new zine, seven loves, the end of the world and dancing bears

So spring is in the air, almost just peeking it's way around the corner and I am R.A.C.I.N.G. to get as much drawing done as possible. I find winter very insulating in a creative way. Maybe incubating would be a better word? Anyway, I'm actually a little sad to see the snow start to go... it was my blank canvas, a little bit.

This latest project is my newest zine... I haven't found a name for it yet, although this morning as I was curled into an unpleasantly morphing nauseous ball after a night of wayyyyyy too much whiskey, two names did float through my head that could start the chain reaction towards the correct title. "i don't really believe in the apocalypse" or or "sweetest sun". Something like that. (sidenote: don't you just love the gracefully random things a subconscious can bubble up in the throes of hypnagogia?)

It isn't necessarily about the apocalypse. It's definitely planetary though, a bit epic. Probably a lot more about growth and seeds, evolving, creation myths, all tied together with the idea that it will end and it's all ended before. But it's not heavy! Actually! Maybe it's the page made up entirely of adorable snack food? Snack food is kinda a theme, too, because it's MY zine suckers. :P

I've also been nominated for the Kreativ Blogger award by the luminous and fruity K from Apricot Belly! I am supposed to list 7 things that I love, and then pass this award onto 7 other bloggers. I... don't really know 7 other art bloggers, and thusly I'll make this a little mission to find a few, how's that? Here goes!

"What are 7 things you love?"

1. Life! I think it's juicy and confusing and never boring and even when it hurts it's kinda funny in a horrible way. And it keeps improving, how is that? age 80 is going to ROCK SOCKS.

2. Making things with my hands (and my heart and brain). Making things in general. Give me a void and some tools to fill it and I am a happy happy girl. I kinda leave trails around wherever I go... ^^;

3. My experience of the divine. It's been there like an extra halo of radiance on everything since as long back as I can remember. (I will divulge that the white circles that are allll over my work are probably very very related to this).

4. Dancing like a moron. Dancing like a flower. Visualizing the earth coursing up through my ridiculous giant Canadian Winter Boots as I cyborg-prance at crazy parties.

5. The city of Montreal. It done me good. It made me a woman! I'm not even kidding.

6. Waking up at 4 in the morning to make myself an elaborate bowl of oatmeal. Nurse said oatmeal for 2+ hours reading whatever thick and conceptual book I've managed to find lately. Drink piping hot yerba mate alongside. Finish said breakfast. Then Go Back To Bed. Love it.

7. My kitty!!!! Okay, and every single one of my friends. Especially my oldest ones. I have really really really rad friends. Loyal and strange and beautiful, all of them. My family too. "my friends and family"? Well DUH I love them!!!!

Enough mushiness though. Here's some impossible band playing at the Sala Rossa's Japanese Night coming up March 4th. I'll be there! You should be too!

tamagoléoptera
Oh right! Almost forgot (and okay, so I do know some artsy bloggers):

1. Bettina @ Inside the Artist's Studio
2. Michelle @ My Zoetrope
3. Evan @ Bjorked Off
4. Evan @ Swan Fungus
5. Olivia @ Olivia Ew
6. Amelia @ Chibi Amelia
7. Angie @ Angie's Amazing Adventures

Go! go forth and love things! I'm out.

happy heart day!

"
I saw two necks, male velvet strong, lamplit mid-keyboard swell in a freeze frame embrace, the air smokey and sweet with the smell of youth and january hope... remembering for a moment that we all will die. one's dress shimmered silver and silk, his beard wrapped around a nightlong grin and beer bottles clattered like softly tossed snow around the room. There were promises flourishing everywhere, between the languid and the crazed, the blind and the violent, the yogi, the yoni and the star, because - for the most part - we were young and youth is designed for grasping of all kinds.
"

ps. painting custom patches is fun! :)

Performance #2: Persona Literata

"Dear Diary,

today I woke up and I was a ghost. How strange! made of lines, eleven years of words and promises and opinions and stories. boys and mistakes and doodles and heroes and days. I am having a hard time creating words. Right. Now. They are so permanent and so wrong... and just who am I now anyway? I walked up and down the street, fingers numbing in the cold and my mind numbing too... a Self dimming and fleeting to leave just the skin. So in a way it's a shell with no soul. OR is it a soul bared completely with no body to recognize? As much as a soul can be summed up in an A B C kind of way, and just how WAS your tuesday? Dear diary, I never wrote dear diary at all. Who was I talking to? It wasn't me. I haven't found a ME definitive enough to be the fulcrum of these words yet. There is a good story I'm wearing, it's a one-of-a-kind couture made from the hundreds of voices that all went by E. Ranger (except that phase where I wanted to be called - wait for it - Willow Moon, and I really don't count her as part of the Me-ish canon at ALL, what a chimp!.... <----- Artistic license). Like a relay race of my own name... with no prize and no finish but apparently a decent uniform and oh there's unlimited graphite!

ANYway. I hate reading my own writing. The End."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I consider this my first real performance. I had to psyche myself up all morning to go outside but I needn't have been so reluctant. This was exhilarating!!!!!!!!

I only walked. That's it. I walked slowly and at one with the Persona. Cars slowed down, people did double and triple takes. My hands felt like they would crack right off in the sub-zero weather, but I kept going, vision at once blurred by the pantyhose and sharpened by the contacts and pure creative high.

Seriously, this is like my dreams coming true. Literally. The fantasies I lost myself in as a kid, the strange characters that I still draw... stepping off the page and into YOUR TUESDAY MORNING. What the hell??? I love life! I'm wearing this suit again.