Beautiful Books: An interview with the artist behind Eraser

All Lit Up: The cover of Eraser is vibrant and evocative and captures the play’s exploration of identity, memory, and transformation in a dynamic way. How did you approach the design? Where did you start?

Cleopatria Peterson: The scenes with water are so important to the story and really show the transformations and the character’s experience. I started kind of pinpointing how each character was feeling and trying to portray that through their facial expressions or pose. The cover is everyone’s first entry point to the book and they were super supportive of having a cover that was a spread with French flaps. This allowed me to really play with the space each character could take up within it.

ALU: Eraser features a highly interactive and unconventional layout—with full-page illustrations, doodles, instructions, and choose-your-own-adventure elements that guide the reader through the narrative. How did you approach designing visuals that not only complemented the text but actively shaped how readers move through the book?

CP: The layout design was actually taken on by Avvai Ketheeswaran and she did such a fantastic job. I really got to just focus on the illustrations.

ALU: What was your collaboration process like with the authors Bilal Baig and Sadie Epstein-Fine? How much creative liberty did you have?

CP: We had back and forths over character expressions and conveying what the scenes meant. I was coming into a project they both knew intimately through actually putting on the performance with actors. So I deferred to what they wanted a lot to help bring their vision to life and it was great to have their insight into the characters as well!

ALU: How do you think illustration can push conversations forward in books that deal with complex or marginalized identities?

CP: Being able to show characters that have marginalized identities, it falls into the simple stance of representation matters. There are a lot more diverse books available now but there can always be more. I never got to see myself growing up in stories and it really made me want to change that landscape, to push the boundaries of who is telling stories. I need people like me to be making that work also; there is no such thing as a diversity win if people that look like me aren’t being paid to create the work.

ALU: Because discarded designs deserve some love too, were there other cover designs in contention? How did you settle on this one? 

CP: There is a sketch before I knew I would be allowed to have the cover be a spread. I was pretty concerned about every character getting their moment on the cover, and how busy it would end up being. It wouldn’t be fair to just pick certain characters either, so I’m glad we got to use the one we did.

ALU: You work across multiple mediums—narrative, printmaking, education, and illustration. How do these forms speak to or influence one another in your work? Do you feel a particular medium gives you the most freedom?

CP: Each medium does it’s job, I don’t think freedom is the right descriptor but certainly having multiple skills means I know the best way to execute certain ideas instead of being restricted. It means I can also rely on myself too. I guess as an artist I am using these skills to tell stories, and what I would illustrate may lend itself to something more fantastical than what I execute with printmaking work. There are different tactile methods and processes for each that fulfil me as an artist differently, and being able to switch mediums can often help my brain reset. When it comes to my work in education I just want to really work to encourage anyone that they can create art and not be limited to structures that may hinder their belief in that. Seriously, drawing is just mark making, everyone can do it.