Our Favorite Time of the Year

Us and Halloween

Us (then)

Wanting You

What I have been up to…

The first piece came out of a discussion about “slut shaming” with a woman on OKCupid. I wasn’t feminist enough for her – maybe I should do some art about “feminist-shaming.”

 

A Past Moment (in progress)

Some Things

I was working on some sketches today. The human form just wasn’t doing it for me, nor was popular culture type imagery…I did manage to produce something I may or may not use:

In Progress and Untitled

I have yet to come up with a title for this, by the time I finish it maybe I will.

A Nice Reflection and Maslow.

I’ve been rather reflective as of late. As an educator, it’s good to be reflective. I’m a substitute teacher and its September so really I probably just have too much time on my hands. What have I been reflecting on? Dating and my love life. I’m just going to put it out there: I haven’t had a date in months. This is despite the fact I presented at an event entitled Smut Night. I kind of feel like a fraud for presenting at Smut Night and talking about sexuality and being sexy when I myself hadn’t even had a date in several months. And when you haven’t had a date in months you begin to wonder if it’s you and not them. My friends insist this is not the case.

Which brings me back to being reflective and being nice. I have this love/hate relationship with being referred to as ‘nice.’ I suppose ‘nice’ is a nice adjective for a spinster school teacher (some of which I might be). Nice does not conjure up an image of someone who’s hot, desirable, sexy, and the like. Let’s face it, no one looks through a Victoria’s Secret catalog and says, “Wow those women look like nice ladies!” I mean, maybe they are, but no one is going to look at them and think about their nice personalities. I remind myself to be flattered when well meaning people refer to me as nice. There is the polar opposite of being nice which is being a bitch. And clearly since I’m nice, I’m not a bitch. Also, I’m not going to change.

This was my thought process in creating the image “You R Nice” and “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Things I May Need.” I would also point out that if you do not know what Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are, it’s an interesting theory. There’s this neat chart (which I used in the work) and when a person has a need met they happily move on to the next. After meeting one’s basic needs, one will wish to meet the need for love, belonging, and sex. To reach self-actualization, where you are clearly awesome and loved and getting some, you need to meet all the needs on the fancy chart. So, according to Maslow, I have yet to achieve my full awesomeness.

detail

Smut Night and such…

I will be one of the people presenting at Smut Night this Saturday. I will be discussing sexuality, sexiness and my Beach Beauty series. Speaking of which, I decided to create larger scale paintings of some of my sketches for Beach Beauty. This is one of them…

Beach Beauty (pt.8)

Pieces from my series Beach Beauty will be presented at Smut Night, September 13th at As220’s Empire Black Box Theater.

Beach Beauty is inspired by a trip to the beach. I created work of various representations of females in swimwear.

Swimsuit season is the season women dread or love or something in between… depending on how comfortable they feel in their bodies. Despite this, it always appears, from an outside perspective, that regardless of size, color, age, and gender identity everyone appears a-okay with how they look half-dressed hanging out on the beach.

Beach Beauty isn’t just about being body positive. These are different sized women identified women who all appear to be confident and therefore sexy in swimwear…