’re writing).

Misc: Sit up straight. Change the height of your chair or the tilt of your table monthly. Go for a walk. 

Links: liamfranciswalsh.com

ShowNotes///

LILITH