This looks good, check it out! http://www.whodoesshethinksheis.net/
Unfortunately I doubt it’ll be coming to theatres here any time soon, so I’ll have to wait to see it on DVD. But if you’re in a bigger city, look for it and if you see it, tell me what you thought! (There’s a list of screenings right on the site, most of which seem to be in art galleries and art centres in the US.)
Thanks to a kind internet friend, I am currently signed up for Suzi Blu’s “Be. Divine.” workshop on Ning in an attempt to keep my creative juices flowing throughout the holidays when I typically get depressed (doesn’t everyone?) and things start to go sour for the winter season.
Truthfully, I don’t think I’m going to be making any of the projects in the class and I’m sort of being a non-participator in the sense that you’re supposed to start the class by being grouped up with a “goddess sister” to help keep you motivated and well…I don’t want one. I’m flaky and unreliable and I don’t want to feel like I’m responsible for someone else’s good time in this class. I just don’t want to feel like I’m letting someone down or that they got screwed in the “goddess sister” department. The other part is that…I don’t feel like I have very much in common with most of these women, which I’ll get to in a minute.
The main reason I won’t be completing any of the projects in the class is simply because I’m fucking POOR y’all, REALLY REALLY poor, and I can’t really afford to buy new stuff for this class or ‘waste’ the supplies I already have on stuff I’m not going to sell. These days I just can’t afford to play, as sad as that sounds.
If you think that’s as sad and pathetic as it is, feel free to hit up that “donate” button on the right-hand side of this site and throw some cash my way, or even better, purchase something from the shop. That’d be rad. OR if you’re feeling REALLY generous, you could always just buy me presents to cheer me up, some of which are art books that would really help me out. And that’s the end of the begging /poor me portion of this post.
So goddesses…my first assignment for class is to make a goddess journal and write down what a goddess is to me. Well, since my goddess journal is currently drying its first cover layer on my desk, I decided to write about it here instead. Maybe I’ll print it out and put it in the journal when it’s done, I dunno. It IS going to have Courtney Love on the cover though!
Anyway, the question was posed in class a few days ago and I’ve had some time to think about it. I’ve also had the opportunity to observe some of the other women in the class and there’s something that’s really bugging the crap out of me and I feel like I need to get it out.
I don’t know what a goddess is to me yet, but I have decided what a goddess ISN’T. A goddess ISN’T someone who can only be pro-woman by being anti-man. The anti-man, “boys are stupid” sentiment being thrown about in this community of women is really starting to grate on my nerves. It’s not just because I love men and have the greatest husband on the planet. It’s not just because I have an amazing son. It’s not even because I know an equal proportion of intelligent men and women and truth be told, I’ve met way WAY more stupid women than stupid men and I’m talking about the ability to make life decisions here, not the ability to add 2 + 2. But like I said, that’s not even it.
What it is is the inability to say positive things about women without tearing down men at the same time. Really, the two shouldn’t even have anything to do with one another. I mean, what do men really have to do with women to begin with?
What killed me is that I made a blog post on the class page showing off the “Bitch Barometers” I’d found and explaining them, and one of the women said in a comment “I’d change the 2nd barometer to be more luscious, but still designed to keep the men OUT!!” This actually made me make a face at the screen and kind of step back for a moment. In making those, in thinking about my uterus or my period or cramps or any of the above, men never even enter my mind. In fact I’m PMSing like a motherfucker right now and last night when I suddenly decided I wanted an ice cream cone, who went to the store in a snow storm at 11pm to buy me cones and Haagen-Dazs from the convenience store even though it’s $10 a goddamn pint there? That’s right, my husband Blake. The same guy who drew me a bath afterward, with green tea bath salts I might add, and then sat on the toilet and talked to me for 45 minutes about life and the world in general while I soaked my aching girly bits. The same guy who happened to minor in Women’s Studies and is probably a bigger feminist than I’ll ever be.
