Dollface and Her Coffin

I have drawn several (hundred lol) pics of women in coffins, in front of coffins, walking away from coffins....

I sculpted an 5.5 foot coffin and placed a styrofoam sculpture of a distorted pregnant female figure.

Coffins are symbols but not always of death. Maybe just fear, just a trap, a womb or cage you are afraid to be out of. 

When i think back to the images in first art show to the ones i am making now it is such a progression (in skill i hope but also in visual imagery) Guess I am telling a story, here. Guess I am Illustrating my life. I hope  - I dream - that maybe one day i will be able to HELP someone, somehow with my images and experience.

The E.D. was one thing, the Depression and Anxiety was one thing...S.I. was one thing...One thing I don't ever want to hide or lie about but one thing I FOUGHT LIKE HELL TO OVERCOME

for years. And i drew that fight. Of course I don't want to glamourize the struggle, the starving or the blood even though at times, doesn't it glamourize itself? It does to me but I know that is part of the trick. Part of the comfort of being sick.

Anyway i am hovering but im hovering high right now! I have another new painting to post i just need some natural sunlight to photograph it and it has been toooo rainy here.

My Tulsa trip (to see the boy and to see Sonic Youth) was fanta-bulous and here is a pic of me downtown being verrrrry happy!!!

So.

why would a person get out of a coffin yet insist on

carrying with them everywhere?

Folk Urban Continuum. I am it.

Awesome weekend at my parents house. I fed a baby calf and this mama hog. I really love hogs. Its crazy, bc i am vegetarian but my dad and his brothers and his parents and his grandparents and on and on were all hog hunters. They have free range hogs that live in the swamp, they hunt, catch, and kill them in the winter. I grew up watching all sort of animals killed and cleaned. Maybe that i why i am veg.... bc i do believe animals can suffer, and I think it is rather gruesome to eat them, but i deal with and accept the fact that my family and most everyone I know, eat meat. However, I think it is more humane to kill and eat wild animals that it is to raise them in tiny cages and mass produce them. Anyway, I used to think about this ALL THE TIME. I am so spiritual with nature and animals that is almost goes over into the realm of new age hokey-iness.
Yes, i can laugh at myself.
No, I will not eat a shrimp.
Yes, i want to bury steaks and give them funerals
No, Im not disgusted by watching a hog being butchered.
Yes, i love bones. I collect bones. I see life as a circle....my bone collection and my vegetarianism are not a contradiction. They are a confirmation. Almost a religion.

Humans can be nasty. and vile.

Life can be ugly. and gruesome.

There were times, when i should have looked away.

and i didnt.

And humans can be Kind and Joyful

and Love and compassion can abound

and i honestly don't know what to make of all of it.

So i draw

and i write

and i blog

and i breathe

MONSTER

Here is the Monster drawing i did for the Monster Mash Show in Shreveport

The theme was just your interpretation of a monster. So i did this sort of primal, instinctive natural monster that is inside everyone. LIke Maybe even more primitive than an animal, you know, its a freaking plant. trying to surive. Trying to grow towards the sunshine.

It is funny than heard "your own interpretation of amonster" and the first thing i thought was INSIDE ME.

so...this is the see inside monster.

and i was in Tulsa during the show, so UNFORTUNATELY I didn't get to attend the opening, and i don't have my own pics.
Prints are for sale for 10 bucks.

aaand since i hate to blog w/out a pic here is a shot of me and my bestest friend Amanda at the Terrorplex near Dallas. It was a series of Haunted Houses and it was a blast!

Bitter Heart; A Love Rant

when i disappear

i go here

it never happened

you ever noticehow you can make somthing disappear.
like you are a witch
like you are a magiciain

this didnt happen it didnt happen it didnt happen no hting happened ti never ever happened it didnt. it did NOT and i am FINE.
there you go.

just got back from tulsa. have not blogged bc i was gone but now i am back.
and now i am dumped.

and now once again im going who the hell am I?
my bday is wednesday.
i am july 221978.
i am.

iamlosingthis

Lily and her Healing Light

Some times i have a such a bizarre time being alone with myself i just stay busy to avoid getting sucked into the crevices of my psyche...an ocd focus on a pore, a scar, a fingernail. Like a black hole collapsing in on itself.

