Reader's Diary #2265 - Alison McCreesh: Petrozavodsk

In 2018's Norths by Alison McCreesh, she documented a family/work trip across the Circumpolar world as a series of hand drawn postcards sent back home to friends and family. Just two postcards, sent from Petrozavodsk, Russia, mentioned a health scare involving a lump in her breast.

In 2021's Petrozavodsk, she expands more upon that ordeal: the stress, dealing with foreign health care, not speaking the language and so on. 

By it's very nature, it's more personal than Norths, and maybe it's her eloquent way of expressing her mindset at the time, but the isolation is palpable. I think one of the moments that really hit it home for me was her lamenting that because her mind was on other, more critical things she hadn't had "real conversations about real issues with real Russians." You don't have to be having a health emergency thousands of miles away from home to relate to that aspect of stress.

Art-wise it's a bit rougher, sketchier than much I've seen by McCreesh but it adds to the personal art journal vibe.