ARTS AND LITERATURE

Jurga Vilė, Miglė Anušauskaitė, Mekas’s Garden. About Jonas Mekas, Inspirations, and Flutter (Meko sodas. Apie Joną Meką, įkvėpimus ir plast), Vilnius: Aukso žuvys, 2024, 165 pp.

The backstory of this book begins in 2000 when the author Jurga Vilė, having read the book “Trys draugai” (Three Friends) by Jonas Mekas, travelled to New York, met with Jonas Mekas himself, and volunteered for a few months at the legendary Anthology Film Archives. Later, she met countless people who had been inspired by Mekas and his work at different points in their lives. Some of them are featured in this comic strip book, recounting the circumstances of their encounter with Mekas, revealing their relationship with Jonas and his art, and laying out stories about Jonas’s enthusiasm and his cinematography of everyday life. All these stories, written by Jurga Vilė and drawn by Miglė Anušauskaitė, which share much even as they differ, speak of Mekas’s light that he shared with other people, of his freedom and his uniquely graceful defiance of all the thou shalts and thou shalt nots. Each story is like an individual cinematic frame, always ending with the same question: “What kind of a tree would you plant for Jonas?” Each answer, however different, helps nurture Jonas Mekas’s garden, wild and endless.

Jurga Vilė – graduate in French Philology, who studied fine arts, film archiving and restoration in Paris. She has worked as a coordinator of film and theatre festivals, translated films and
written for cultural publications. She lived in Spain, for some time, where she wrote about her family history, later forming the basis for her first book “Sibiro haiku” (Siberian Haiku, 2017). To date, Jurga has authored seven books. “Meko sodas” (Mekas’s Garden) is her first comic strip book.

Miglė Anušauskaitė is a comic book author, translator, and Judaica researcher. She has written and drawn comic books about historical Lithuanian figures, most famously “Dr. Kvadratas” (Dr. Square, 2017) about the semiotician Algirdas Julius Greimas; she writes a column about literature, “Tekstai ne tekstai” (Texts Not Texts), in the Šiaurės Atėnai newspaper; and, on the topic of Jewish culture and history, she has written short books about Vilna Gaon, synagogue, and shtetl.

Contact for rights: sigita@auksozuvys.lt