It’s the 85th anniversary of the ratification of the XIXth Amendment to the US Constitution.
![Penn[sylvania] on the picket line-- 1917](https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5631/21928591802_e1ea00d8f8_z.jpg)
Penn[sylvania] on the picket line– 1917
from Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
(photo info here)
Museum of Femoribilia
Girls
Did She Fake
Be Ready
10 x 6 1/4 inches
new and vintage magazine ads, wrapping paper, page from vintage children’s activity book, 1920s yearbook photos, and soap wrapper
The latest round of Color Erratica pages, this time in magenta and orange. The monitor I’m viewing them on right now is, I think, uncalibrated, because the colors look off. They were fine on my own machine.
I took more of a gluebook approach to my pages in this book. I was reluctant to use any wet media, because the pages of the book had been glued together by the owner. Where others had used wet media, the paper has buckled and the glue is failing (you can see the buckling in the first page).
I spent time last night watching the first half of the last disc of Wonderfalls. The first disc sat here for nearly a month before I got around to watching it. I couldn’t remember what it was or why I’d put it in my Netflix queue, so I waited until I was good and bored before I watched it.
It was well worth the wait. The writing is brilliant–funny and smart. It’s quirky, but not annoyingly so. And, as there was, alas, only one season of the show, it’s not a huge, on-going time committment.
While I was watching TeeVee, I put some finishing touches on the hemp-bound journal I made the other night. I used torn masking tape to attach a photo of a stormy, sullen winter sky. It’s been ungodly hot lately, so I thought a reminder of cooler weather would be motivatory. We’ll see. Because there are only 24 pages, I decided to mete them out as two-page spreads. With one spread for a calendar/table of contents, that leaves 22 plus one to grow on. My intention is to do a spread a day.
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And now some more ranting about Big Brother. This one has been germinating for a while. In a previous episode, Eric got his knickers in a twist because Mike was kissing and hitting on the women in the house. M’kay. The women in question either enjoyed it (one, in particular, claimed to enjoy it a lot) or told him to fuck the hell off in no uncertain terms. It seems to me that that ought to’ve been the end of the Situation, but because Eric is afflicted with a surplus of testosterone, it wasn’t.
Eric, as head of household, decided that it was his place to give Mike a talking to. Apparently, those poor, helpless girls weren’t capable of speaking their minds and it was up to Eric to come to their rescue. Poor little girls. After calling Mike on being a flirtatious pain in the arse, Eric spent the rest of his tenure as HoH telling everyone that Mike had sexually harassed the women and that he needed to be voted out of the house. It fit nicely into Eric’s strategy. He wanted Mike gone and branding him as a pervy bastard was an effective way to achieve his goal.
Mike was a jerk, there’s no doubt about that, but using the umbrella of sexual harassment as part of your strategy for winning a game is, I think, pretty craptacular. I also thought Eric’s ubermanly “I’m going to protect these poor, defenseless girls from the big, bad, kissy monster” schtick was far more degrading to the women in the house than Mike could ever have dreamt of being.
What an ass! And a bully, too. Eric was this close to doing physical violence to Mike because he thought he’d been talking smack about Eric’s family. Who the hell cares? You don’t go around beating up people because they’ve got big mouths. It doesn’t solve anything and only makes you look like a total and complete fuckwit.
Oh, and I’m liking Kaysar more and more with every episode. The guy is smart and, I think, appropriately devious.
I just returned from venturing downstairs to a) use the restroom and b) search for a salad. The salad reconnaissance went well, but I have a few words to say about my jaunt to the cafeteria restroom. First, some background. The kind folks who originally designed this building neglected to foresee that us wimmins, being wimmins, might have needs that menfolk don’t have to consider. To whit, there are no tampon receptacles in any of the stalls in this building. WTF?!