I take offence to male-bashing, just as much as I take offence to woman-bashing. I mean ladies, before you say something anti-man, say it in your head but in the opposite, against women and see how it sounds. Is it still funny or cute then? Why then, is it acceptable to repeat it against men? Then you’re just as bad, if not worse, than the stereotypical men you believe to be the majority of the penis-having populus. You just propagate the problem. If any woman ever said some of the things I hear out of this class in front of my 5-year-old son, I’d slap them silly. It’s the same thing as saying “Girls are bad at math” in front of a 5-year-old girl. (And if anyone said that kinda shit in front of my daughter, believe me, I’d slap ‘em just as hard.)
Why can’t these women build other women up just on the merits of being a woman? And why does everything have to be a man’s fault? I just don’t get it.
My family is matriarchal. I don’t know where the men go, they just disappear. It started with my great-grandmother, whose husband died young, then her daughter, my grandmother, who took over his furniture store at a time when women didn’t even have jobs, let alone created them. Then came my mother, who had me at 15, but still finished high school, ran her own business for 12 years and is now a successful artist. And then there’s me, and as much as I’m down on myself all the time, when I go down the mental list of the shit I’ve done and the shit I’ve been through, I’m not a goddess, I’m a fucking WARRIOR.
And let me be clear: It’s not ALL of the women in this class who are boy-bashing. It’s just enough of them for me to feel uneasy about the vibe, it’s like cheap perfume stinking up the place when we’re supposed to be acting like goddesses, discussing divine femininity and perspiring rose petals.
So what is a goddess to me? Dudettes, I still don’t know about the modern definition. But I’m pretty sure Aphrodite, Artemis, Hecate, Persephone, Kali or any of the others didn’t waste their time bitching about how stupid boys are. They had better things to do. And so do I.
I should end this here, but I just want to be CLEAR CLEAR CLEAR that I’m not dissing Suzi or her class, I’m just fired up by a few stupid comments by some chicks who should be old enough to know better. I get that some women have had bad experiences with men, but I have a problem with anyone who paints any group with the same negative brush, especially in this instance where we’re supposed to be women building up other women so we can all become goddesses in our own right. I don’t think this can be achieved with the way some are carrying on. I mean, you CAN build one group up by tearing another down, but isn’t that the exact thing our feminist mothers and grandmothers fought AGAINST? Think about it.
So I guess I’ll get off my soapbox now. I’m not really looking for a fight or a feminist philosophical debate, I’m just saying that women can stand on their own virtue and tearing down the entire male gender doesn’t make anyone closer to goddess status.
Shutting up now. Going to bed.
I met this very nice girl named Lorette last night and she wrote about the event on her blog. Check it out, there’s pictures!
Us crazies gotta stick together. ;o)
I am exhausted and already the high from last night is being replaced with a low due to the grey sky and the fact that I’m carrying around all this extra weight from the hell that is psychiatric medications. My lack of sleep hasn’t helped matters either. :o/
So when we got to Touched By Fire, I was met with a throng of people telling me how much they loved my work and that I already had some “fans” waiting to meet me. These “fans” turned out to be Gail and Norm Cutler of Chicago, who were very disappointed that “Dream” was already sold because they felt a special connection to it.
It’s kind of a long story, but here goes:
Touched By Fire began in memory of a girl named Rebecca Burghardt, who was an artist with bipolar disorder and who ultimately took her own life. The show is put on by Rebecca’s father, The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario and a financial company called Raymond James. Well, as it turns out, Gail and Norm Cutler also had a daughter named Rebecca, who also had bipolar disorder, who was also an artist and who also took her own life to end her suffering. They hold a show much like Touched By Fire in Chicago every year, called Rebecca’s Dream and the two families found each other via the internet. The Toronto Rebecca’s father was a guest at the Chicago event last week, and the Cutlers came to Touched By Fire last night.
Gail Cutler saw my “Dream” painting and was reminded of her daughter, even moreso when she read the description of the pieces, that they (Hope and Dream) were the first pieces I’d created after having my psychotic break. I felt bad that I couldn’t sell them to her because she was obviously still so pained by her daughter’s loss, but I did offer to do a commission for them and gave her my card. After reading about their Rebecca on their website, I think I may start on creating a painting called “Rebecca’s Dream”, just because I could relate to her story and feel fortunate in that, that so could have been my story so many times.
