This piece is something I've been wanting to do for a while. This skull is one I've had for a few years and had already painted with different designs three years ago. But I wasn't satisfied with it and knew that I could do better. So a couple months ago, I covered the skull with a layer of white gesso paint and planned out the beginning of my design. The design was completed in pen and ink over a period of a month or two. My motivation was to celebrate the life and death of this cow in a respectful way. The designs were inspired by Mexican and Indian fabric designs. The skull itself came from Seven Stars Farm, which is a farm that a number of friends of mine have interned at over the years. Seven Stars has a herd of dairy cows, which feed right next to the farmhouse that my friends have stayed in. The cows are so wonderful and beautiful, with their big lashy eyes and sweet demeanors. The farm is Biodynamic, which means a lot of things that I don't fully understand. But one of the practices they do is putting a cow head in their compost pile every year. After a few years of turning the compost and eventually using it as fertilizer, they recover these skulls. In 2011, we got 4 of the skulls, which we immediately processed by bleaching for a week and sunning for 2 months each (flipping the skull halfway through so that both sides get sun). I then scrubbed them down, and shook out any extra little bits of dirt (and stuff) out of the crevasses, prepping them to be utilized in whatever project we had coming. I sold this piece at an art fair last weekend. I am glad that someone will be able to fully enjoy it instead of it sitting on my wall for a couple more years until I don't like it any more and paint it over again. :)
A few days after this came out, I got an email from a friend asking me to explain the problem that this video is pointing to. They didn't get why these men hitting on this woman was a bad thing, or why Hollaback! is calling for this type of behavior to become illegal. So they asked me for my opinion. When I got the email, I blinked, stared at the wall, felt a lot of feelings, and had no words to explain what I was feeling. It's just a feeling you get! But after thinking it through, this is the response that I gave...
::start of email::
Why is this street harassment? Why, over the years, has saying "Have a nice night, miss" gone from being an accepted courtesy to an intimidating harassment that people are trying to call illegal? Why is this type of behavior called street harassment largely on the east and west coast, but not as much in the mid-west? What about our culture in this part of the world makes this unacceptable? I believe it is truly an anthropological question and I do not know the complete answer. But I do know something.
What I do know is that myself and other women who live in women-forward, anti-patriarchal, liberal settings feel a number of things when this behavior happens repeatedly... We feel creeped out, sexualized instead of respected, made to feel like we need to hide our beauty so we don't have it pointed out in public, we feel physically intimidated, we get yelled at for not responding in the way that the "harasser" wants us to respond, we are told that we need to smile and appreciate their unwelcome sleazy comments... For women who have been attacked, raped, grabbed on the street, molested on the subway or any other place, this type of behavior is very intimidating and you never know where it is going to lead. Some men are downright mean when you don't play into the script in their head. But in no way is this behavior respecting who the woman is, what her power is, her intelligence, and what her story is.
Some of the comments seem innocent enough, as the first scene in this video shows. "How are you doing today?" is the first comment she gets. There doesn't seem anything wrong with that, except for the comments that come directly after that, which narrate the intent of the first call. These comments make women feel really on edge, uncomfortable, being demanded of... it makes her feel like no matter how she is feeling, she needs to smile in order to please these men's moods. Why is it that someone telling me to smile pisses me off? Because it is ok for me not to be in the mood to smile because I have my own thoughts/feelings running through my head. These men don't ever tell other men on the street to smile. They don't call out anything to other men. There is a parody video to this original video, which exaggerates the respect, admiration, and privilege of men in our society. I'm not going to include it here because that can open a whole separate conversation, but I mention it because men showing respect looks different than how men cat call these women. Catcalls are not the kind of respect or attention that these women want, including myself.
Zooming out a bit, this behavior still falls into the story that women need to please men's wants whenever they are told to. And women are rebelling against that, and against the patriarchy that envelops that ideology. Men take it upon themselves to assume power in a relationship. "Smile." "You should be grateful when someone says you're pretty." All of this is demanding and points to their wants/desires, and has nothing to do with meeting women on an equal playing field, treating her like an equal human who has her own complex thoughts, talents, desires, fears, and lifestyles. And when I think of the progressiveness of the coastal cities, and the movement to even the playing fields between men and women in those cities, it makes sense that women living in progressive areas are finding this offensive, while people living in more conservative, patriarchal landscapes think it is the norm.
