Will Library Exhibition: The Illustrated Obituary of Moses Marques

The Illustrated Obituary of Moses Marques commemorates the life of Moses Marques, D.S.H.*, throughout our eighteen-year coexistence. It is a graphic elegy and a stealth memoir.

Hand-drawn and lettered, the four-hundred-word obituary, differentiated by a signature font, winds through the book, elaborated upon with detailed pen and ink drawings. A Greek chorus of background text and imagery simultaneously amplifies the events at hand. The “chorus” includes fictitious obituaries, want ads, fragments of poetry, Enlightenment quotations, and other ephemera. The mash-up is both content and imagery.

Moses possessed undeviating self-awareness. She was a Bartleby sort of character; all this stuff happens around her yet she . . . maintains. She thinks in Edwardian script.

*Domestic Short Hair, a non-pedigreed cat noted for its range of temperament and its unidentifiable parentage

Sarah Marques studied drawing and printmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2010 Sarah won the Edward Rivera prize for Autobiography while completing a  yearlong Autobiography Seminar at the Center for Worker Education, CUNY. She shares her Yonkers, New York home with Valerie, Wendell, and Olympia. One of them is not a cat. For more of her work, see www.mosesthecat.com