Desdemona McCannon

Manchester Metropolitan University

Desdemona McCannon was born in Liverpool and after studying for an English degree at Bristol University, a degree in Graphic Design at Liverpool John Moores and a masters at the University of Brighton she lived and worked in Tokyo for two years before settling in the North West of England with her husband and two children. She currently holds a fractional post as Senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art, part of Manchester Metropolitan University, and also works as a freelance writer, illustrator and curator. She is Principal Editor of the peer reviewed ‘Journal of Illustration’, and is on the steering committee of the ‘Illustration Research’ network. She has a strong interest in visual literacy and the historical and cultural relevance of illustration and print culture, and has given talks and papers at many conferences and institutions around the world.

Abstract:
The Illustrated Pilgrim: a collaborative exploration of Pilgrim sites in North Wales

Keywords: Collaboration, cartography, embodied knowledge, immersive experience, , emergent knowledge, experimental archaeology, gathering, tradition, landscape, history, palimpsest, distant past, singing stones, ancient buildings, holy wells, scared groves.

Working collaboratively and borrowing from the literary formality of welsh triadic tradition the illustrator (Desdemona McCannon), the singer (Emily Portman)and the poet (Eleanor Rees) propose to create narrative objects, poetry and song based on the physical and spiritual experience of the environment during pilgrimage. Gathering testimonies and stories from many sources, from local voices to those from distant times and places, and from the landscape itself, we propose to create a work that responds to the way that the landscape and sacred architecture of North Wales has fostered pilgrimages. A contemporary relationship with nature and evergreen cultures associated with ritualized journeys, pilgrimage, tourism and local histories will be explored. This project will be undertaken during the summer and autumn of 2014. The paper will describe and contextualise the project, looking at the historical role illustration has played in shaping artefacts associated with and documentation of ‘pilgrimage’ in Britian, in North Wales particularly, and will present the outcomes to date.