I scanned in some drawings from a while back ago. The sketchbooks are from the past 3 years ...i try to remember to date things but for me trying to remember is just Forgetting.

going thru the images made me sad bc i used to fill up a sketchbook in a week. now ....i work so much and work makes me tired that i can only do 3 or 4 drawing a week and small ones at that....

The gaining of these last five pounds eradicated so much pain. It is unbelievable. The pain in my hips, jaws, shoulders....It is gone. The bone scraping joint pain is gone. The freezing ice bone pain. Why would you miss pain? How can you miss pain? Maybe i don't miss it, i just am not sure how to live without it.

recovery tree

So in a blog post i referred to my maintaining wellness as "dancing around the recovery tree" and the author of I hate to weight and more blog suggested that i draw that. LIGHTBULB. greatest idea ever - bc i tend to draw the sickness feeling so much more than the healing because im not sure HOW to draw the healing in a not so painful light bc the HEALING IS PAINFUL but i wanted to try something more positive and ACTION oriented but it was just a suggetion to myself in my head so when
i got the comment on my blog i was like BAM yes okay lets try it.

aaaand this is just a thumbnail - first rough sketch - and notice that she is not real joyous in the face! This can be a tedious dance. Maybe eventually I will draw happy souls dancing around that sacred tree. RIght now it is new and she is afraid.

Trees are symbolic and important to me.. as i grew up in the most rural spot in a million pine trees. and cedar and cypress and sweet gum and pin oak..ancient old secret grown up in their rings. In my pretend world those trees were my friends. yeah i was a dork. whatever i lived in my head. still do. So...you know how in myth shamans are dancing around the tree, witches are living IN the tree, jesus is nailed to the tree...etc. I like that. I like to use that. It makes sense to me.

Ribbons. So the first person i showed this to said, "oh look a girl tied to a tree." Im like, "she is NOT TIED TO the tree she is dancing around it". He said, "oh like a may pole." "well. no. yes. sort of...."
i have drawn women tied to trees several times before...that feels more like what i am feeling thatn the recovery dance that i want to feel. BUT. i can draw it and make it come true, I say.

I drew..Stone figures in a row all connected with ribbon. I make little voodoo dolls and tie them with ribbon to a stick. or to each other. or to the leg of bed. I dont know why it seemed important. This is art? This is religion? This is me trying to make it all make sense...
Whatever. The ribbons symbolize our connections maybe? the invisible lines that weave us together? or apart?
i don't know. i'll post more pics. some days i m just bad with words.

2000

Trying Not to Refuse

So my friend is a photographer and I model for him all the time and of course i dont really model i just pose for fun and get all artsy sometimes (we are both painters) and i like this one bc it is
kinda spooky and the highlight/shadows are interesting and all that.

Anyway right now I am attempting to force myself to be comfortable in this shape/body that is way not the shape body i want.
So you have choices I suppose - stay this way and hate da body, Lose weight, Stay this way and learn to love da body.

Sometimes is just seems like the soul of me, the body of me, and the space around me, don't sit right together... all disproportion and feeling of Hugeness and Pressure..much of what i believe is Anxiety. A formless fear taking form..in my body!!

I found this post at Ed Bites to be helpful.

But alas I am 30, been ED-ed since 14 and forever, and the idea of accepting this body..just clicked as something as i should and could strive for. Instead of the usual...I REFUSE.

Love/Hate

Finally! This is the piece I did for the Love/Hate show a couple of months ago. It has been at a friends house since the show came down and I finally got it back.

the sun is a star.

here is another of the bright watercolors. I may have blogged it long ago, but i am feeling it today!
hugs to the blogoworld

photosynthesis

swamp grrrrrl

She Stood....in a COLORING book!!!

I did this while we were watching a movie -and now dont remember which one or anything that happened in it but! I got out my old prismacolor markers, btw those markers are truly amazing bc they are years and years old and still in great condition and NOT dried out at all.

