TeaTime
By stef lenk
(Self-published)
REVIEW BY Tara Quinn
In Toronto artist stef lenk’s world, tea time is an invitation to adventure. The latest installment in lenk’s evolving graphic series, TeaTime follows a young girl who is drawn into an antique shop by toys that are not as inanimate as they seem. Both the eerie story and the unusual wordless format of the graphic novel indicate that something extraordinary is afoot.
TeaTime, a single story told over two books, is part of a larger series that explores the systems of the human body through abstract metaphor. Each episode follows a single girl through a different environment, with each presenting a new challenge. In TeaTime, the antique shop is the perfect backdrop to showcase lenk’s acuity for detail—the toys pulse with life, and the soft watercolours give a dreamy glow to the sequence.
Indeed, with the absence of dialogue, lenk’s drawings assume the full weight of the story. Each exquisite page is like a stand-alone painting, with ordinary objects conveying a rich allegory of some deeper, darker meaning. Doll houses, costume trunks and Russian dolls all represent delightful playthings, but also suggest portholes into other possible worlds that the protagonist must barrel her way through.
