Something Not Unlike a Real Bio

I’m terrible at talking about myself. It’s that whole vulnerability thing. But if you’re here, you must want to know *something* about me, so allow me to be completely honest and entirely awkward while doing so.
Be assured that I can feel you reading this, and am hiding in a cupboard at this very moment.

I was originally from Ohio, which is basically the Florida of the midwest. It’s pretty, but no one stays there. I mean, just look at the sort of artists that place has cranked out: Marilyn Manson, Maynard James Keenan, Trent Reznor (Ok, he was from PA, which is like an annex to Ohio, but he spent time in Cleveland, so it still counts). Ohio does things to a person.

I’m in Chicago now, which is big. Too big. But diverse and fun and a better place for an artist to be than Ohio.

I’m homesick for New Orleans, even though I’ve only ever visited. The size is comfy, it’s full of palms and banana trees and cemeteries and sordid history, and the artistic vibe there is palpable. Since I’ve not the means nor way to ever live there, I kidnapped its folk art influence and I refuse any ransom offers.

I’m a goth. I could say that I’m a lapsed goth, which would mean I only go to the club on Halloween
and Beltane, but alas, I have not set a booted toe into a club for a long time.

I enjoy skulls. I enjoy eyeballs. I enjoy bats. I also enjoy hot pink and electric blue. Make of that what you will.

I’m a builder of worlds and creator of characters. I write. I’ve been filling journals and sketchbooks since I was 7. I write poems and sonnets and song parodies and weird surrealist vignettes and short stories. 

I’ve been drawing my whole life. I drew whatever I wanted as a child. When I was twelve I drew ancient egyptians. CONSTANTLY.  Then in high school I became melodramatic and drew period costumes and proto-gothy things. Then I went to art school and drew what they wanted and was made to feel self conscious about my drawing by one of those teachers who feels they have to knock everyone on their ass, tell them that most of their drawings are going to be crap, and proceed to draw on your work with a red fucking pencil. 

This is why I do collage now. 

I can paint; in fact I loved oil painting class. I even learned to love gouache after being tormented
with its ridiculous properties during freshman year. 

I can sew, draft patterns and have made/assembled quite a few costumes. I nearly threatened to arm wrestle one of my instructors so I could costume Othello when I went for my costume design degree. (I have a fashion design degree as well, and the lifelong debt to prove both of these) I’m a fool for costume history, my favorite periods being the 16th century, the 18th century (for men) and the 19th century (for women).

I’ve dabbled in makeup, again in college, and enjoyed it immensely as it’s basically three dimensional painting. And there’s nothing quite like wearing your makeup of the goddess Kali home on the train and having not a single soul willing to sit next to you.

I’ve had a brief flirtation with theatre, being both onstage in high school (drama club), and offstage
in both high school and college. I’m not the type to be an actor, at least not in person.

My penchant for theatre carried over into some twitter projects that involved writing, such as
playing a humorous version of Hamlet on there for a time.

Oh yes, the Hamlet problem. So I love Hamlet. No, I mean I. LOVE. HAMLET. It started in high school, where for a high school video project I filmed an autumn leaf doing THE soliloquy whilst being munched on by caterpillars and threatened by wind and birds, occasionally punctuated by ridiculous commercials, one of which included me singing my song parody version of “A Whole New World” (Disney) while spitting blue mouth wash into a toilet with a monkey puppet on my hand and a towel on my head. But that was another decade. Hamlet is one of my alter egos. I get him. He was a proto-goth. I felt like I could hang out and sigh with him. So it turned into a large playing card Hamlet art project which turned into a Hamlet paper doll art project and then it turned into a twitter project, because really twitter is just constant monologing anyway. And of course I had to construct an entire costume for my drawing of him, and add in Horatio as his teddy bear and give him sock puppets of Gertrude and Claudius so he could act out his trauma. Did I mention that I have a problem?

I have done craft and art fairs in the past; I’ve made jewelry, coasters, hand carved block prints, assorted trinkets, and handbound books from handmade paper. I just like to make lots of random things.

But I really find that mixed media assemblage and collage is where I’m most at home, because I have too damn many skills and need an outlet for all of them. I like to use public domain and historic imagery, incorporate drawings, stamps, bits and bobs, threads and patches, salt and pepper, pizza and ice cream. You know. Whatever is lying about and not already glued down. 

