The Making of The Girl and the Boat

A Tale of Cascading art-making that became a Picture book (2010-2023)

In 2010-2011 I choreographed my dance MFA graduate thesis concert. At the very end of the hour length concert of my work, I had asked the dancers to gather all the props and set pieces used throughout the performance, and assemble them in the middle of the stage into a “boat" of sorts. They climbed on board, and a projection of sunset, ocean, and seagulls flying played behind this scene as the lights faded to black. I painted that final scene for my dancers as a thank you gift for the amazing year we spent together. This imagery felt symbolic of the journeys our tight group of college friends was about to embark upon. After graduation we all moved into different corners of the world. This moment on the boat was one of our last moments all together in one place. I drew a ship on the back of the paper program for my concert. This image of a boat lingered on for me, resonating with artistic meaning to further mine.

After graduation in 2011, I moved to Berkeley, California and became roommates for a year with my younger brother Elliott. One day, Elliott found an abandoned boat hull on the side of a street in Berkeley and brought it home to our apartment. This would become a pivotal day. I was completely enchanted. I cleaned it up and ran to the hardware store to buy a dowel to make it a mast. Then I sat on the floor with some muslin and hand sewed a sail for it. Thrilled, I posed it in various places in the garden, snapping pictures of it against a fence covered in nasturtiums. Then I wondered if it could float so I drove it to the Berkeley Marina. A bunch of children who were playing on the beach and jumped in the water to watch as and I rolled up my blue jeans and waded into the water with it. Indeed it floated! Little did I know, these magical moments would become the opening scenes of my future book that would be published 12 years later.

From 2011-2013, I was often creating art with the boat. I staged the boat in different scenes and sometimes painted it, fascinated by the whimsical stories you could read from these images.

In 2012-2013 I was artistic director of my own small dance collective in the Bay Area called “9 Shards.” I began using the boat in lots of our dance work and in imagery for our website and show posters. The boat became a character in our choreographic works. I could be spotted walking down the streets of San Francisco with my arm wrapped around the boat while carrying other props and lighting fixtures for dance pieces. In the pics below you’ll see dancers, Abby Stopper and Lucy Vasserman, standing outside our rehearsal studio carrying parts of the boat and another moment where Shannon Leypoldt held the boat for the bows of one of our concerts. The boat performed with us at the San Francisco’s Garage underground theater, ODC theater, and also went on tour with us to southern California to perform at Scripps College. It was such a compelling image that scenes from those performances inspired me to paint more paintings of it.

One day in rehearsal around 2013, I created a scene in which dancer Abby Stopper sat on a dimly lit stage facing the boat and spoke to it, asking where it was going. This scene haunted me so much that I went on to paint it as a 30” x 30” oil painting. By 2015, I had become a full-time freelance painter and this oil painting got to hang in a 4 month exhibit of 44 of my paintings at the Google legal building in Mountain View, California. After that show, it came back to my living room where I stared at it daily, always feeling that there was a story to be told from that image. This painting would became the catalyst for my book years later. I would later model the cover of my book after this image.

One night in January 2017, while sitting in my Berkeley living room looking at this painting, I started spontaneously storyboarding a children’s book. The story that poured out of me that night was in part based on the real facts of how I had come to have this boat: finding the boat abandoned on the side of a road, and taking it home to clean it up and sew it a new sail. But it also explored the mystery and intrigue of the boat character we had been developing in choreographic work. I wondered about the question Abby had asked the boat: where was it going? A boat is not meant to stay still; it is a vessel for traveling. Set in a child’s world, facing goodbyes is an important lesson, and I knew that in my story, the child would need to let it go. My storyboard got to that moment of the girl letting go of the boat, but it went no further.

A few months later I was still so obsessed with these characters that I carved them into bowls in a ceramics class I was taking that spring.

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By October of 2017 my life in the Bay Area took a turn and in January of 2018 I packed all my worldly belongings into 13 boxes and drove them to the port in Oakland where they would board a ship bound for Maui, my birth home. Then I got on a plane, leaving that oil painting with Abby, and somehow forgetting my beloved boat altogether. I spent 2018 building a new life on Maui where I had not lived since 2005 when I first left for college. My world exploded open in countless ways that year. In June of 2018, one of my new Maui friends, Malia Crouse, invited me to her dad’s birthday party. At the party, I met Gill MacBarnet, an accomplished children’s book author and illustrator. I took a chance and asked her if she would be willing to talk to me about the process of creating a children’s book. She was incredibly gracious and said yes. We had a first meeting and she taught me about storyboarding and character sketches. Then, she generously set another meeting to give me accountability to get my book off the ground. I spent all of July 2018 doing detailed pencil sketches for every page of the book. The story I developed in those sketches became even more imbued with my life’s path, having let go of to a big part of my world in the Bay Area. But now, standing in a whole new place with incredible new friends and opportunities blooming, I was filled with the fresh confidence that amazing new experiences and relationships follow heartbreaking goodbyes.