To deal with this oversight, the powers that be have placed a not-so-clearly designated trash can outside the stalls. Yes, that’s right. Us wimmins have to carry our unsanitary refuse out of the stall in order to throw it away. Okaythen. That wouldn’t be so terrible, except there is no signage in the stalls indicating that one ought to do so. This is the campus library we’re talking about, so it’s a high traffic building. We get a huge amount of people who don’t know the system. And, this being orientation season, it’s a huge-to-the-nth-power amount newbies. That means that you get to wade through drifts of pad wrappers and adhesive covers as well as used tampon applicators. Again, WTF?! The pad wrappers are at least, well, sanitary. I do not, however, care pick my way through used tampon applicators. C’mon, people. This is getting ridiculous.
The other thing that pisses me right the hell off is that the toilets in this building can barely handle TP, so flushing a tampon down them is next to impossible. After the tenth flush, most people give up. And, who can blame them? It’s not reasonable to throw used tampons in the trash. It’s bad enough that we have to wrap up used pads and tampon applicators so that we can trek them to the designated receptacle–there is no way in hell I’m going to do that with a used tampon.
Is it too much to ask for refuse receptacles in the individual stalls?
No art today (we’re experiencing a drought, dontchaknow?), but I thought I’d share this gem: I Blame the Patriarchy. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s way better than Cats. I promise.
And, speaking of Patriarchy, an Instant Review of Mozilla’s Thunderbird:
I started using Mozilla’s Firefox web browser about a year ago and have nothing bad to say about it. It’s a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. I decided to give their e-mail client a try, so I downloaded Thunderbird yesterday.
I’ve been using Forte Agent and good, old-fashioned Pine for newsgroups and e-mail. Each has it’s strengths. I adore Pine, but I’ve got a crap connection at home, so an off-line news/mail client is necessary there. Agent has suited my needs well, but it still does not have multiple server support. Blech. So, enter Thunderbird.
Set-up was easy-peasy. It will apparently import from OE, but since I don’t use it, I don’t know how straightforward it is to do so. I had no problems setting up all my POP accounts, nor my news account. I like the junk mail filter. It’s trainable and seems to catch on quickly to what goes in the bozo bin and what doesn’t. I’m not so fond of the news filter, though. It’s clunky and, unless I’m missing something, not nearly as configurable as Agent’s killfile. So, I guess we’ll see if I stick with it for newsgrouping. I’m sold for e-mail, though.
For those who use OE, Thunderbird will feel very familiar. I really urge OE and IE users to give Thunderbird and Firefox a try, if for no other reason than that I think it’s important to have as many options as possible. If we don’t support the good alternatives that are out there, those alternatives will slowly disappear. I, for one, don’t relish the thought of having my computing experience controlled solely by the Wizard of Redmond (or his brother from another mother in Cupertino).
I watched way too much teevee last night. I usually try to ignore commercials, but I noticed something that cracked me up in light of the recent link I gave for Vulva Puppets. At the end of a commercial for Levitra, I noticed that their little flame logo looks an awful lot like a vulva.
I also saw the newish Paris Hilton commercial for Hardees. There’s been a bit of a to-do made over it, which I guess is par for the course. Personally, though, I think it’s not anywhere near as offensive as the other Squick Burger ads. We’re talking hardcore food porn. About the last thing I want to see when I’m thinking of food is some waify little girl stuffing her fist in her mouth. Or, the squicky porn noise of someone biting into a mile-high burger. Eeew. Compared to that, Paris tarted up in a black bikini and wrestling with a hose just isn’t terribly offensive.
Vessels: 3 by 9 (with detail)
mixed media on paper
This is the latest installment in the Vessels series. It’s a combination of Pitt pen, Koh-I-Noor watercolor pencils, Neocolors II water-souluble wax crayons, and collage on yummy Cartiere Magnani paper. I’m much happier with this piece than #17–not so much because I think the final image is all that much better, but because the process of getting to the end result was more satisfying.
