Alicia Bay Laurel is the celebrated polymath - artist, author, and musician - who found international fame as the visionary communard behind the classic self-sufficiency book "Living on the Earth".
Her latest production Eartha & Aetherias is described by her as an "eco sci-fi romantasy graphic novella." It draws upon her experiences living in Hawaii during the nineteen seventies and all that entailed: "hiking on volcanic mountains, swimming in waterfall pools, ecstatic improvisational dancing, communal living in the jungle, sailing, camping on beaches, learning natural medicine from holistic healers, permaculture gardening, foraging, cooking with hand-gathered ingredients, chanting with Tibetan lamas, and receiving Hawaiian songs & guitar tuning from Hawaiian elders."
The book's first incarnation was presented by "twenty-five year old" Alicia as a reading with illustrations and accompanying slides to a packed audience at the Maui Community Theatre in Kahului in 1974. But Alicia never pressed ahead with publishing it as she threw herself into touring as a singer-songwriter and storyteller. Circling back fifty years later "seventy-five year old" Alicia has brought a whole other set of talents to the production, and in a sense completion, of this enchanting book.
The central drama in the story is the ecstatic unification of the characters Eartha, the feminine nymph representing the embodied powers of mother Earth, and Aetherias, the masculine spirit representing an unfettered cosmic energy. In their coming together in love, the divine is made manifest. This classic spiritual concept is handled with the sophistication and profound wisdom that only this Queen of the Hippies could could bring to the tale.
There was so much I loved about the book. In the first instance I found the nudity of Alicia's characters very liberating. It's hard to imagine in our repressed and buttoned-down society how the natural unadorned body needn't immediately be sexualised, or equally that that sexuality might be woven with kindness and affection, and not fraught with violence. Alicia's instantly recognisable drawings are enchanting and slyly funny, the decorative aspect of the illustrations endlessly inventive, and structural ideas like the dotted lines representing "dubbed out" spiritual beings are ingenious.
The book is available in colour and with a monochromatic interior edition from her excellent website. Get yourself thence for some authentic hippie vibes in 2026.