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In August of 2018, I had developed a full “dummy” of the book packed with detailed pencil sketches. I submitted it to an agent and got rejected. That same month, my mom was in a bad car accident. My world shifted again in the aftermath and I set the book aside for a few years, meanwhile navigating the hit of the pandemic and rebuilding my own and my families art businesses to stay afloat. Then in December of 2020, my friend Jenny Coon wrote and published a children’s book. Seeing her bring her wonderful book to the world, reminded me of this huge dream, and lit a fire in me to get back to work of this project, but this time I vowed to make it much, much better. I knew I hadn’t taken those illustrations in 2018 to the level that I can take them. In February 2021, I decided to paint every page as a beautiful detailed watercolor painting. I got 10 pages in and was not satisfied. While they were cute and sweet, I was not achieving the level of realism I knew I could achieve if I worked with real child models to observe. I also wanted to be doing oil paintings, where there is so much more availability for richness and depth.

One night in February 2021, I told a friend on the phone that I just wished I had real models so I could observe them, see how light fell on them, make them costumes and see how the clothing would move with them. After I hung up from that call, I realized I could have real models if I just did the work to make that happen. The next morning I realized that my mom’s physical therapist from that aforementioned car accident, Mylene Motomura, had a daughter named Tehya who looked EXACTLY like the girl I had been trying to draw! We had become good friends with Mylene through the process of my mom’s healing! With my heart racing, I reached out to her. I then also realized that Jenny Coon (the friend who had published a book) had a daughter named Kaia who looked just like the curly-haired, joyful friend character I had dreamed of for the ending. Both moms responded immediately and were thrilled to have their kids model for me! This began a whole new chapter of not just making a book, but basically directing a movie! The part of the main little girl would be played by Tehya Artzi (left) and the part of the new friend at the end would be played by Kaia Coon (right).

The craziest part of this is that, in retrospect, I can see that I had to wait until 2021 for these amazing girls to be the right age to be in this book. When I had met them before the pandemic they were toddlers and babies! In a weird twist of fate, my mom’s awful car accident and long healing process, which had led me to set aside my book for a few years, also connected me to the perfect children at the perfect ages to bring my book to life. FATE.

Next I had to find a boat like the one I had left in Berkeley (this still breaks my heart!) that would be big enough next to the kids. I scoured Ebay, Etsy, and Craigslist for weeks, even researching whether I could make a boat myself, but that sounded beyond my skillset. Finally I found a perfect sized boat on Craigslist in Northern California. A very kind man named Ed was willing to send it all the way to Maui and was excited that the old model boat collecting dust in his shop would have a new life starring in a children’s book! On April 8, 2021, the boat arrived and I was so thrilled to have all my characters.

Next I had to sew costumes and build sets and props.

I had always envisioned the main little girl in a light blueish long-sleeved dress with a high bodice and 3 buttons down the back. I searched everywhere for a pattern like this and found the Oliver + S Playtime dress pattern. I ordered Nani Iro blue speckled fabric from Stone Mountain and Daughter. This is a special thing to note because when I first came across Nani Iro’s watercolor paintings on fabric around 2015, that planted huge seeds of inspiration that led me to expand my painting business into a textile business. The fact that my main character starts wearing Nani Iro fabric and ends wearing my own fabric is a story of the birth of Julia Allisson Cost Textiles! Stone Mountain and Daughter was also the store in Berkeley where I finally learned how to sew properly from the amazing teacher Mary Patrone. This costume is an ode to all of these people and histories.

I wanted the friend at the end to be the embodiment of radiant sunshine in a pinafore style dress. I had yellow linen cotton twill in my stash and bought the Oh Me Oh My Sewing Flutter Pinafore dress pattern. By March of 2021 I had both costumes ready to go, made to the measurements of Tehya and Kaia!

I knew I wanted the boat to be wrapped in a colorful patchwork quilt in at least one scene, and I did not own a quilt like that. I took this as my impetus to make the quilt I have always wanted to make with scraps of every fabric my mom sewed my brother and I when we were young children. I pieced tons of scraps together, including bits of my own textile designs, plus clothes I had sewn for Maddy and Brooke, my honorary nieces in Berkeley whom I had help raise when I lived there. What resulted is the memory quilt of my dreams, and the perfect quilt to lovingly wrap around the boat in this book. I finished this quilt in April 2021.

