Carpet Sweeper Tales Format: Paperback

The iconic author of My New York Diary returns with a collection of dreamy, collaged photo comics

Julie Doucet is an artist who has mastered many voices and styles, from her landmark and medium-defining early work in comics with her comic book series Dirty Plotte and the classic graphic novel My New York Diary, to her linocut and collage work in Lady Pep and Long Time Relationship. Most recently, Doucet has focused primarily on collage, crafting impeccable zines, prints, and other ephemera. In Carpet Sweeper Tales, her first new book in almost a decade, we see this multifaceted artist combine her many talents into one genre-defying masterwork.

Though Doucet stopped drawing comics more than ten years ago, here she revisits the art form, pulling images from 1970s Italian fumetti or photonovels to create her own collage comics. Using vintage women's and home decorating magazines, Doucet collages a unique dialogue of love and travel between characters sitting in classic cars, driving through cities and pristine countryside. This book is the first to combine Doucet's love of collage with her gift at comics storytelling. The result is a collection of lighthearted stories that play upon the disconnects between 1970s imagery and our modern world. Lost in translation, the dialogue is stilted, the characters alien, the mood always playful. Carpet Sweeper Tales is a milestone in a career filled with milestone achievements.

Julie Doucet was born near Montreal in 1965 and is best known for her frank, funny, and sometimes shocking comic book series Dirty Plotte, which changed the landscape of alternative cartooning. In the 1990s, Doucet moved between New York, Seattle, Berlin, and Montreal, publishing the graphic novels My New York Diary, Lift Your Leg, My Fish is Dead!, My Most Secret Desire, and The Madame Paul Affair. In 2000, she quit comics to concentrate on other art forms. From these experiments emerged the collection of engravings and prints Long Time Relationship; her one-year visual journal, 365 Days; and sassy collages from fumetto comics, Carpet Sweeper Tales. Her post-comics artwork includes silkscreened artist's books, text-based collages, sculpture, and animation films. She published her most recent book, Time Zone J in 2022 and was the first woman cartoonist from Quebec to win the Grand Prix d’Angoulême that same year.