A coloring book! wouldn't it be fun to make a coloring book..not for kids maybe but just turn all of my doodley drawings into a story book that you can color? It could be like a graphic novel about this woman that changes shape in an environment that changes shape and in her efforts to find something solid and constant she lands on a scale and then finds it to be UN-reliable also so she plants flowers in her stomach and they grow out and up toward the sun and she becomes nourished by the suns energy and grows and eventually learns to accept the Fluid nature of reality..all in VIVID TECHNICOLOR!! yay

So sometimes i post pics of myself - and REFUSE to bodysnark in an effort to force myself to ACCEPT this flesh vessel regardless of how i FEEL about it. w/out picking it apart...Dancing around the Recovery tree singing la la la this is okay la la al i will Do this i will not freak out i will not la la la but then a heavy weight inside just wants to take a chainsaw to that flesh-bot.

black berry stained heart

So over the weekend i bought some hair dye. I used to dye my hair a lot just random fun colors but it never turned out like I hoped..which was Blue or Purple like the mermaids in Hook. So i just let it be natural for years but then a few days ago I bought some semi permanent EBONY MOCHA dye and voila. Im an ebony mocha head.

But in this picture i had just picked black berries and was bringing them to my friend-with-a-camera.

So since declaring myself recovered i freaked out and eliminated some food groups and sailed a sea of internet thinspo. Yikes. FreakSTOPwhaTyrDOING.... i feel like im looking at porn or something when i do that. BADBADEVIL.

oh hello lovely bones. stop no dont. chew chew swallow gulp
yeah yeah yeah

I fell asleep drawing in my big sketchbook.
I have a difficult time trusting people
I think bruises can be pretty

I wonder if you can take a medication for so long, that the part of your brain that makes the chemical being targeted by the meds will just STOP working.
so you cant ever get off of the meds. I worry about that often.

i think that as far as recovery goes, it is one thing to look deep within yourself and sort out
the things you shoved below and it is another whole thing..to accept the body you got.
- - - - and these things are tied up together for most of us...but! I really feel like the part of me I use to NOT hyperventilate when my thighs touch is very distinct from the part that remembers painful events...and moves forward toward a challenge regardless.
I dont know how to explain it...But there is, well, you know, it IS a helluva HARD THING to feel your flesh and clothes touch and the space around you pressing down and truly believe that it's all gonna be OKAY. When the scale says normal, and you still have to eat some lunch. and then go back to work and do a regular job and not curl up in a ball and wail. or starve or smoke or slice yourself to bits or whatever sort of bitter coping mechanism you may have chosen, or just developed.
and you must talk to this customer on the phone despite the fact that your body parts are expanding rapidly in disporportion and it cant be true but if FEELS soooo true but it can't be...MUS push through you know. And i'm so shocked that these days i mostly can. I think..i can push through it. Its frightening, isn't it?

Body Burn

And i was thinking of old things

..">
In my head we are happy we live on a hill we grow things we live in a castle we are in love in your head you blow your brains out every day.
In my head we have been together 10 years we have been on a thousand trips we kissed on a balcony in Italy we bought wine in a tiny village in france we walked the streets of Berlin we live in a castle on robbins hill we met in a snowstorm you wish you were dead everyday.
It..s the world you hate? Good. When you start lovin it is when you..re in trouble. The world will hate you, when it loves you, you are in trouble. It..s the prophecy.

Don..t trouble yourself with judging them their judgement exists already its waiting. Its coming. Just like ours. Don..t waste time hating this world it barely even exists. It will all be destroyed. What we crave is somewhere else and it can not be destroyed. Some things I know I have always known and not because someone preached it at me. I searched for it. I begged for it. I pleaded with an invisible force to not make me stay here in this reality. I begged for the reality not to be so. I wanted an answer. I wanted some peace.

