Heads up, SFA mebers: A new issue of Gravy is on its way to your mailboxes. But before we leave issue #50 behind, we want to introduce you to Brooke Hatfield, the creator of the the To Kill A Mockingbird -inspired ham collage on the cover.
SFA: What gave you the idea for this image, and how did you execute it?
Brooke Hatfield: The scene where Scout is dressed as a ham in To Kill a Mockingbird has always been weirdly resonant, probably because I have so many strong positive feelings about both ham and Scout. She’s so important if you’re a tomboy in the South! Which I guess I was—if you could be a tomboy and still suck at softball.I drew the image digitally, then printed it out and traced the legs and torso with a scalpel onto a cooked ham steak. (The best part: EVEN MY MISTAKES TASTED LIKE HAM.) I cut the eye portion and lettering out of paper, placed them atop the ham, and photographed it all on a piece of white paper. Here is a photo from that late-night session. There was a little Photoshoppery—the legs had zero structural integrity, so I had to skewer them together with a toothpick, which I edited out—but by and large I made the whole thing by hand.
SFA: What’s your day job?
BH: I’m the communications coordinator at Georgia Organics, a member-based non-profit that connects organic food from Georgia farms to Georgia families. We also partnered with the SFA and Whole Foods Market on the excellent A Spoken Dish video storytelling project.) Favorite professional achievements include this video of a former Harlem Globetrotter doing basketball tricks with a cabbage and making Blingees of farmer beards. (Editor’s note: We didn’t know what Blingees were, either. Click the link to learn.) SFA: What’s your next side project? This June I’m releasing a ‘zine of Flannery O’Connor portraits at the Atlanta Zine Fest, which has been a really fun opportunity to convene 13 amazing artists on a single project. It’s going to be a Voltron of excellence. Emily Wallace, whose completely charming work should be familiar to SFA folk, is one of the artists.I also recently learned how to cross stitch (as part of Aubrey Longley-Cook’s Rupaul Cross Stitch Animation Workshop), and it’s really hard and kind of great and I look forward to doing it more.
