badass women.

(because I so love strong women of all types...)

You probably can't get more different than Sunstone magazine and Lightspeed magazine, but between the two of them I've had the chance to illustrate some awesome female power lately.

For the Sunstone magazine (my lingering connection with mormonism) I worked with Holly and Stephen to re-envision Heavenly Mother and the Creation of Eve and some additional Goddess imagery to boot.

THEN, I got a story from Lightspeed to work on: Ruminations in an Alien Tongue, which featured a most intriguing protagonist: Birha, a brilliant, aging scientist living on a far away planet in the distant future.

NOW, I'm illustrating another story for Lightspeed that will go up in May, featuring a handful of kick-ass-century-old-space-age-warrior-women, fighting for their life on Callisto. (Can't wait for you to read this one!)

Life is awesome right now.

why I'm not around much right now

I'm not dead! I swear.

Though I have had a few near misses this past month.

see... I had to battle a mecha-octopod in a japanese bathhouse:
Finally was able to blow the darn thing to pieces.
THEN... I had to wade my way though a hoard of zombies in an abandoned temple:

Finally got them put to rest.
THEN... I had a traitor's throat that needed cutting:

I'm still working on that one, but almost there. Very lucky to have such a good comrade-in-arms helping me through all of this slayage.

Anyhow, aside from that mess I have also put a few new Art Nerd posts up at the Functional Nerds, wrote a post for SF Signal, was able to finagle my schedule to make it to World Con, where, incidentally... I was inducted as the newest member of the InkPunks!!!! (Hard at work on my first post there.)

So, you see, I'm not dead...yet!

creating gods

(this post also at Feminist Mormon Housewives)

So that's me, at the back of the church, hiding out in the last pew. The atheist mommy with a sketchbook.

Lisa, Moriah and I got talking about the act of creating, of making art, and how it related to our religious beliefs. It was interesting, our different approaches. Me: I'm the naval gazer: having thought and read my way out of all belief in any literal Gods, I still find myself as an artist, obsessed with the symbols and icons and language of religion (in particular, my native religion: Mormon). God has been pivotal to my art for years: here's a piece I did a while back as I worked thought my issues/concerns/etc about approaching God.

Nowadays, I find myself obsessed with taking the stories and re-working them, twisting them, turning them, doing a bit of re-arranging (for example, I am currently hard at work re-telling the story of Eve). In my mind what I am doing is scraping away the white-washing; trying to get down to the raw, messy stuff that is at the root of all of our belief systems. My tools are pretty simple: pencil, pen, paint, a bit of ink and other odds and ends. With them I go sifting through all the shards of my broken belief.

Art is my therapy.
Art is also one of the only forms of worship that I practice at the moment. I guess you could say it is my homage to the reasons we humans make our Gods (see here and here) and also, to the way we make our monsters. (Sometimes I think those are the same thing.)


(In case you are wondering, one of the reasons I hide way at the back during church is because, quite frequently, what comes out of my pen while listening to the talks/lessons is either quite disturbing, or rather blasphemous. WARNING. Those links are disturbing and blasphemous.)

women making art [or not]

Because so many thought Eva Hesse was just "Tom's wife".

Because so many thought Esther Broner was just "Bob's wife".

Because Sister Butterfly felt the impact of LDS women who can only introduce themselves by their husband's and children's accomplishments and Mraynes discussed the issues of wives giving up their own ambitions to support their husbands.

Because I just spent two hours cleaning the kitchen, and holiday preparations have kept me from my work for almost a whole month. Which isn't the same thing as being identified as merely DH's wife, but seems to fit as I currently feel my identity being absorbed by housework. And it also triggers all my own insecurities about even claiming I have "my work" (who the hell do I think I am?)

(Perhaps also exacerbated by an approaching birthday and a sense of having accomplished not much.)

So I'm just feeling kinda lousy lately. But it might also just be the weather.

a Mormon feminst image

(posted at Feminist Mormon Housewives)

A room of my own. Because Virginia was right.
My space, where I have room (sufficient for my needs) to work, to make, to make a mess, to make art. My entire married life I have maintained this space in our various living/family situations; sometimes it has just been a corner of a room, or half a closet and part of the table, etc. In our current local, I occupy the entire thing. I have frequently felt guilt about it, conflicted about my taking up so much space (a lovely way to top off recurring feelings of artistic failure). And for a good couple of years after my son was born, it became a rather neglected room. But not lately. With my son's growing independence and starting school, I am back in my room. No time for guilt now, only have time to work, to get into it with my materials. Making a mess, Making art. Using this room of my own.

