Lists - Sept 2011

Deadlines:

Sept 16 - Little Art Show, Toronto ON, http://www.artistsnetwork.ca/las incomplete
  -  Oct 14 - Ironclad Graphics Calendar 2012, Kingston ON, https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=150480588366055&ref=ts
  -  UNTAPPED EMERGING ARTISTS, Arts Project Toronto - applications come out in mid October, deadline Jan 13, must have body of work ready to fill at least a space of about 10 linear feet - http://www.theartistprojecttoronto.com/2011/info-for-artists/untapped-emerging-artists/

Shows to consider/find out more details on:
GAY ART - Patrick John Mills, Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, Ottawa ON - August 2-25, 2012

Commissions in the works/in discussion:
Van - Belleville ON
Logo Design for bar - Kingston ON
Wedding Portrait - Kingston ON

Events:
Sept 29, 7pm - Art After Dark, Kingston ON

Chatelaine Style

I haven't posted on here since the first time, and unfortunately, have been too busy between the worker-owned cooperative cafe I work in, volunteering, meetings and meetings and meetings, and doing advertising commissions to be coming up with much in the way of orignal artwork, even if my studio were in order.

With the fall finally here, and the colours outside changing, I've decided it's time to follow suit by working towards repainting and relighting my studio (which doubles, I have to admit, as my bedroom), which is the same fucking deep dark shade of eggplant as it was when I moved in which I've found to be an incredibly depressing, tiring, and just generally bad colour for me to be living/working in. In the process of this, I'm going to be ACTUALLY fucking organizing my space, so I can use it effectively and productively at my own pace, and not just scramble to find supplies when a short-time-frame commission comes up, but also to revisit a few old projects that I've had packed away and finally fucking finish them.

One of which, is the cut-up poetry minizine, "Chatelaine Style". Taking found words/phrases from a couple of issues of Chatelaine magazine collected from castoffs from hair salons and housewive's garbage cans, I started this project back in Calgary at the Zinetree's old location inside of the Goodlife Community Bike Shop before I left two springs ago and have been picking up snippets of it ever since and reconstructing them into queer Senryu-inspired poems. Read into this what you will for the time being. I'll come up with the right words for the explination of the project once it's done.

Here's a bit of a teaser from the first set I did, which, amoung others, will be included in the upcoming zine that I'll have out by the end of this month.

It reads:

mean boy Fruit Hunters

Leave a Hello, Baby love note

(IT INVOLVES CROWBARS),

Public Transgressions

It's been a long while since I've had a blog, or really done much writing at all, so please bear with me.

Local, public men's room. International Women's Day. Body and mind still wired from my second ever testosterone injection, and bleeding thick from my cunt, I enter the space and beeline for the stall. A few moments inside with one foot propped on the door that doesn't lock to block it from swinging in and revealing what I am doing, allow me to remove the Diva cup that I've put inside my body and I emerge, carrying it, and walk briskly past the men at the sink to fling the cup of blood into the urinal.

The drive to create change and the drive to create art are intrinsically tied up in each other for me. It's moments like this in which I allow myself to recognize and express and gain some catharsis for the fear, the shame, the pain, the violence, the frustration, the defiance, the outrage, and anger that I, and so many other trans folks that I've known, experience within these spaces, within these skins, and within the society that constructs and enforces our understanding and experiences of all this. Defying danger calls for dangerous art. It is empowering to face down the threat of fear and violence and danger and rage with irreverence and brutal irony. Call it what you will, but the experience of spilling blood in a public washroom on my own terms felt liberating and defiant and beautiful. I want to call out to other pissed of queers. Let's show 'em right where we are, and that we're ready for 'em.

Niqolai Roadbike Gryphon, Man(struation), 2007.

Photograph taken after guerrilla performance piece.

The artist's menstrual blood in a public urinal.

Print size 10"x15"

Price $90

This work has been selected, to be displayed in public for the first time, by the jury of this year's Kingston Pride Art Show, which will be running from June 1st to June 14th, with a reception on the night of June 3rd at The Artel alongside selected works from other members of the LGBTQ community in Kingston. It's taken me a long time to allow this work to surface to the public eye and I hope that it's well received by the folks who've maybe experienced something along the lines of what drove me to create this piece.