L'update: Birthday and School

Birthday pictures by Salena.

I just had my birthday last week and though I was turning 21 I somehow threw a shindig that closely resembled that of the basement scene in 13 Going on Thirty haha. The intent was to host a ghetto Tea Party for bastards where we dressed fancy and drank a noxoius pink concoction of booze and lemonade. Instead wierd cliques formed and old grudges were held tightly too and beyond the first three friends who came nobody even dressed up or seemed to help make it fun. When I offered people "tea" in my mother's assortment of beautiful cups she lent me all I recieved in return were judging stares as if they were humoring a small child or worse, there was some mutant fetus growing out of my forehead. When conversation lulled all eyes turned to me, as if I were supposed to put on a show, tap dance for them, who knows! The party was never meant to be extravagant but who would have thought that within a group of friends I'd still feel like a freak. 

There were some moments that were nice though, the panic at gettind dressed with my friends Candie and Salena, where because I had modified my dress with safety pins Salena had to rescue me from its clutches. Playing with balloons, Pretty in Pink playing while showering, falling asleep to Breakfast at Tiffany's, hanging hello kitty streamers, frosting cupcakes and sneaking tastes. There were so many tiny happenings that made it all worth while and I'm thankful to the friends who did come through for me.

Seattle has hit its long grey faze but I'm seeking solace in bright colored textiles, cups of peppermint mochas and super novas. University life is truly lovely and for the first time in a long time I'm content. Everyday I'm surrounded by beautiful architecture and the buzz of thousands of students humming with knowledge. It's a tiny utopia fo sho.

This new quarter brings hours upon hours in the printing studios with breaks in between attending astronomy lectures. Am really digging the printing teachers and curriculum because they ask us to draw a lot and basically work in whatever direction we want. For the last week of drawings I started doing quick ink portraits which came out lovely. Theres a fluidity in brush and ink that really aids in understanding shapes. I just have to be careful to continue to hold myself to a higher standard in my classes. It would be a shame to fall behind my illustration peers just because I switched to a state school. 

My schedule feels odd though. Mornings are spend realizing how tiny and insignificant we are in the universe and then within 10 minutes the focus switches to how important even the smallest marks on an 8 by 10 linolium block can be. Isn't life goofy?  

"The Birds!"

Bird Dramas 

          Initially meant to be a series of politically oriented illustrations of women and birds. I've been trying to learn how to use acrylics (so frustrating!) and am slowly getting the hang of it. But its so different and I think it effected how I create images. After I was done with the above I was like "Whoa, who made that? I didn't make that!" Even though it still has my signiature corner fetish composition going on and hooded figures it just felt so...stable? It looks so dense and heavy. Like a chunk of cement. 

homecoming (acrylic)

          Which means I made the next bird image in total retaliation haha. Where in the first one I was somber and closed in, here it became suddenly windy and moving fanciful even. I decided to follow the graphic pattern motif that tentatively started in the first, the only stylistic quality that links the two. This time though it was almost too airy and the colors too bright! This illustration reminds me of some of the old sketchers shoe ads from the 90s :)

Help Yourself (Acrylic, India Ink, watercolor, Photoshop)

          Should I talk about the messages behind them? I used to write such full blown explanations and now, the more time I spend with an image the more it opens up until all I see is open roads ahead when it comes to what they could "mean". Well though they've morphed during the process and have severed ties completely with each other for the sake of mastering a medium the thumbnail sketches depicted sort of a trifecta of woman at home during war. Since they would have all been swarthed in flowing burqua like clothing people could have read it as a commentary on whats been happening in the middle east, but really they could have been any woman. 

          Interestingly when I look back I had no interest in depicting the woman warrior. In the scribbles there are only girls being left behind to put back together whats left of civilized society and to watch the fires from afar. They're quiet and reflecting inward on their priveleged safety. Thats what the last image was supposed to be, the one watching from a distance, grateful but ashamed at the same time. Basically carrying on the proud tradition of romanticizing tragedy for the sake of entertainment hehe Maybe I'll go there in the future. 

But until then, two final papers having to be written in less than 48 hours! Wish me luck!

Ribbon around a bomb.

Hello everyone, as you can see I couldn't stay away. I JUST REALLY LIKE BLOGGING YOU GUYS! Plus I really like making pictures so there you go, crisis averted. And do you know what got me so quickly out of my slump? A movie about Frida Kahlo... Whaaa??

It's true, modern Hollywood has created something kind of great. The Format of the film is narrative and then a tie in to one of Frida's paintings. She really was something else and quite inspiring really. The impression that the director of the film gave was that Instead of defining herself by her artwork Frida merely lived her life and then painted as a way to sort of funnel and describe the numerous wordless pains and joys that would spring up. She was quietly brilliant. A first look at her paintings suggest an obsession with the self that borderlines on the narcissistic. A closer look at the circumstances of her paintings suggest a different interpretation.

