Variations of the Handless Maiden exist in several cultures around the world. As a studio project, we paired creating accurate drawings of information with portions of the story to create collages embedded with meaning and data. The collage below includes a dimensionally accurate depiction of a place of rest (my bedroom) as well as the sentence "He searched for seven years" with each letter representing a day, formatted to depict seven years worth of time.
My Portion of the Story
"The king vowed to go without eating or drinking and to travel as far as the sky is blue in order to find them. He searched for seven years. His hands became black, his beard moldy brown like moss, his eyes red-rimmed and parched. During this time he neither ate nor drank, but a force greater than he helped him live.
At last he came to the inn kept by the woodspeople. The woman in white bade him enter, and he laid down, so tired. The woman placed a veil over his face and he slept. As he breathed the breath of deepest sleep, the veil billowed and gradually slipped from his face. He awakened to find a lovely woman and a beautiful child gazing down at him."
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes
