Luka Hodgson BFA Illustration Thesis Spring 2023

Small Defects is a 342 page, monochrome illustrated, murder mystery romance novel. 

In this story we focus on Mischa Kochanek, a sex worker who has decided to end his life. We join him in the midst of his attempt, about to step off the roof of his apartment building. But before he can, in the closed off alley below, he spots a headless corpse. The police are called and a detective is sent to the scene. The man who arrives is Raymond Vargas, a handsome, depressed alcoholic whom Mischa instantly connects with. In a moment of impulsivity Mischa convinces Vargas to let him work on the case alongside him as an informant of sorts. Together they work to solve the murder of the mysterious corpse and grow together along the way. 

Small Defects is a love letter to nihilism and hope. It shows just a fraction of a vast world, honing in on two people at the end of their tether, facing their own mortality together. In each other they find a form of solace and what starts as a bleak depiction of existence, morphs not into false positivity, but into neutrality. Which is sometimes all it takes to keep living. 


21 albums

Spring 2023