BTW, I just found this trailer for a documentary about women artists who are mothers, to me it's searing, I almost cry every time I watch it. Powerful. "Who Does She Think She Is?"

(I think that woman, in the middle of the documentary, is Mormon. Makes my heart so happy.)

Invitation to 18 hr Comic Day!!

Please Join Us!!!! On Saturday October 24 2009, Me, John Remy, Catgirl, and a goodly handful of other friends are going to do our own version of Scott McCloud's 24 hour Comic Challenge. Here's a quick rundown of McCLoud's "official" rules but for the purposes of our comic challenge we're being flexible. (Hell, we already decided that we are just too old for the 24 hour version.)

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A COMIC ARTIST!!
Or even able to draw for that matter: comics are diversifying in very cool ways, for example: consider storytelling with Legos, or cookies, or paper cut-outs, or photo snapshots, or stick figures. One of my favorite artists sometimes just takes his iPhone for a walk (just turn it into a 'story' of some sort, and voila!). You can PAINT a comic. You can Sew a comic. There doesn't even need to be words (wow, SO in love with that last link...!!)

More info will be forthcoming, but part of the idea is to foster the community aspect of it by sharing, discussing, tweeting, (etc) both heading up to the 24th and also posting real-time updates, panels, (etc) on 24th.
(if tweeting, consider using hashtag #18hrComic for easy searching)

If interested please leave a comment on john's post, or send an email.

We understand if you need to tweek the day/duration a bit to fit your own circumstances, THAT'S OKAY!! It will still be awesome to have you and we'll find ways of including your work throughout the 24th.

Pleeeeaaaase say yes :)

coming from behind-sight.

Ah, the wonder of it all… first day of classes! Of course, I always feel this way on the first day of class, reality sets in a week or so down the road when I suddenly realize how much time and effort they really will take. But for now just let me enjoy this moment, this thrill of anticipation.
I have been attending school, off and on for quite a long while. My first attempt at the University right out of high school was rather a disaster that left me reeling a bit and only lasted a few semesters before I quit altogether and took a job wandering around in the wilderness for weeks at a time. Eventually I started taking classes at a local community college, here and there, working on and off, always with the idea that I would eventually get back and get a degree (in "art", that never wavered... it was always going to be "art"). finally, after my mission I was ready- I was going to get that degree, Dang it! And i was going to do it at the Lord's University too!!!
I still ended up changing my major a couple of times ("art" is such a vague term), and ironically, it wasn't until the last half of my last semester that I finally 'found my voice', so to speak, a real sense of direction and inspiration in my work. And then I was out, booted into the cold cruel world with a piece of paper for all my effort. and I soon found out that paper wasn't worth the ink it had been printed with. It wasn't the Universities fault, it was mine. Somehow I had gone through that entire process without really gaining one marketable skill. And I was a newly wed with a husband still in school. Some lessons are learned late and hard. After weeks and weeks of being turned down for hundreds of secretarial and receptionist positions, I finally landed a minimum wage job at an art supply store.
I really wanted to go back to school, do graduate work, follow that flicker of inspiration that had finally shown itself, but we mutually decided to put the 'bread winner' through school first. A few years later, when the bread winner was finally brining home the bacon, I did apply. To one University, the one in the town in which we lived. I wasn't accepted. I took a few fine art classes to brush up on some skills, get some new portfolio pieces, get some more recent letter-of-recommendation writers, etc... I applied again, and was rejected again.
I had to to some hard thinking. why was i doing this, anyways? I was making art on my own... why this push for another degree? well, there is a lot of answers to that, but one of them was that I really wanted to not be so utterly unmarketable. If something happened to my moneybags my lover, what would I do to support myself. In all honesty, an advanced degree in fine art can very likely still leave a person with relatively few marketable skills.
It was while visiting the website of an old art friend that I had the thought; get some computer graphics skills. I have always wanted a website just for showing my work... why not learn to do it myself? those are highly marketable skills. I started last semester at the local community college, taking an intense Photoshop class, and a beginning class that covered Illustrator, Indesign, and Quark. This semester it is learning HTML, Dreamweaver, Flash, and web designing skills. This has been totally new for me- I'd take those fine art classes and was automatically the star student, it didn't take much effort... this computer stuff, however, is really tough, this is REALLY stretching me. And I LOVE it. I am so excited about what I am learning, the things I know how to do now, and the things i will know how to do in just a few short weeks.
Part of me worries, that this will displace my other art. I really hope it doesn't. I don't know for certain that it won't. But i do feel I am doing the right thing. That has got to count for something.

wombs, breasts, and decapitated heads...

