3 Questions with Juniper Kim

Juniper Kim is a comics artist and writer currently pursuing an MFA at the Center for Cartoon Studies. Their work has recently appeared in Nashville Review, Black Warrior Review, Catapult, and SweetLit. You can find more of their work at juniperdoodles.com or say hello via Instagram @doodlingjuniper.

HFR’s Web Editor Christina D’Antoni chats with Juniper about their comic “Mirrors & Stones” from Issue 68.

Can you share a little about your artistic process when creating comics? I’m curious if the drawing or writing comes first, or if you conceive of the comic as a whole when drafting?

It depends! For this comic, I started by free-drawing while meditating on an idea. At its conception the idea was wordless, but basically went something like this: when you look in the mirror, you expect there to be a straightforward dialogue between two images (yourself and your mirror image). In reality, the dissonance between your self-image and your mirror image give rise to other, figurative reflections coming up between you and your literal reflection. I tried to play with that idea, eventually arriving at this visually repetitive comic examining and re-examining the same faces and shapes in different ways.

In “Mirrors & Stones,” the figure looks at themselves through a mirror, which is an image I’ve noticed reoccurs in your comics. Can you speak to this theme of the self vs. the perceived self in your work? 

I’m obsessed with the concept of the mirror image, partly because I’m interested in psychoanalytic theory; I was first introduced to it as an English major in undergrad, and it changed the way I think about the way we relate to our bodies. Theory stuff aside, what’s most important and interesting to me is to think about mirrors as a device for both literal and figurative self-reflection; they supposedly allow you to see yourself the way others see you, but it’s never that straightforward. Also, mirrors are just a fun visual device; they’re always interesting to draw, especially in the context of comics. 

Is there anything you’d like to share about “Mirrors & Stones” that we don’t know? 

At the time I made this comic, I’d just gotten Procreate for iPad and had never done digital drawing, so I wanted to use this comic as an opportunity to create something that would be well-served by the digital format. With digital drawing, you can copy, paste, undo, and erase as you please, which isn’t always a good thing (I find that too many opportunities to redo things over and over again can cramp the creative process), but with this one I think it helped me explore repetitiveness and reflection in a way that I couldn’t have with traditional materials.