Frida worked I daresay mostly from her bed? Earlier in her life, before art had taken precidence, she was caught in a harrowing car accident where along with having almost all her bones broken, a pipe traveled through her right side and exited OUT OF HER UTERUS. Throughout Frida's life she would go through multiple surgeries and suffer from chronic pain that would pull her focus from the outside back to her own broken sorry excuse for a body. As an artist honesty seems to be the best policy, and what is more honest then unashamedly saying "All I think about is how my nerves are screaming and how my heart is hearting, All I think about is me!". Because really we all love thinking about ourselves. Frida is just able to paint the nasty bits that we can relate to and make them beautiful. Gaahhh so good!

Blah Blah Blah so much ranting! The point is I look up to Frida, and it was really inspiring to hear about this person who was so uncompromising when it came to her art and life. The End. Now look at this Bangin picture they took of her for Vogue! So fashionable!

Boobies got folds yo.

The other day I was watching that documentary/ film about the four different babies growing up around the world, appropriately titled Babies. One of the kids was from the Himba tribe in Namibia where the women coat their bodies and hair in a red clay that not only tints them a beautiful earthy crimson but also protects them from the sun that constantly beats down on them. They're jewlery is also very practical, particularly their tall metal anklets that protect their shins from poisonous snake bites! Plus the baby boys have these adorable little braided mohawks. Overall visually the tribe is visually fascinating and has earned a steady stream of tourists that borderline fetishize the proud women who walk around bare-chested regardless of age or body type.

And who can bloody blame them! I wish I could walk around shirtless, or at least wear sheer clothing. In New York it was actually legal, but how could one even fathom it when just wearing a skirt garners so much innapropriate male attention? How much healthier would the world be if women were allowed to bare it all without the fear of a sharp pinch or even sharper yelps? Though giant breast implants are now on the outs trend wise (hurrah!), what a breast actually looks like seems to still be a mystery to most. Since women arn't encouraged to be shown the breasts and bodies of others (because of society's rampant fear of homosexuality or honest sexuality of any kind) everyone just walks around thinking they're hella freaky and constantly apologizing, when really they're totally fine. Better than fine, BANGIN'!

At some point western (primarily American) culture decided that it was unnatural and unnatractive to be human... aaaannnddd to be alive.

It's wrong. They're wrong. The end.

Training for naive digits.

1) A drawing of Self portrait with Cigarette by Max Beckmann

2) Rope from the pier.

3) Animals from the natural history museum. 

Calling All Perverts!

All Right kids, am really excited for a new mini project my friend Laura and I are starting called The Naughty Blog. Theres not much there yet, and though our original plan was just to have a place to put all the naked folk we draw the few entries that have been put up seem to say that anything remotely sexy goes, actually even the unsexy will go.  Haha so stop by and see whats going on in the minds of two very nerdy ladies... 

Two very buxom, juicy, voluptuous, sleek, fashionable yet completely modest ladies with incredible hair...ladies.

Did I mention ladies?

Pop-up Riddles!

"At night they come without being fetched, and by day they are lost without being stolen."

"What Cannot be seen but only heard and will not speak unless spoken to?"

"What will fix this?"

introducing...

my circus!

The concept is a lot more interesting than the image, but since this blog is supposed to document the good and the bad of my art and life and whatever I figured sharing it wouldn't hurt too bad. This summer I've been reading a much about the lives of performers in the circus and vaudeville and I'm always fascinated by the wide range of folk that travel about. It seems like the absolute greatest kind of life. Where you do something beautiful for people and then pack all your things, get on a train and and start again in a whole new exotic place. Think of all the stories and people you'd meet! 

So I'm wearing this burger hat.

Alright, so I was reading this blog called Coilhouse and the webmistress uploaded a video of this fellow cosplaying and playing this huge custom bass guitar. First of all I was mesmerized by this man's perfect legs and how body wise he made a better little girl than I EVER have been, with the exception of his face that clearly is boyish. Anyway when I went to go see what the comments were that were left on youtube they basically alternated between "Is he Gay?" and "Dang that boy can play!" 

So this ended up making me think about if he actually was gay, and if I cared, because oddly I really want him to be super chill and straight to balance out all the folks that are that insecure. Plus, i guess that kind of confidence is attractive. AND THEN I just went down this whole train of thought plot wise. What is gender? Is it the gender under the clothes or like the personality traits? Etc. Etc. 

So now I just want to write this epic love story/ comic about the cute girly boy, whos secretly badass and brings down homophobic punks with his glorious yellow guitar in dark alley ways behind a nameless burlesque studios and then lovingly swarthes his woman in his mounds of frills. Maybe this will happen, most likely not, but enjoy this man's bouncy joyous (totally not as epic as my character's) undertones of goofiness anyway. <3

The creepy entry.

Like many, I practice the ancient japanese art of cute phone accessories, and my newest little tidbit is the little bugger pictured above. Many would look and go "oohhh how cute, an animal in an animal suit!" Now don't be so naieve! What I wear dangling about my cell-phone is no vapid sentiment meant to make me look "kawaii". Oh no, what you see here is really a totem of how warped our society is! It has become all the rage to depict folks wearing animal suits, but it's really a barbaric idea to STRIP the skin of another living creature and WEAR it. Humans I think are the only ones who actually do it anymore as a means to decorate out bodies, however back in the day of course we were literally wearing the fur of others because we had no fur (and still don't)! 

Human's are a definitive fail in the area of cool body structures like teeth, fur, whiskers and claws. Maybe this is why people so like to differentiate themselves from nature. We close ourselves in our houses, move via wheels and communicate without talking or body language via text. Thus our bodies don't need the same survival mechanisms because all our best evolved traits are outside, aka our tools and technology. But take a step back and you see that instead of us evolving, our technology does. Computers advance, medicine evolves etc etc. I'm not saying that our bodies arn't changing at all over the eons, just that it is more evident in our technological advances. Natural selection can be applied to how far we make it up the social ladder, and if you take even another step back you see that all of humanity is just a hive of sorts. None of us really know that much at all, or make much of a difference, but together we are a force to be reckoned with. Oop, ranting again. Sorry about that! 

Anyway, seeing another animal do the whole skin stealing thing would just be disturbing. For instance it would be quite scary to see a a wolf actually actually wearing the clothes of a sheep. I think the visual of wearing another's skin conjurs up this whole malicious bloodthirstiness and cunning that either screams silence of the lambs (!!!) or a metaphorical struggle for survival.

See this is actually what my keychain looks like:  

Now what would happen if an animal challenged our superiority and stole a human's skin?

Crow quit squakin!

Though I want to make this blog mostly about my art, it is quite difficult to completely leave out personal feelings and happenings, because thats really the root of art and fiction. Or is fiction the root of art. Whats that saying? Life imitates art?  Anyway, the point of this entry isn't really about anything in particular, just the thoughts that have been circling around this vacuum of summer.

I just finished this book, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by. Its basically about what we percieve as reality and what it becomes once all logic and explanation have been abolished. It really struck a chord because instead of spouting all this matrix-y mumbo jumbo it sticks to only the nameless. The Diseases people carry inside are nameless, there are bad people but the author never goes as far as to call them evil, relationships are left unfinished and un persued. The character literally has less than seven people whom he talks to and the rest of the world gets pushed to the wayside. But that doesn't matter so much, because those few people in turn connect him to people in the past and future. People he has never met are able to become almost like aquaintances or even close friends (and enemies).  He is then driven to save his run-away wife Kumiko and wait for her, but he is only really able to achieve this by staying within his bubble of a world. 

On a not so completely unrelated note I've also been thinking about the human heart. Not really the organ (which is really cool, for example did you know that the individual cells of a heart beat themselvese?) but more our capacity to love another human being. I think we easily love people when we're little. Because our world is still small we really value those around us and when we break apart from each other it hurts a whole lot because our world is literally breaking apart! Like do you remember when one of your friends moved away in grade school? IT WAS DEVASTATING!!! You would then exchange those funny best friend necklaces haha remember those?

Naturally we tend to seek out better people and things to love, its almost like a never ending cycle of humansitic consumerism. This leads to indescision and the breaking of ties for greener pastures. But at what point should we stop looking? And should we ever stop looking? People now have the means to be whoever they want, to live wherever they want, travel wherever. It's such a tantalizing and tempting option to just continue to be in transit and never quite reach the goal. But to actually build a tie between two people, not necessarily a sexual laison but just a friendship, one has to willingly come to a standstill and block out whatever could interfere.

Which we don't always want to do, so then we again break those ties, move on and make another. In doing that storybook love becomes useless doesn't it? Whats the use of building something when it is considered so replaceable and chuckable? 

Why are these entries always such downers? Lets see, today was really great because I had a bitchin italian soda, oh yeah ;)

Meet Sir Constinople.

dollar!

Went Thrift Store Shopping today because there was a fifty percent off sale (Gasp, moan, weeze!) and found this lovely little beauty (see above).

Its an old cigarette case thing that reads: 

DET 2

6146th AFAG

ROKAF

10th F.W

Did a little research because I know nothing about anything historical and apparently it belonged to someone in the Detachment two, of the 6146th Air Force advisory group who taught the Republic of Korea air force (ROKAF) how to fly! And like part of the 10th Fighter wing but yes! This group or whatever you call it, division?, was stationed at the Suwon Air base in the 50s.  

How rad is that? I got a little piece of history for a dollar!

Though I don't smoke, maybe I'll buy a small pack of girly cigars and put them in there for special occasions and then I can pretend to be a real dame.