A lot of the comments in the video (and in real life) over sexualize the relationship between the man and the woman. And even when they seem innocent, that feeling of being sexualized is creepy. And by creepy, I mean it is unwanted pointed attention. If a man I liked romantically told me that my ass looked hot, I'd be way into that. But a stranger on the street saying that is completely unwelcome. I am so much more than my ass and I don't want the start of any interaction with a man to be that sexualized.
In response to you saying that they are simply hitting on her... This is not a safe way of hitting on someone. I don't know quite the words to describe it. Because of course it's nice to be called beautiful in some circumstances, but when it comes to walking around the streets, being gawked at, looked up and down by strangers, commented on... its embarrassing, unwanted, and it makes us want to hide.
The history of this kind of argument has been repeated in other settings. While I was talking with Patricia about this topic this morning, she pointed out that workplace sexual harassment used to be dismissed as well. Women were told to "get over it" when their butts were grabbed in the office or men made comments about their boobs, and were told that they should be grateful for the compliment. The conversation around workplace sexual harassment started with voices speaking up and ended with that behavior being called illegal. Will that happen now? The conversation has started. How do we want to respect one another? What kind of future do we want our daughters to live in? Each generation of feminists finds their own fight to fight, building off of the one before it, or knocking it down and rebuilding it another way. This video has gone viral because it resonates with so many and baffles so many others.
The woman shown in the video has already received rape and death threats from men all over since the posting of the video. This was unfortunately not unforeseen, as it is the case that when you speak up after you are hurt, the one who hurt you hates you more. This is a textbook pattern for all sexual harassment and is the case again today. Do we cower, too scared to have our voice heard because of the repercussions or do we speak up even when our voices shake?
....and that is my answer. I hope it helped at least a little.
::end of email::
I then hopped back on the internet and this video scrolled by me. It is a video of a man telling a women about how they should feel about being catcalled on the streets. This is called "Mansplaining" where I come from.
And if you are really interested in the video called "10 hours of walking in NYC as a white man," you can find it here:
A friend of mine puts together a yearly planner called Wretch. It is similar to the Slingshot planner, if you are familiar with that one. Anyway, she asked me to decorate some of the pages for next year's calendar and these are what I did on two of the pages..
"May I carry with me Freedom and Rootedness... And burst forth with Seeds of Life!"
"Fossil Fuels are made of Dinosaurs. Save the Dinosaurs!"
Last week in my dROARing class, we talked about animal behavior. We observed anatomically correct toy dinosaurs ::cough::cough::Christmas::cough::cough:: and tried to think about drawing them in different poses than the one they were sculpted in for the toy. This was harder than expected. The above was my best sketch of the day which isn't really a very exciting pose or angle. I'll have to work on this. Sometimes it's just hard to figure out how the limbs' muscles would bend into the body and how the different masses would squish and push one another. I'm excited to keep learning about how animal/dinosaur anatomy works. Maybe next semester I'll find an Animal Behavior class to take somewhere. That'd be a dream come true.
The illustration above will be colored soon but I'm still working on that...
Back in August, while on the lookout for a good fall art class I could take, I scrolled through Fleisher's adult art classes listing like I do at the beginning of most semesters. I grazed over the Watercolor Technique class and the Figure Sculpture class, waiting to see if something really grabbed my attention this year. I stopped scrolling when I reached "Dinosaur Drawing Class". As my eyebrows raised, I clicked on the link and read through the description. This was exactly what I wanted to spend my fall doing.
I emailed myself the link so that I could meditate on it for a few days before investing in the class, as it was no small investment. As I mulled it over, I realized that this class might be the first opportunity for me to learn from a professional how to structure an animal drawing from the bones on up. I feel like this could really benefit my accuracy in my drawings. In this dino drawing class, we would learn how to draw the bones first, then fit the muscles on, and finally lay the skin and decoration ontop of it all. Yes, please! I signed up for the class.
The class takes place in the Dinosaur Hall of the Academy of Natural Sciences here in Philly. I had been to Dino Hall once before, back in the late winter. It was inspirational then, but now I get to sit and sketch the beautiful specimens after-hours, without gaggles of schoolchildren around me. That is glorious.
My visit of awe and wonder last winter
Dino Hall's full Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. You know. No big deal.
The first 15 min of class is warm-up. This little guy is a swimming dino.
