Back in AP art during high school in the mid-1980s, I vividly remember dabbling in scratchboard (according to m-w.com “a black-surfaced cardboard having an undercoat of white clay on which an effect resembling engraving is achieved by scratching away portions of the surface to produce white lines”) and completely screwing it up. So the fact that Leah Hayes created Funeral of the Heart, a 120-page book drawn on scratchboard, caught my attention (and earned my unceasing respect) rather quickly. Thanks to some assistance from Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds, I was able to recently email interview Hayes. Here’s part of Fantagraphics description of the book: “Hayes creates a world of unease and ambiguity populated by obsessive characters, forlorn animals, and mysterious, inanimate objects; odd occurrences, unnerving deaths and unconventional but genuine love bind these characters and their stories together.” In addition to some sample pages, Fantagraphics set up a Flickr slideshow for the book and also offered a 10-page PDF preview. My thanks to Hayes for the interview, and please be sure to also check out her musical projects, Scary Mansion and La Laque.

Tim O’Shea: What made you decide to work with scratchboard for Funeral of the Heart?

Leah Hayes: It happened by accident. I was playing around with Scratchboard at the time that Fantagraphics talked to me about publishing a second book with them. I had written part of one story just for fun, so I decided to go with it.

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