I spent a lot of time location scouting in my yard and around the island to find scenery and compositions that would work with my vision for each page. Deciding on the perspective of the viewer for every scene was a huge decision process, as this can have major effects on the way the scene reads emotionally. By May 2021, I had elaborate schedules, check lists, and mood boards established for each page and I was ready to begin staging the scenes with my models in costume. I scheduled photo sessions with Tehya and Kaia at times of day according to the lighting needed for each scene. The below 4 scenes from my yard will look familiar if you know this book!

Here I am heading out to a photoshoot at the beach in 2021, carrying my boat everywhere just like I did 10 years prior through the streets of San Francisco.

One of my favorite moments from the photoshoots was when we did the overhead shot of Tehya letting go of the boat. We decided that we would stage this at a pool so that I could stand on a ladder to get an overhead perspective. I wanted to see Tehya’s outstretched hands at the same time as seeing the boat moving away. Tehya’s mom Mylene graciously jumped in the pool and held the boat (which was very tippy) and her dad Ilan (a professional windsurfer who knows everything about sailing), said that we needed waves in the water and he grabbed one of his paddles to create realistic water action. Meanwhile, I was on an 8 foot ladder, so tickled and grateful to have the whole family helping make this moment happen so I could paint it realistically, including being able to see what the wet dress looked like swirling in the water. Tehya was totally delighted to get to wear her dress in the pool. So ironically, the saddest moment in the book was the most fun and hilarious behind the scenes.

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We even had one photoshoot at night so that the night scene would be lit accurately. Tehya loved making up silly stories while pretend-reading the prop book I made, which was actually my mom’s 1970’s yearbook disguised in a cover I made by paper-collaging Eric Carle tissue paper to look like waves. I wrote “The Sea” on the cover, but decided the waves were symbolic enough in the final painting and left that off. Special note: one of my old oil painting of boats on a beach is positioned next to the alarm clock, which I though would be symbolic of the boat’s time on land coming to an end. You can see the boat painting and the clock even more prominently in the next painting when she wakes up. The memory quilt worked beautifully to wrap up the boat in this scene. A bear house I made in a childhood woodworking class also had a chance to shine in a few pages. A mural I had painted on my wall worked as a beautiful addition that makes me think of fantastical dreams rising from where the child will lay her head.

One day in January of 2022, while I was halfway through the paintings for the book, I woke up with a vision for a final party scene that would end the book on a celebratory note, and allow for the possibility of reading the book as a story play-acted with a toy doll and boat. By 2022, I had established my fabric business and also wanted to have my models wearing my fabrics at the end of the book. Worried about the kids having grown, I rapidly sewed new dresses for them with my Blush and Pink Bouquet Jubilee fabrics and the Bebekins Tilly Dress pattern, and hemmed a table cloth with my XL Cherry Giant Flower Panel. Then I sanded and repainted my brother’s childhood tiny toy boat (and sewed a new sail for it) to be a replica of the big boat. I also crafted a tiny cake with a lid coated in white paint and iced with pink puffy paint, topped with a ribbon rose. The day before the photoshoot, I made lei po’o (head lei) for Tehya and Kaia and picked up a cake I ordered from Safeway to match the tiny cake. I got out my mom’s light green glassware and filled cups with cherries, blackberries and strawberries. My neighbor, Karen Thompson, let me borrow her gorgeous cake stand. Finally, I moved a lot of potted flowers into the room where I would stage the scene. When the girls showed up the next day, it was like entering a fairytale. Both girls were elated to be in this magical scene eating strawberries and playing with the toy boat and doll. The girls and their families enjoyed the cake after our final photoshoot.

From May of 2021- October of 2022 (18 months), a floor to ceiling wall next to my easel gradually became covered with 29 oil paintings on 12” x 12” or 12” x 24” canvases. Some of the paintings took over a month to complete, and others a bit less, but all took dozens of hours. It was an amazing experience painting these scenes with intricate detail and bringing them to life in the way I had always dreamed. As each new finished piece joined the wall, my heart soared and my eyes welled with tears seeing the book coming to life. As I worked on it, I thought about my maternal grandmother Rogene Radner, a painter, textile designer, fashion designer, book illustrator, art therapist, and art teacher, who passed away in 2016, and my paternal grandmother Harriet Cost, an elementary school teacher and sailor who loved boats, everything about ocean, and who lived by the beach her whole life. Harriet passed away just before I started painting these oil paintings in 2021. This book is filled with their spirits and a few of their special possessions, including Rogene’s lamp and wooden sewing box in the sewing scene, and her colored pencil sketch hanging between the windows in the bedroom. Harriet’s crystal bud vase is on the doll and boat’s tiny table in the party scene.

