Sometimes I really wonder what the hell is wrong with my brain.

So, I of course signed up for my friend Suzi Blu’s “Rodeo Girl” workshop because I really wanted to see what this “muddy effect” was all about, just in case I ever found a practical use for it. Now, I didn’t really have any intentions of making my own “rodeo girl”, which was kind of the point of the class and a lot of the women have been doing, I just wanted to see how Suzi did the technique.

And here’s where I worry about my mind. I see a lovely, muddied rodeo girl with a pretty skull balloon and tissue paper stars and a pink bunny and as I’m watching Suzi explain the techniques I’m thinking, “Wow, this would make for a really awesome abortion!” *head desk*

So, to refresh your memories, here’s what Suzi’s rodeo girl looks like in all her cute, shabby, muddy glory:

And here’s a sample sketch of what my version is going to look like:

I see “cute little rodeo girl”…. and think “girl who’s given herself a coat hanger abortion and is now hemmoraging to death as the cat watches”. I mean, I know my brain’s warped, but to be fair, I saw the technique with the muddy effect and the papery bits at the bottom and was reminded of the 40′s or 50′s and I’ve been on kind of a feminism kick over the past month so that’s just where my mind went. If all goes as planned, I think the piece is going to be awesome, although I’ve already had to do some improvisation I’m not totally happy with because I couldn’t find what I was looking for at Micheal’s. With this technique, you use patterned tissue paper, in Suzi’s case, stars, but I found the selection at our local Micheal’s pretty limited and had to make due with what they had. SO this is a call to arms! If any of you get any presents wrapped in patterned tissue paper, SAVE IT FOR ME! Then let me know and I’ll gladly give you my address so you can send it along!

At Micheal’s I found the other things I was looking for for the piece though, and that made me happy. For example, her nightgown is going to be made out of fibrous white mulberry paper with real lace trim and the blood is going to be made from these really neat alcohol inks made by Adirondack. In theory, the mulberry paper should suck up the ink like crazy and make it “bleed”, causing the blood to (hopefully) look pretty realistic.  Oddly enough, we also found a mini metal coat hanger in the scrapbook section and I paid $7.00 for the goddamn thing because it happened to be holding a onesie in a baby sticker kit. You probably know the kind (Jolee’s Boutique), they use real material and snaps and stuff? Anyway, I got one and the piece is going to be fabulous.

The whole time I was planning it though, I kept laughing to myself because I really am just a perverse individual. I think I’ve told this story before, but I’m going to tell it again: In grade 8 I had this art teacher named Mr. Byers who was a total cocksnack to anyone who had even the tiniest bit of talent and for whatever reason, he had a special hatred for me. I remember one class in particular where we we doing a papier mache project with chicken wire and the assignment was to create a sculpture that was a play on words.

During the brainstorming session with my group, I suggested that we make a sculpture of a bear with his hands over his groin and call it “Bear Naked” and as I suggested this, Mr. Byers had been walking right behind me, heard it and gave me this tongue lashing right in front of the class – and I’ll never forget this – about how “everything [I] do is socially unacceptable and [I] will amount to nothing”.

And here I am, half a lifetime later, painting bleeding uteri, miscarriages and abortions. But guess what Mr. Byers? I’m sellin’ ‘em, so fuck you. :o)

Oh and one day shortly after that, some of my friends who were also fed up with him, stapled his coat to his coat rack with a staple gun….repeatedly. Like, there was no saving it.

Anyway, it is true though, that a lot of what I do is “socially unacceptable” and I truly do think that there’s something wrong…or maybe not wrong I guess, but different, about my thought process. When I started painting, which was only about 5 years ago, my main goal was to take the things my mother had taught me about acrylic paint and traditional folk art and bastardize the hell out of it. I liked making acrylic paint and mediums do things they weren’t supposed to do. I liked using the ONLY technique my mother ever taught me, called “floating”, to highlight the inflammation inside a menstruating uterus or to create a white glow around a miscarrying one.

There’s just something in my brain that sees or learns a new technique and automatically thinks of perverse applications of it. Or I see pretty things and I automatically want to make my own ugly versions. I’ve got this damn rebellious streak in me that I’m just completely at the mercy of when it comes to art. Like, even when I was doing “Les Petite Dolls” (the first Suzi Blu class where I learned how to paint pretty girls), one of my pieces was “Ennui”. Everyone else was doing inspiring, beautiful pieces with traditional folk arty words like “believe” and “dream” and all of these inspirational phrases like, I dunno, “The Earth laughs in flowers!” and I create a monotone piece with a word that means “intense boredom”. I mean, come on, that’s not normal, right? To just automatically stick my chin out and do the opposite of everyone else, probably just for the sake of doing the opposite of everyone else?

I dunno. I dunno what that says about me, but I’ve been that way my whole life and it’s that characteristic Mr. Byers was talking about the day he went off on me. He saw it. Unfortunately he didn’t see it as something wonderful or exceptional or unique. Instead he gave me shit for it and tried to berate me until I saw the error of my ways and conformed, which I obviously never did. In fact I’m pretty sure that the older I get, the worse that characteristic comes through, I think because I can get away with it. I’m not 14 anymore and I can simply tell you to “fuck off” if you don’t like it. Don’t look at it if you don’t like it. Don’t buy it if you don’t like it. I’m gonna create it regardless.

And I think I’m just sick of seeing the same crap within the folk art genre. It’s always pretty girls and flowers and butterflies and sisters and best friends and quilts and quirky, inspirational sayings and while I get that a significant portion of the folk art buying population wants to hang that kinda shit on their walls  (hell, even I do!) or on their kids’ walls, I grew up living, breathing and eating that shit every day of my life and I’m just so goddamn sick of it. (Especially anything with a country theme. *gag*) Again, don’t get me wrong here, I think what my mother does is BEAUTIFUL and I think she should charge a fortune and I think what Suzi Blu does is GORGEOUS and she’s a natural born teacher, but I’m a natural born trouble maker and I wanna stir shit up. I have the strongest desire to just, I dunno…subvert the dominant paradigm. It’s almost as strong as my desire to have children or get married was, it’s that big of a force in my life.

Anyway…

I really wish I could write about the series that I’m going to be working on after I finish “The Abortion”, but I’m so scared of people stealing my genius ideas that I just can’t. These ones are way too special. What I will say though, is that anyone in IT or any kind of computer science is probably going to dig them (well, two of the four anyway) and I’m painting them specifically for my homegirls in those fields.

I’m going to be treating these ones a little differently than previous works though. Right now I’m thinking that the originals aren’t going to be for sale, at least not right away, and that – pending I get this arts grant I applied for – I’m going to just sell prints of them in an Etsy shop or something. The original paintings will be 16 inches high and 12 inches wide and I’d like the prints to retain their original size, but I won’t know if that’s possible until I get them done and actually go and talk to a printer. I’m also hoping to get these ones professionally photographed because sadly, my skills in that department are way too subpar and I want these to be perfect because I believe in the ideas behind them so strongly.

I also think that once they’re done, I’m going to post pictures of them here on my site and take pre-orders for the prints and do a limited, hand signed and numbered run based on general interest. After that I’m hoping to get the originals into a gallery somewhere, maybe not to sell, but to at least show off.

So this is my plan.

Okay, it’s almost 8am, I’ve been up most of the night and I think it’s time to give my brain a rest and find something else to do.