[January 17 update: this is also now posted over at Feminist Mormon Housewives. Check it out for additional discussion on the topic.]

Artists block. I hate it. What it means is I try to go into my studio and make something but the well is dry. So I try anyways, and end up making crap. The blockage is probably caused by a lot of things, the fact that I don't hardly have a whole consecutive 60 minuets to spend working is surely one reason (It usually takes a good couple of hours for me to 'get my grove on').
But I think it also has to do with being suddenly conflicted about the imagery I was on a roll with. See, I was all gung-ho for quite a while over what I called 'female imagery' and it consisted of wombs, breasts, ovaries, vulva's, menstruation, etc...
My sketch book was full of stylized interpretations of these female sexual/reproductive parts, and many of my sculptures and paintings continued those themes. I think this served me very well in coming to terms with my own female body and as a way of seeking a divine feminine. I love these pieces I have made. But I came to a point where I realized that all I was doing was reducing woman to her reproductive capabilities, her biology... And that has been one of the main problems (as I see it) with how society at large treats woman. So now I am stuck. I was really excited about doing a whole series of little hand-sewn breasts like the one I displayed in this post... but now I hesitate to, until I have reconciled this rift I now feel. It's easy to say that I am re-appropriating woman's sexuality from the patriarchy, all our female parts that have been used and displayed for the convenience and pleasure of a male dominated society... but to what end? Of course, there is always this little sketch I did a while back of a warrior woman with an infant strapped to her back, who has just vanquished her (male) opponent without disturbing the sleeping baby (a little nod to Artemisia Gentileschi?)...

hmmmmm....
So, anyways, I am trying to gather my thoughts, doing some reading, playing with other alternate images... It very well may be that I have moved beyond the wombs and breasts, that they served me well at the time, but now I need to find my next phase... or maybe this is just a clarifying process that will help me take the imagry even further. Possibly, the artist block is permanent and I may never do another piece of art worth mention at all (NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOOOOOO!)
But in the meantime, what is your take on using female sexuality, sexual parts, and reproductive themes in art?

a neglected room

My studio. A room of my own. This is how it looks right now. I haven’t been active in it for some time. Things have piled up, stuff that doesn’t belong in there has been thrown in for lack of a better place. My work lies half started, half finished in piles on the tables and stacked against walls. It is a mess, and it is not being used. We live in a small three-bedroom cookie-cutter track house; our bedroom, Offspring's bedroom, and my studio. Offspring's toys spread all over the family room. The desktop computer (and accompanying paraphernalia) is wedged into the dining room/living room area between the table and a bookshelf. And there is just so much STUFF, how did we get so much stuff? Other families in this suburb have an extra room specifically for the “play room” or the “study/computer room.” In these homes everything seems to fit so nice. Us, we have a failed artist clinging to a fading dream by holding a whole room hostage to her hopes. And I haven’t been in it for months except to toss more stuff on the piles of junk. Recently I have been thinking of clearing it all out, tossing a lot of it, burning even more, keeping only what can fit into a medium sized box stashed somewhere on a shelf in the garage and turning the room into the “play room” or “study” or some other functional family space… but I haven’t brought myself to do it. Not yet. Partly because that would require a lot of work, and right now it is easier to leave everything the way it is. And also, I keep thinking ‘I AM going to get back in there!'
Any day now.

wearing the apron

(I love the self-portrait challenge...)



This is a compulsion that goes beyond just keeping my clothes clean. I cannot cook or clean without putting on this apron. I can’t do it. If I try I get all tense and agitated. This is also the apron I use in my studio. That was it’s first purpose, to wear it when painting and doing other messy things (hot wax, clay, epoxy, resin, and charcoal just to name a few of those other messy things.) My mom made this apron for me, made it to my specifications with lots of pockets so when I am working on a project there are lots of places to put brushes, pencils, erasers, scissors, matches etc… But currently, this apron is used almost exclusively for housework. Making dinner, cleaning the bathrooms, even just tidying up, I obsessively put it on (I’m wearing it right now to write this post. Weird). Haven’t used it to make any art in a while. So I’ll be doing dishes in the kitchen and a friend will come over: “Oh, are you painting right now?” “Nope, doing dishes.” Ouch. I mean, I the dishes do need to be done… but I really wish I was feeling inspired in the studio instead. Maybe this why I wear this apron, trying to hold on, to remind myself with the paint that is smeared on it… Or maybe I am just weird.