This is a Torosaurus Latos female's skull from the Cretaceous Period
Last week, a journalist & photographer from the Philadelphia Inquirer came to class to gawk at us nerds. They went around and talked to some of the students and I thought I was safe from them. But then while they were across the room, I heard a series of shutter clicks and knew that I had been captured. Looking up, I watched as the photographer checked out the photo, started to chuckle, and leaned over to his co-worker to show him the picture. They both started quietly laughing and then pointing at me. This has not happened to me in about 20 years and I got a bit flush. They asked me some questions later and I guess they liked the most mundane thing I said, because they quoted it in the article they wrote a few days later...
I'm not sure this picture quite captures the adoration for this creature that is in my eyes...
This is what I drew that day. We started by drawing the skull, then erasing the skull and drawing the muscles, then erasing the muscles and drawing the scaly skin. Good thing I have thick paper.
This class is pumping me up this fall. I'm learning a lot and making a shit-ton of mistakes, but its a blast and I wouldn't spend my Monday nights any other way. Also, if you have a dinosaur documentary you like, let me know what it is. I watched all the ones on Netflix already.
After 15 years of staring at this unfinished dragon on the wall of my old bedroom in my parent's house, I have finally finished the piece. My folks decided to remodel the room this year. It was still covered in glow-in-the-dark star stickers and Eric Lindros posters from my teenage efforts to entertain myself, but at last my mom decided that it was time for the little room to become a real guest room. Down came the posters and up went new curtains and a layer of paint. She has always wanted me to finish this dragon, though, so a block of space was saved around it for me to "do something with". So I did something. I don't think I'll ever be completely satisfied with any piece that I complete, but this is what I did.
It's funny to think about now, but I have this very distinct memory from when I was a kid- maybe 7 or 8- riding in the back of my parent's Oldsmobile Silhouette minivan, gazing at the billboards that were sliding across my view.
I said to whoever was driving, "That's the kind of art I want to make when I grow up- billboards! Everyone sees it and you can make an influence on soooooo many people!"
I'm pretty sure that at that point, my parents started pointing out all the different types of art I could make if I wanted to. Glad for that.
But today, as I was hopping on the subway back home, I glanced across the tracks and saw my work on the little billboard there. This is the day I get to check off that childhood dream. Did it, little Megan. This one's for you.
It was today, exactly twenty years ago. But that day almost seems insignificant when I think about the years before it or the years after it.
A century ago, when someone got sick, it wasn't unusual for them to die from the sickness, whatever it was- measles, tetanus, the cold. And relatively quickly too. Maybe a few months of illness and then POOF. All gone. And as terribly disrupting and traumatic as it may have been to experience the loss of that loved one, there was a bit of a difference from what we commonly experience with illness in our modern world.
In this world, we experience the big "C" all the time. Caaaaaaancer. The terrifying word that dooms someone to prolonged suffering, but gives them winks of hope at every corner. Maybe the resilience of their body along with the doctors, the researchers a million miles away and their own will to live are going to take back their health for them and they will WIN.
But sometimes that takes a while. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes years.
Sometimes you win. Sometimes you don't.
You never really know how it's all gonna go down when you first hear that the battle is on.
So you fight. And fight. And fight. And pray. And fight. And rest. And fight. And get weak. And fight. And you howl and punch the wall. And fight. And lean against the wall for support. And pray. And fight. And sit down. And look up. And you don't know where to go from there.
This is the struggle I was raised on. This is the struggle I remember today.
One of my oldest friends, Patricia Noonan, has written a play that she has named "Learning How To Drown". This heart-wrenching story swirls through three generations of women as they realize their different forms of autonomy from family myth while struggling with the choice to love. This play is a project Patricia has been working on for a couple years and it has been a pleasure to watch it grow and change over time. Recently, she booked an official reading of the show in NY, complete with beautiful songs written by Amanda Jacobs, actors, a director and producer. It's a really exciting time full of anticipation. She asked me if I would make a poster for the show. I have read the show a half dozen times over the past year or so, and quickly sketched out this piece, then immediately flipped over the page because it was too simple. Nothing is that simple. I kept sketching, elaborating, and adding to the piece, but kept bending the paper back to sneak a peak at this sketch one more time. I finally decided that this had to be it.
It is uncharacteristic of me to create such a simple piece and I'm glad I went through with it. It's a good reminder that sometimes less is more. I also did this watercolor inspired by the play.
If you're interested in hearing some of the music and seeing a video about the show, and maybe to donate toward its completion, check out her kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1582144598/learning-how-to-drown-a-musical
I'm going out tonight and I don't care what my conscience says about it. I have so much freelance work to do right now that I could work for the next 20 hours straight and possibly not be done. My brain needs breaks. This is exhausting.
