Heckle on.

Cat comic 1.

My first go at comic-making.  I like to think it has an element of Zen.

Nigh the end.

Hello, fellow interneters.

Ok, maybe life is a big circle and there is no beginning nor end.  However, the end of my academic/student career at USF is close.  Yesterday I presented my thesis to a hollering panel of three and demonstrated my prowess with a power point presentation.  It was all pretty anti-climatic.

My thesis show opens on June 15 at USF in the Ian and Mimi Rolland School of Creative Arts building.  Everyone is invited, even Ian and Mimi.  As soon as the show opens my diploma will be activated and I will become a magical master of arts.

Now for a picture:

   

This watercolor was originally going to be an oil painting.  But due to the raw state of my nervous system and sake of time, the oil painting was abandoned and I made this nifty watercolor instead.

As promised, my thesis will be on public viewing on the contact page of my website.  You can link to it here.  This paper is very revealing.  It speaks to my life and my art making and how I arrived at this moment in time.  There are many topics touched upon in this thesis, each them could have their own thesis written about them (and perhaps they will). However, the paper is a good survey of my life as an artist.

Q: "What are you going to do next?" A:  "10 years of indentured servitude to the public."  There is a nifty program the government has in place that forgives student loans after 10 years if you work in public service.  For example: a tax exempt non profit may qualify, such as Artlink.  (Deb is a little too excited about this.)  I hope to YHWH I am able to bust this popsicle stand before the end of my 10 years, but who knows.  I will be 40 years old and Ezra will be 15.  

On Being a Woman Artist.

I was invited to participate in a "Woman's Work" exhibition that opens next weekend in Roanoke at Katharos Art.  They asked me to write a paragraph about what it means for me to be a woman artist.  I hope they don't regret that decision. Hah!  I'm posting the piece and paragraph(s) here.  Enjoy!

On being a woman artist:

“We believe that feminism is a transformative philosophy that embraces the amelioration of life on earth for all life-forms, for all natural entities.  We believe that all oppressions are interconnected: no one creature will be free until all are free—from abuse, degradation, exploitation, pollution, and commercialization.”  --Josephine Donovan & Carol J. Adams in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations

As a professional woman and artist, I am thankful for all the women that came before me and worked to bring the issues of women into the national dialogue.  That being said, I am not interested in being known as a “woman artist” and I have only the ladies who fought for feminism to thank for that.  I wish for my work to be viewed as good art, nothing more or less.  I feel privileged that gender does not need to be considered in the evaluation of my work, nor should it be for any other artist working day to day.  I believe that Feminism stretches far beyond women in general.  Feminism needs to fight for all creatures that are oppressed, as the highlighted quote from Josephine Donovan and Carol Adams expresses. 

There is still a bitch or two left in the fight for the rights of women and I am happy to be one of them.  Though we have been gaining ground, there is no time for rest.  The level of power our birth right affords us is dangerous.  I think this same danger is posed to women of my generation: what will we do with the power and comfort we did not earn? I believe we need to continue to work for the rights of all creatures, regardless of gender or species. 

And with that: a few lines of the poem “Song” by Edward Hirsch: “Listen, this song is for you even if you can’t listen to it or join in, even if you don’t have lungs, even if you don’t know what a song is or want to know.  This song is for everyone who is not listening tonight and refuses to sing.  Not singing is also an act of devotion.  Those who have no voices have one tongue.”  

Thankfulness

Even though my Valentine's Day wasn't filled with romance, there was plenty of love to go around.  I started thinking about all the loves in my life, Ezra first and foremost :)  Second, I feel very thankful to have a job that I love.  The seamlessness between my personal and professional life is nearly invisible and I hope that I am worthy of such a wonderful existence.  I hope to serve my community and fellow human well!

Also, I feel pretty lucky to have been given the opportunity to work with Johnson County Library!  I've been working on paintings for their children's department.  The two below are finished and awaiting framing so they can be shipped to their new home. 

Enjoy!

 

"Paintings are never finished, they are only abandoned."  I'm not sure who said that, but it is very true!  I think any painter or artist could relate to it at least once in a while.  I'm still working on the paintings that were  in the last post.  A couple of them are close to being abandoned ("finished").

The top two are very near completion.  The bottom two...not so much.  They are getting there.  All are a series I started last fall.

The two pieces below are commissions I am working on for Johnson County Library in Kansas.  They are about half way done.

And last, but certainly not least, is a piece I have just recently started.  It is another commission piece and pet portrait of a kitty named "Golem."  I have been listening to the BBC dramatization of the Lord of the Rings while I paint since starting this.  I decided that since I've never actually read the book and am doing a piece that I can only imagine is inspired by one of its characters, that I'd better brush up on my fantasy literature. It's been sketched out and I am starting to lay down the first colors. Enjoy!

ass kicking

It's been a bit since my last posting.  I got my ass handed to me by a new painting prof this fall.  I was pretty pissed off and snarling at him for most of the semester, but toward the end I started to come around.  I realized that all the crying and frustration was really worth something.  I was pushed to produce work with meaning and a depth of thought I had no idea I was capable of.
The work changed me on a molecular level.  Well...that may be a bit extravagant but it got pretty damned real.  The semester is over and I still have not actually completed a piece, but somehow I still made it out of the class with an A- !!  That kind of killed my 4.0 but it's way better than I expected to get.  And it was worth it.

Above was the first painting I started and my biggest struggle.  It's after Da Vinci's Girl with the Ermine.  I'm trashing up the classic work of art.  The girl in my painting is a picture of my adorable little sister.  The raccoon in her arms is, among other things, a play on the racial slur "coon."  This piece (and all of the pieces) are somewhat self portraits.  

This piece (above) is my comic relief, if there is such a thing when dealing with such heavy topics.  It is a parody on Westboro Baptist Church and closed systems.

While the other two pieces are references to myself, this last piece is a true self portrait (that's me under the hood).  My parents were KKK members and my step father has a robe that his grandfather used in the 30s, apparently.  When I was growing up, I went right along with this line of thought.  I have a lot of guilt about it, though I was a child and didn't know any different.  I am wearing a "white trash" tshirt and my fingers and stuck in a Chinese finger trap, alluding to the ignorance of this cycle and the closed system (inability to escape).
I would say, enjoy! Though these are some heavy topics.  They are very powerful for me and have lent me a voice.  I hope they do something for you! Now to finish the dang things!

new watercolors