An illustration and culture magazine that celebrates doing-it-yourself.

WORDS: ZITA ABILA
ILLUSTRATION: NATALIE KAY THATCHER

Excepts from Natalie’s zine, The Whole Universe In A Glass of Wine

In the words of Camberwell College of Arts Illustration graduate Natalie Kay-Thatcher, zines are “little invitations into people’s brains”. Her intricately designed black-and white zine, The Whole Universe in a Glass of Wine, inspired by the poem of the same name by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard P Feynman, feels as if it has actually shrunk the entire universe into its few pages.  With its beautiful celestial illustrations, it takes you on a journey through time and space, exploring the art and poetry of science. And it opens the door into Natalie’s science and art-filled mind, which Flamingo now takes a tour around.

How did you become interested in science?
My father was a big influence; he has a science background and a wonderful imagination. He introduced me to Feynman. I remember asking questions like, “what would happen to me if I suddenly got transported between two colliding binary neutron stars?” and getting genuinely good answers from him.

Were you good at science subjects in school?
Not really. I think this was partly to do with the seeming lack of interest from the teachers themselves. I couldn’t even relate the interesting things that my father showed my brother and me to the things I was taught in school. It seemed like they were separate subjects entirely.

I still have a quite basic understanding of most science, not for want of trying. But thanks to people like Feynman, scientific complexity can be expressed in a way that we can all understand. And he does it with charm and humour, making use of metaphors and personal anecdotes. Science really needs personalities in order for it to be relatable. Facts can end up being like a factory and regurgitated uninterestingly, like in school. With care and attention, and without being too cheesy, facts can be sung like hymns and written like poetry. It can be quite powerful.

Why do you like creating art from science?
I guess when you have an obsession you like to tell people about it. Just like street corner megaphone, preaching comes from a very passionate place inside. It is also a great platform to reach wide audiences (graphic art, not street preaching) about a really important subject.

Science has some truly wonderful narratives and people in its history, as well as some very dark tales, like the construction of the atomic bomb in Los Alomos by a group of physicists – Feynman included – and the subsequent atrocities that were carried out as a result. There should be a place in graphic art where stories in the history of science, good or ill, can be celebrated and exposed.

Your work is full of such amazing detail; what materials do you use?
Gouache paint, rotring pens and buckets of glooping, black Indian ink.

What are you up to now?
Drawing for pleasure. Drawing for cash. I am also working on a book about the 17th century astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler. And I have an unrealistic amount of zines planned. I have one about Nikola Tesla that has been stuck in my head for ages. Someday I may even revisit Mr Feynman, as I’m not sure I’m through with him yet.

Natalie Recommends…

1. Zines
Chan, Fan by Aaron Cook – illustrations of Jackie Chan doing various rhyming couplet actions.
Fragments by Joe Kessler – stunning strips from a true comic enthusiast and brilliant story teller.
Tree Dwellers by Katie Scott – fantasy biological forms beautifully printed.
Stay Safe by James Cartwright – everything you need to know to survive the apocalypse.
Steak by Lewis Wade Stringer – a screenprinted zine about meat, wrapped in meat packaging, tied up with butcher’s string? It’s so good, I almost resent it.
Melonfarmer by Zeel and Orson – a father-son super team of true imagination scribblers, filled with funny and touching comic strips.

I could go on…

2. Her illustration classmates
There were cascades of different interests in my illustration class: medical dissecting room illustration, graphic representations of sound, confused cats, anatomical bears, large scale automata machines explaining the tectonic plates, hp lovecraftian inspired fictional landscapes, americana signage, whales, weaving and football. What excellence! What a mouthful. You can’t find a more interesting environment.

www.nataliekaythatcher.com