The Punk Rock Mommy poster is a design I did for my friend Jon's photography show coming up in May. The show highlights a photography project he did with our friend Andrea who had breast cancer and passed away in 2008. She was a straight up punker her whole life, but had 6 kids and was an amazing mother to them and many other people. Jon was allowed to be at her side, snapping photos, from the first doctor's appointment all the way up to a couple days before she died. She wrote a blog during this time- a total of a year and a half- called PunkRockMommy.org and got a ton of press for it. Thousands of people read it daily. Check it out if you get a chance. Now, years later, Jon is fulfilling her wish that the blog be turned into a book. Jon, myself, and this guy Chris have been working on it since the beginning of the year and the gallery show is promo for the book coming out. The book is going to be beautiful- mostly designed by Chris, but with a ton of influence and guidance by Jon. The man has a vision and I'm really enjoying being a part of it.
These two Jazz Fest posters totally shouldn't be up here for others to see. They're not completed at all. I just did them over the past couple days and sent them off to the lady who needs them yesterday. Our next steps are for her to choose colors, give me more info to put on the bottom of the posters, and then we'll tweak the designs for the next few days until we send them out hopefully on Friday to the printer. I'm just excited about them. I like making "music art". By the way, as I type, there are three men sitting on my roof doing shape-note singing. It's beautiful and inspirational. Abstractly, I don't know why humans make music but I'm sure glad we do.
As I get older, I'm getting worse at remembering to get people presents for fun occasions. It's terrible and I feel like a jerk. I should make a resolution to remind myself a month before each event/holiday. And I have less money, so I make more presents, which takes more time. So when I am forgetful and then I remember that I have to make someone a present in the next HOUR... these kinds of things occur.
This was make very quickly for my friend's kid's 1st birthday. I didn't have time to scan it, so I took this low quality phone picture.
On the flip side of things, I'm making flyers for my job now. This one is just kind of cute. I'm trying to stretch the bounds at work to see how much time I really have to design and how much time I have to dedicate to admin work. So I didn't spend too much time on this and it's not amazing, but it's a start to hopefully at beautifully hand-drawn aesthetic.
I also make things more along these lines:
I get immensely self-conscious about my design work. I'm an almost 100% self-taught designer. I don't know tricks to making type very interesting like "real" designers do. Every day I gather reference and inspiration to copy, twist, mimic, and learn from. My "inspiration and research" folder on my desktop has thousands of images in it from poster designs to website layouts to typographical tricks to email headers to everything else you could imagine. My mantra for years has been "ugh! i just need to get better at this!" as I spend hours and hours trying different layouts.
But then today I showed one of my co-workers a design I made for her and her jaw dropped and she told me that I make magic happen. She is usually very generous in her compliments and doesn't know how to design herself, but it made me feel competent in my work, which helps everyone once in a while, you know?
A couple weeks ago, I spent some time at my parents' house cleaning up what used to be my bedroom in order for them to create a guest room or study. It included tossing a bunch of art that I made when I was really little, which was fun to giggle with my mom over. I snapped a few crappy photos with my dumbphone and tossed out all but a couple pieces. Then yesterday, I barrelled through my current studio, filling up three huge bags full of my old art that have been sitting in my closet ever since I made it. I snapped a few more pictures and saved a few more pieces. The pieces below are mostly of the pieces I kept. I now regret not photographing all of it before tossing the ripped bags out into the rain. Whoops. Well, now I have room to store more pieces that I don't really like. Hahaha One thing I'm thinking of doing is posting these pieces on Facebook and giving them away. I don't want money. I want you to take it away from me! I haven't fully decided if I want the world to see these things.
The order in which I'm putting these pictures is... first ones are post-college, then college, then highschool, then gradeschool, and lastly possibly some of the first "art" i ever made.
POST COLLEGE ART:
This is break-up art. Interpret as you will. I'm way over it and never want to see this piece again.
This is a piece I drew for a group show I was in based on a nautical theme. I was surprised that I was the only person out of the 50 participants who focused on pirates. Irate pirates at that.
I painted this for a show in 2011. Rravens are a symbol of death because of their carnivorous ways and so when you spot a murder (group of ravens) flocking to one spot, it can be a telling of someone's immanent doom. I made this in my phase of studying post-apocalyptic everythings.
I made this while in a study group called the Rookery. Interpret as you will.