All I found were some flowers. A plant that grew back. I thought it was dead. A dog shoving its cold wet nose in my ear. Ladybugs in my house. A dead woman 30 years old who had planned a life of joy. Some dew in the grass reflected some morning sun. And the rich logging companies plowed on through....extincting species no one even knows about. half naked young women dance across America to distract men from the bombs falling on innocent peasants in tiny poor countries. But I saw 2 deer last time I went home and they only belong to God.

there is no real peace to be found anywhere outside of you. You know that right. I don..t know what you believe. I don..t know where you..re anger comes from. I don..t know how to help you. I don..t even know why I think I m supposed to.
so in your head you blow yr brains out everday and I make up stories in my head so much I don..t remember what even really happened. I remember what it felt like. The ongoing injustice, corruptness and greed that is this world grinds on and you get aggravated and and angry and then something breaks and we yell and we curse and wecry. And ball up. Its like this negative spirit that is emitted from factories and traffic and greed and money it seeps in our skin. It makes us claw at each other and snap at our fellow humans who just like us are confused and sad. I pretend there are lil glowing frogs all over the house crawling around and radiating a positive life force.

Its all energy. That is all any of this is. And just because you can..t see something does not mean it isn..t there.
In a way I think its okay you can add to the pos. side or the neg. side. But of course it isn..t that simple.
What do I know anyway. I sleep to avoid. Im just a lonely girl that talks to herself.

12-09-02

Treehugger

So i had some favorite trees as a kid...i suppose, in my head, they were 

like Ents...the talking trees...they sort of marked off the backyard which was a kind of wonderland 

to retreat

from the hellish anxiety ball that was school.

so there was this mimosa tree that i climbed and well, I must have been

quite literally  a kind of treehugger barefoot chimp child.

So anyway it grew and i grew and ..it just died.

My dad cut it down yesterday.

boom crack snap thud.

sort of a ....milestone. marker. 

it was a great tree...gone

Bad Taste. (108 Dead Fish St)

So this one time, a blogger that i was kinda sorta trying to befriend mentioned that my art work was quite possibly IN BAD TASTE.

After the initial MORTIFICATION, i got angry. Then HURT. Then back to angry. Surely, i would not have been offended if it had been the wealthy ladies at the Local Parish Art Guild. I would have expected it...see it has happened quite often. However, I was seeking approval from this person...i imagined that if I branched out..reached out, you know, something would happen. Something different.

Despite the positive responses I got from several people that bad taste comment stung and stood out in my mind.

I paint what I have felt and experienced and a good deal of that has not been "socially acceptable" or in "good taste"..I just can't apologize for it anymore. As a matter of fact, I really never should have apologized for it in the first place..but  my particular personality....made that inevitable. My imagination is what it is and at various times it was all I had. Creating this imaginary world that mirrors reality was a coping mechanism as much as it was an ACEDEMIC AREA OF STUDY...and too bad i became unbalanced and retreated too far into it...

so far that reachng out is, at times, terrifying.

Cyber communication seemed less frightening. Made my heart race less....

The more "well" i get, the more i can see how "sick" i was in the past. And there are flickers of regret for  the time I could see as wasted. However when down in that deep dark cave of collarbones, ribs, deafening hunger and rotten flesh images..a pit of despair, depression, anxiety, i gathered, out of the muck, jewels. And though they made be shaped odd and possibly in bad taste, I wouldn't trade them for  a shiny photoshopped manicured  waxed diamond. I am what I am, and that includes goodness and  love and most importantly kindness and Honesty. And honesty includes, sometimes, things that are not necessarily Media Approved Pretty.

This curious decaying fish reminded me of  that comment..about the bad taste. Bc i saw a creature that was a cultural symbol for "life" or "birth" decaying on the bank. I was intrigued by the scales drying texture and the silver white color....so beautiful. So repulsive. So REAL...I feel an overwhelming love for all of God's creatures and their natural life cycles and the suffering that occurs in all of the life forms on earth.  It is all bundled up in my world view and if it sometimes seems that i say or paint things that are in bad taste...well i really don't mean to be offensive. I only am being real..which is pretty much what i expect and admire in other people even if it does not match my exact outlook.

In spite of my laid back silliness and cynical sarcasm, I can at times be too serious...and i can be too sensitive and take things too personally...And I attempt to balance that and lately it has become easier.  Becomes sometimes a dead fish can spark a symbolic liturgy for nature in my head but sometimes a dead fish is just a dead fish.