Phoebe Stringer

Phoebe Stringer is a fine artist, bronze caster and teacher in BA Technical Arts at UAL Wimbledon College of Arts. She graduated from the UCL Slade School of Fine Art with a specialism in Sculpture, and now runs her family-owned bronze foundry Hoxton Bronze Casting. She is passionate about all reptiles.

Saturn the Alligator is a graphic novel based on the real life of Saturn, an American alligator and Second World War survivor who died in Moscow in 2020. Hatched in the wild in rural Missisippi, Saturn was caught and shipped to Germany in 1936. Stringer re-imagines his journey through wartime Berlin after the bombing of the zoo in 1943. Following his discovery by British soldiers in 1946, Saturn was handed over to the Red Army and transported to Moscow Zoo, where he remained until his death in 2020.

The events Saturn witnesses are drawn by Stringer from her family’s own experiences of surviving WW11, including forced labour and concentration camps. Saturn is a silent observer, present but unable to process or interpret what he sees.

The work sits close to a silent comic, with minimal dialogue and a focus on small, human moments. It explores survival and observation without imposing narrative resolution or meaning. At its core, it is a record of endurance: an animal moving through human history, without commentary or conclusion.

Saturn the Alligator is Phoebe Stringer’s first graphic novel.