I’m especially happy with the leaves. I usually don’t enjoy the process of cross-hatching. It’s a bloody pain in my behindermost parts to get the sort of result I want. It’s a little difficult to tell, even from the detail, but there there are layers upon layers upon layers of cross hatching, which gives a velvety depth to the drawing. The paper held up very well to this sort of abuse.
Vessels: Blue Moon Gold Halo
collage
This is another piece in the same series as the Identity Theft pieces. Instead of working in a composition book, these pieces were all done on chip board. My plan is to eventually bind them all into a book. The book’s working title is Vessels. That could change, but at this point things are shaping up nicely within that overall theme.
As with most of the glue book pieces I’ve done, this one is nothing new or profound. It’s just a reflection of where my head was at the time. Glue books, for me, are as much stream of consciousness as anything. As you can see, I’ve been thinking a lot about the dichotomy between the Virgin and the Whore. Girls learn at a very young age that they’re either one or the other. However, as any sane woman can tell you, there are no such absolutes.
Sacred Cow
collage
Identity Theft 1 & 2
collage
These are pretty self explanatory. Our break room at work has a table where people leave magazines they’ve finished with. There are usually several women’s magazines Good Housekeeping, Women’s Day, etc. I occasionally flip through them. It never fails to depress me.
1. Baubo Takes Love by the Horns
2. Baubo and Cycladic Head Find Love in a Feather Bed
3. Baubo Cruises the Love Boat
4. Sympathetic Magic 1
5. Sympathetic Magic 2
Technical notes:
One of the art groups I play in decided to do a special Dark Valentine ATC swap. I had some ideas that revolved around Hollywood sex sirens, but they all seemed a bit flat. I was going through a box of photos I’d taken years ago for a project I haven’t really gotten to yet: Baubo’s Safari. I thought some of them would be perfect for this swap, so I pulled out a few of them and set them on my coffee table to contemplate. I figured that if I looked at them long enough, inspiration would hit. And it did.
I sanded and scratched up the surfaces. For the one 35mm photo, I was able to entirely sand away extraneous bits I didn’t want included. Polaroid film isn’t as easily manipulated, but I found that if I sanded off the binding tape around the edges, I could remove the film from the emulsion layer. I really like the way these turned out. (If you try this at home, I’d suggest wearing gloves and a face mask and dispose of the emulsion layer very carefully! It contains some pretty toxic chemicals that you don’t want to breathe or worse, have your pets chew on or eat.)
The photo layer of a Polaroid is a thin piece of plastic, so it presents a challenge when trying to adhere it to something else. I’d decided to use an old deck of Harly Davidson playing cards as my ATC base. The cards are highly plasticized, and even though I’d sanded them thoroughly, I didn’t think I could get a good bond between the card and the film. I decided to use a mechanical fastener–eyelets–instead.
Baubo:
So, who is Baubo and why did I choose her to represent tainted love? Baubo is a goddess of womanly humor and knowledge; of obscene laughter and bawdy jokes; of the belly and the vulva.
Baubo played an important part in the story of Demeter and Persephone. When Demeter–goddess of ripe grain; of fruition and harvest–lost her daughter to Hades, she wandered the earth in deep mourning. Demeter took an oath that the earth would remain barren until Persephone was returned to her. The crops died and the earth turned barren. It was as if ceaseless winter had fallen on the land.
In deep despair, Demeter travels to Eleusis, where she retires from the world. Baubo meets her there and intercedes, telling bawdy jokes and then, the unthinkable: Baubo flashes Demeter. By lifting up her skirts and showing her belly and vulva to Demeter, Baubo shocks Demeter and causes her to laugh. Demeter regains hope and decides to carry on her search for her daughter. In the meantime, she reclaims her duties in making the crops and vegetation grow. Abundance returned to the earth.
Sympathetic Magic:
These two images should be self-explanatory. They are funerary urns from the Bura People of Lake Chad, Niger. They’re shaped like huge penises (3-4′ tall) and are covered with scarification patterns.
red paper boat 