As far as favorite artists and influences, I love Van Gogh and Renoir, but I have more kinship with surrealism because of my fascination with dream and symbol and stream of consciousness absurdity. I very much like Magritte, I enjoy Dali, but I identify with Frida Kahlo (she technically didn’t call herself a surrealist, but we aren’t going to be strict about the label) It was pointed out to be that my assemblage art reminded many folks of Joseph Cornell, who was influenced by the surrealists and a pioneer of assemblage. (I am partially ashamed to say I had to look him up because people kept mentioning him) So, he was not an influence, per se, but I respect him greatly.

Other favorite artists of a more modern persuasion are Nick Bantock -a HUGE influence on me, Neil Gaiman, (whose Delirium character is referenced frequently in my work, because, basically, I’m her) Terry Gilliam’s animations, and Dave McKean’s digital art. I revere Shakespeare and Poe, and as well as Rumi’s poetry.

As concerns other influences in my art, my abiding love for history and different cultures should be quite evident. Mexican Folk art, especially that of Dia De Los Muertos figures in quite a bit. Ancient Egypt, anything medieval or Victorian, Chinese and Japanese themes…all are present and accounted for. As concerns symbol, I incorporate a lot of tarot imagery, jungian references, catholic symbols (never mind that I was a lapsed catholic at the age of 5) alchemical emblems and hieroglyphs (I just adore dead languages).

Now, this is where it gets serious. No, I mean it.

I am chronically ill. 

It took me a while to figure out I was essentially being poisoned by the house I was living in (for fourteen years), due to mold being in the attic above my flat and coming down through the dust. In fact, doctors failed me at every turn to either help or diagnose, except for a couple who put me on the right path. I started accumulating rare conditions with excruciating names like hyperprolactinemia and eosinophilic esophagitis, which should have been a clue to these people that something overarchingly bad was going on with me. In my quest to find out what was wrong with me, I uncovered that I have an annoying set of genetic insults that, to oversimplify, don’t allow me to properly metabolize and cause a buildup of inflammation. Add mold to that, mold being inflammatory, and add age related hormone issues. This equals a perfect storm.

I was a frog in boiling water, my mood slowly corroding along with my capacity to function over the span of several years. In 2018, we had to leave the house even though we couldn’t afford to, because I was basically hysterical.

I lost nearly everything I owned. All my clothes, furniture, all my costumes save Hamlet’s, furniture, treasured belongings, and pretty well all of my art. I say pretty well, because what art I had for fairs sits now in a storage unit, with no discernible future. I cannot come into contact with any of it because I had bad reactions to any object that was contained in that house. We were able to get a precious small amount of things cleaned, such as my personal journals, but I still have to handle them through plastic. I have but one piece of my art in my possession: Violent Grace.

The last few years have been a harrowing and frankly terrifying ordeal in just trying to recover and regain balance. I’ve had to do so much work and research and advocacy by and for myself, as doctors have continued to drop the ball. I can’t even say how many times I thought I was going to die and go crazy. I have had to figure out on my own, through insomnia and depression and anxiety, physical pain and digestive distress what I need to do and take in order to try and live again. I don’t know if I will ever really be “better”, in fact I hate the word because it implies a state of being that I haven’t really been able to hold the ground on.

I am improving, painfully slowly, but I am still suffering. I have been able to get back to a fairly normal diet, to function more normally, and of late, resume my creative pursuits and my writing.

I hate talking about all this, because it draws my attention and I refuse to be defined by the horrors I have been through, but at the same time, I want to be heard and understood.

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I am a survivor. I survived bullying in my preteens and teens, rape in my early twenties, estrangement/abandonment by my parents in my thirties, and now I am surviving this. My art and humor and imagination are what has pulled me through all of these things.

I am in a process of reclamation. I want as much of *me* back as is possible, however long it takes. It’s been a lot of stop and go, and it will probably continue to do so. With whatever time I am permitted, I will make things, I will create worlds. I will do the things that make life worth the bother, and hopefully in the process make someone laugh or witness something beautifully outlandish.

Alright, I’m done now. Please close this page so I can come out of the cupboard. It’s stifling in here.