I wanted the “About the Artist” page to be a peek into my studio with tons of art supplies, and all the props and costumes used in the book so that kids could imagine the “making of” process of the book.

Six months after finishing the last painting, I realized that I needed to repaint the cover to be even more lavish, bringing the grand total of book paintings to 30. I modeled it after the painting of Abby and the boat in my choreographic rehearsal, but staged it outside in a field of wildflowers so that the cover would represent the rich world of color that is inside the book. I decided to self-publish the book after spending too much time looking for agents that were not a good fit, and released The Girl and the Boat November 1, 2023.

The Girl and the Boat was an epic project in every way. In fact, it certainly was the biggest project I’ve ever done in my life, and I was squeezing it between all my other work as a painter, textile designer, and running an international fabric business. It was a huge blessing to get to create this book, and I am infinitely grateful for my amazing models Tehya and Kaia and their incredible parents Mylene, Ilan, Jenny and Riley who were so willing to spend the time with me to make this happen!

Using my own fabrics in the book:

The party scene contains 3 of my fabrics. Blush Watercolor Textile, Pink Bouquet Jubilee and the Giant Cherry Blossom Panel as the tablecloth!

New Fabrics Based on the Book:

In the fall of 2023, I designed 14 new fabrics for my collection, 7 of which are based on the book!.

In December 2023, I got to have my first booth for my book and fabrics. I wore a dress made with one of the fabrics from the book, and my models showed up wearing their costumes! I hung fabrics from the book on the walls of my booth! Even Kaia’s little sister Farah wore her big sister’s yellow dress from the book!

What I hope For this book:

My favorite books as a child were ones filled with incredibly rich and realistically painted illustrations. I would pore through the details endlessly. They shaped and colored the maps of my own imagination. I hope that THE GIRL AND THE BOAT will be a sacred, magical world in which children will love spending time, soaking in the details and getting sparks of creative inspiration of their own. I hope that they will study every page, looking with curiosity and excitement through the many tools, supplies, and creative messes in each room. I hope they will feel wonder examining the worlds of nature, imagining their own bare feet are wandering up and down the mountainside and through the gardens. I hope that if kids are going through a loss big or small, they will think about the girl’s courage and how she keeps walking with courage and finds new joy and connection after heartbreak, while still always remembering her friend. I hope it will inspire many re-readings, add beautiful places to a child’s imagination, and lead them to tell their own stories. I hope that adults will also find their own stories in these pages, feeling their emotions ignited as they see themselves in this girl.

Special thanks:

Thank you to my honorary nieces Madison and Brooke. It was so very hard to leave them in Berkeley when I moved back to Maui, and this book is dedicated to these girls whom I love beyond words.

And huge thanks:

To my mom Jill who raised my brother and I to love to sew, paint, and make things with our hands everyday. She also read us big stacks of beautiful picture books from the library at night. When we were young she even insisted on closing in the garage and turning it into a “project room” with a big table in the middle and shelves to the ceiling with every supply you could imagine. We grew up in that room making things with our hands, and she threw out the TV when we were very young because we wanted us to use our own imaginations. She also gave us infinite art classes and supplies instead of toys, so we learned to make our own fun. This book is a manifestation of the magical childhood she created for us. My mom is the force that taught me to be creative, connect every dot, never give up on a dream, and work like mad until you make it happen. She is the fire that runs through me that allowed me to create this humongous project, and it is an ode to her: the most creative and determined person I know.

To my dad Curtis who made sure I learned how to draw from the moment I could hold a pencil and taught me to paint, always hammering into me the value of technique, strong compositions, and storytelling. He also knew it’s tough to teach your own kid, so he dropped me off at his artist friends’ houses to learn from them (thank you Kit Gentry and Dick Nelson for the massive influences you had on me!) It was an honor to share studio space with my dad as I worked on this project. (Thanks Dad for letting me take over a whole wall with 30 paintings!!!) My dad’s masterful paintings, his taste in tradition realism, and the many museums and painting workshops to which he took us, gave me the foundation of skill and sensibility as an artist that allowed me to create the book of my dreams. My goal artistically with this book was that every painting should stand alone as a work of art. Everyone seems to have different favorite paintings in this book, so I think I did what I sought to do! Thank you dad for giving me the skills to do this!