Gail spent a good 5 minutes encouraging me to keep creating, that she felt art was my path and that I should never give up no matter what. That made me feel good.
Over the course of the night, we ate hors d’oeuvres, one of which were these BITCHIN’ roast beef/asparagus wraps that I would have eaten a whole trayful of myself. They were cold, but cooked mini spears of asparagus, wrapped with amazing sliced roast beef and skewered, with some kind of steak sauce drizzled on top. OMG I can’t stop thinking about them. There were also california rolls (yuck) and chicken satay skewers (also yuck), as well as cheese, crackers, guacamole (yuck) and these neat kettle chip-like things to dip into it. There were a few other things too, but I didn’t know what they were so I didn’t have any. It was also an open bar, which normally I’d be all about, but I had enough Ativan in me to fell a horse, so I stuck to Pepsi.
So many people kept coming up to me and saying how much they liked “Mania in the Key of Psychosis”, one lady was from an art gallery, the name of which I forget now. Most of the people saying they liked that piece were the 20-ish year old girls handing out the food and all of these cute little punk rock girls with spiky shaved hair-dos.
Near the end of the night, this man came up to me and introduced himself as Bob and he wanted to know all about me, my illness, how I’m feeling now and everything there was to know about “Mania in the Key of Psychosis”. We were in the middle of the room talking and I was trying to explain things about the painting by pointing and he asked, “would you go over there and show me?” so we went over there and I explained the whole thing to him. And the weird thing was that he was hanging on my every word and genuinely interested in where my mind was when I created it, I’ve never had a conversation like that before in my life and I doubt I will again.
He said that he would love to buy it, but as is the problem with something so big and pink and full of tampons, he wouldn’t know where to hang it. He said he was thinking about buying it for his 16 year old daughter, but we agreed that it would probably be a weird piece for a father to give a daughter.
Then he said, “Could I just give you a donation?” and he pulled out his money clip. “If I just gave you,” flipping through his bills, “$100 just for painting this and to help you continue to paint, would you accept it?”
I was stunned and didn’t really know what to say or what the protocol was, so I just said yes and gave him a hug and boom, I was $100 richer. It was pretty surreal and I’m still dumbfounded by the conversation and donation and just the whole event, really.
The other art at the show was interesting. There were definitely pieces I liked and some I didn’t so much. I’d link you to the pieces I really liked, but they won’t be on the website until after the show. The lady whose piece won was really neat, I think it was painted on muslin over a canvas and there was another one that won gallery space downtown that I absolutely loved called “No End in Sight” by Diana Portokalidis that I wish I could show you all. Another I really loved was a tryptich (sp?) called “Obsessive Compulsive” by Kimberly H. Denny that you really had to see in person for the full effect. It was really powerful stuff and I hope some of you can actually make it to the show to see them.
Another artist whose work was there was Joey DAMMIT! who, from what I can gather, is sort of a Toronto art celebrity. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself to him because he was always surrounded by people, but I really liked his work, it was sort of collage meets Andy Warhol and…I just liked it.
There was an awkward moment when we were coming back into the hotel from having a smoke (I know, I know) where this girl, who was wearing an artist nametag that I couldn’t read under her coat, told me that she meant to find me to say that she loved “Mania”. I didn’t really know what to say to her and I kinda flaked out, so if that was you I’m SO sorry, it was an overwhelming night for an agoraphobe like me.
Finally, the night began to wind down and I started hitting my “people threshold” and Blake & I decided to go home.
During the course of the night, I talked to about 20 different people and handed out a good 30 business cards. One woman came up to me near the end of the night and suggested that I sell my paintings with the sparkles at some of the fancy boutiques for children at The Beaches in Toronto, which is actually something I think I’m going to look into because it would be a good venue for some of my stuff.
So, all in all, it was a good night and I can’t wait to maybe do it again next year!
Oh also, there were 380 entries for the show but only 42 artists got in. o_O I had no idea…
Howdy, circus freaks!