This is a study of a famous scientific illustration of a wolf. I drew this in my phase of studying wolves, their behaviors, and their anatomy. Ask me about that another time.
COLLEGE ART:
I'm seeing now that my dumbphone has a really terrible camera. Sorry this is so blurry. This is a watercolor collage of all things associated with water. College assignments have really weird results sometimes.
This piece was a study in 3 things. First, we learned the rub-away technique (which is all the brown muddy parts). Rub-away is where you put a thick layer of oil paint down, then take a rag and start wiping away the paint in order to create the tones that make the picture. Then ontop of the rub-away, we did Underpainting, which is painting sections of the piece in one color in order for that paint to peak through the Overpainting. You can see the green part of the one guy's face and the pinky forehead of the guy of the other side. Then we studied flesh tones in oils and painted parts of the faces so that we could still see the Rub-away and Underpainting processes.
The journey is more important than the result....?
We had to dissect one of our favorite things. I chose a snickers bar.
Dissecting another one of my favorite things was my '71 superbeatle- my first car.
Figure study. His name is Andre.
Weird pastel drawing of my friend Liam
My first interpretation of Mother Earth. I know, I know, she's probably not white. Whatever. I was 17.
This is a pastel I did for my roommates when we were parting ways. I later added a poem that I digitally placed on the truck. It goes like this:
And this, I suppose, is where it must end.
Move away, step away, like an old trend.
But I like I said yesterday with all of my heart,
I love you more than then sum of my parts.
You've been there with my playing hopscotch and all.
I fear in this new house, my spirits will fall.
So lets keep together your heart and mine
With play dates and giggles all of the time.
Don't worry, my friend, as we drive away slow.
For five houses down is not far to go.
-by Me, in like 2005 or something
This is a terrible photo of a really nice pastel piece I did vaguely based on the play Othello.
You know when you take pictures while you're staring out the window of the airplane? Well, as a 16 yr old, I thought it'd be a good idea to paint that.
This the the most meta art piece I've ever made. This is a painting of me throwing out a painting that I didn't like.
And this is the painting that I apparently never actually threw out, although I still don't like it. hahahaha
I think this was an assignment to copy an idea from a Norman Rockwell painting, but put our own twist on it.
HIGHSCHOOL AND GRADESCHOOL AND CHILDHOOD ART:
I've often been embarrassed by this piece, which I drew on the wall of my childhood bedroom. I just think it's weird. But it's my childhood best friend, Jenny. I drew it because I wanted to work on drawing faces. Who knows why I chose to draw it on the wall. My parents have kept it up there ever since, God bless them.
I also painted this on the wall. My mom actually wants me to finish the piece instead of paint over it. What a funny thing- a collaborative art piece with yourself from 15 years ago.
Um.... I don't know what this is or why I made it, but my name's on the back and I have a vague memory of making it. I flipped out when I found it. I now understand why I had very few friends as a child. What a weird kid. When I showed one of my roommates the other day, he said that there is a book cover that is similar to this. That adds to my questions, but maybe provides the hints of an answer.
I think this is my first drawing of zebras. I must have been in second grade or something.
On the back of this piece is my mom's handwriting announcing "A Great Tree!". How supportive she was. There was a whole little series of this kind of tree drawn on the dot-matrix paper that my dad would bring home from his "Computer" job. This is the only one that said it was great. I was probably about 4 when I made it.
On the back of this one, my mom wrote "Fog". We both laughed a lot when we found it together. How nice of her to see this as something, even fog. Oh, homeschooling...
I am surrounded by people getting married.Albeit my feelings about marriage, I’ve
benefited a bit from it because I’ve gotten to create and illustrate now 4
different wedding invitations for my friends.This is my latest creation.I was given very specific instructions about the
illustration, but I think it ended up pretty nice.I even signed it.I never sign my pieces.Again, did hand-lettering.Well, really just tracing a font.
But it’s a good excersize in keeping your hand steady as shit. I'm designing the other side of the invitation as well, with all the info and stuff. I'll add that later on.
The final piece.
This is how I traced the names. I wrote them backwards on a piece of tracing paper and then placed it perfectly on the watercolor paper with the penciled-side of the tracing paper down, and colored all over the lettering so that it would transfer. Magic.
This is just an in-progress shot.
the back
This is the original sketch. When you're making art for friends, sometimes its best to make fun of them while doing it. The response to this sketch was that it wasn't wise for the deer to being saying "shoot". :o)