Right now I’m doing some stuff online that’s inadvertently bringing people to my site for the very first time and I’m feeling the urge to scramble around cleaning things up because my site is a bloody mess. So, the first thing people should know when coming here is that THIS SITE IS UNDER HEAVY HEAVY CONSTRUCTION AND DOESN’T ALWAYS LOOK THIS BAD. It’s never been the most well-designed site, in its almost 7 years of existence, but it’s always been a HELL of a lot more organized than it is at this very moment.
So hello new people, my name is Sunny and I’m a writer, an artist and a semi-retired muse. I’ve been living my life publicly, online, in front of an audience (so to speak) since 1997 for reasons even I’m not completely sure of. Over the years I’ve had a running webcam (which I’m probably the most “well known” for), an IRC channel, forums, I’ve sold my art and writing and things I’ve made through a website that no longer exists called Merch Bitch (this was in the days pre-Etsy). Half the internet’s seen me naked, knows my kids names and knows where my husband works. I’m an open book, there’s very little I hold back (and when I do, it’s usually as a courtesy for others), and that’s why people read and have followed my crap for so long….I think, anyway. I live an extremely examined life and truly ascribe to the old adage pertaining to such.
In 2006 I had a (very public, as it happened online) psychotic break and I’ve pretty much spent the last two years in a living hell that I never thought would end. Between the unparalleled terror of psychosis and its aftermath, the lack of aftercare I was given upon my release from the hospital and then 18 months of hellacious trial & error with psychiatric drugs, I’ve really been through the ringer. Throughout it all, I was diagnosed with bipolar I disorder and it’s been a slow crawl back to who I was before. Only recently have I become stable-ish and I feel myself becoming a better, if battle scarred, version of who I was before. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this whole ordeal, it’s that life is just a series of processes. I feel like I’m just beginning another, which will eventually end or change and another will begin again.
So that’s me. Oh and I’m 29, married, with two kids, a dog & a cat. This isn’t a current pic, but is, more or less, what I look like (when I’m not sick, anyway):
Part of my “coming back” from mental illness has a lot to do with art and currently I’m enrolled in Suzi Blu’s online workshop “Les Petite Dolls“, which I gushed about here and here and my dear friend Raya paid for me to do because she was glad to see me eeking back towards my old creative self.
When I was starting to “lose it”, just before (and during) my psychotic break, I began working around the clock on a few creative endeavours that I thought were “genius”, including a painting I entitled “Camp Tampon” which to this day I still feel really captures where my mind was at the time. I mean, there’s a definite contrast between that and the way I usually paint.
Because my creative mind was so affected by the mania and because psychosis felt like I was “stuck” in my own imagination and I couldn’t get out, I’ve been afraid to be creative or use my imagination ever since. I’m afraid that if I let my mind “go there”, I’ll get stuck again and that was the single worst experience of my life. I’ve been beaten, I’ve been raped, I’ve been homeless, but psychosis was scarier than all of those things
put together and naturally I want to do everything in my power for it never to happen again. In my mind, that meant stopping all creative activity because to be creative meant I was risking losing it or going over a line that I had no way of seeing. It’s taken my shrink a dozen visits to convince me that as long as I take my medication, it’s okay to be creative and only now that we’ve found what I think is the right medication, have I been able to trust my creative self again.
In the Suzi Blu workshop, you have a profile where she asks specific questions so she can help teach you better and one of them was “What has kept you blocked with art in the past?” to which I answered, “Fear of my own imagination/mental illness. (It’s a long story.)” And this is that long story. You get a blog there too, but I figured if people from “Les Petite Dolls” were clicking the link to my site in my profile anyway, I might as well just write it all out here and be able to post pictures and links to better explain myself.
So there ya have it. Art has always been a huge part of my life (my mom’s an artist, I just grew up with it) and it feels good to have it back.
…I thought you might too.
How To Keep An Art Journal #1:
How To Keep An Art Journal #2:
How To Keep An Art Journal #2B:
How To Keep An Art Journal #3:
She has more videos like these on her YouTube channel and you can buy her creations on her website. :)