So the local art store has an open call for a reoccurring open art show. Just bring an art piece, hang it on their wall. You can list a price and maybe sell it. Some months are reserved for particular medias and I'm kinda blah about that (let's be real, I probably lack the raw technical skill in pure watercolor or acrylics or whatever to really shine), but one month is "artist's choice" and that has potential. It has to be something that could hang on a wall, so a big glass jar piece is out. I immediately thought, I could engrave a mirror.

Then I thought, I could engrave the front of the mirror with the foreground and the backside of the mirror with the background for a slight 3d effect. That would be cool, right? And I already have the old bathroom mirror that came with the house that we replaced with something nicer. It's the cheapest framed mirror you can buy at Lowes. I have no further use for it. I could use that, or maybe find a better framed mirror at a thrift store. If I made something really cool, I might be able to attract some spillover attention to my cups. It would be a showpiece. I'd price it high enough to be worthwhile for me, not the "pls buy me sadface" price.

I really want to do an ugly caterpillar piece, where I have a woman who is getting her head eaten by an enormous hideous caterpillar. I've been on this ugly carnivorous caterpillar theme for some time, but it has yet to emerge in a truly finished piece. The odds that someone will see an ugly caterpillar carnivore piece and think, 'wow, THAT is the look I want for my dining room' are ... low. But I don't care. Yeah, yeah, I do what I want!! NO RULES!!

Well, some rules, it's a family oriented show so I'll have to keep the gore down and hide the nips.

I am excited.

Like this is fun, because I can do the boring, sellable themes on the cups at accessible prices and save the weird personal themes for showpieces with no real expectation of selling them.

I know I've written about this before but I have had a lot of trouble getting stuck between making work I know will sell and making work that is true to me. And I've had a lot of emotional baggage hampering me because the thing about making the work that is true to you is that people will see it and (maybe) ask questions and you will probably have to talk about your deepest personal topics in a surface level way.

When I ran into my old coworkers at that event, I really stumbled over telling them what I was up to. I just wasn't mentally prepared for conversation, nor prepared business-wise. The website is up but it's outdated and I hate it now and I want to redo all the product photos, and I have no social media presence set up. So I was awkward. It's hard to talk about your art coherently and confidently when you're put on the spot. Even moreso with strangers. I could blab and blab and blab about giant carnivorous caterpillars (you know I could) but there is so much to say that I would probably stand there looking constipated if anyone asked me in person to chat about it. 1) ugly things are more interesting than pretty things, especially the older you get. 2) everyone likes butterflies (the end of the metamorphic process) but they ignore the caterpillar. 3) being an artist is a curse and it's like something eating your brain and I wish I could have stuck with math or physics or something respectable. 4) the caterpillar must digest itself to become the butterfly, sacrificing the old self. 5) not all caterpillars survive the metamorphic process. 6) the transformative creative process is painful and horrible but all laypeople want to see is the stupid pretty butterfly.

The more personal the art is, the harder it is to throw it out in public for comment.

Art is a communication channel. So by communicating what is important to me, I am exposing things about myself. And that has been uncomfortable because of all the fakery I've had to do, growing up with an abusive dad while still pretending "good christian family". The compulsion to present myself (and by extension, my parents) a certain favorable (fake) way is real. Maybe it's the christian patriarchal brainwashing, too. There is definitely an expectation that as a woman you will be helpful and nice and politely look to the side when something unpleasant happens, like abuse. Even/especially your own. You're there to be harmonious and smooth things out, not cause scuffles. Theoretically, the nicer you act and the better you are at ignoring abuse happening around you, the more praise and respect and (somehow, magically) less abuse you will get, because you are conforming to what a christian woman should be (as defined by authoritarian men). I know I picked this up from my mom, but I haven't been able to put my finger on it until recently.

So if I bust out the dark ugly themes instead of making safe pleasant art, what does it say about me, my family, etc? What would my mother think if she saw it? It shatters the "all is well" illusion. There is protection that comes with a fake exterior, too. If people don't know who you are, they can't decide they dislike you and deny you opportunities or friends.

Combine that with the fact that most people don't really want Art, they just want pleasant wall decorations at a disposable price. If you want an easy sale, draw pretty flowers or a pretty girl or a pretty landscape. Everyone will fall all over themselves to tell you how talented you are and how they wish they could do what you do. They won't pay much, but you'll sell cheap prints and products because you've made unoffensive, acceptable, family appropriate images with mass appeal. You are aligned with the dominant authoritarian culture and voice. You are complying with the master craftsman illusion. Everyone likes that, or at least tolerates it. Everyone likes art when it doesn't make them think.

When I went to CO for my aunt's funeral this past August and had that talk with my mom, it laid some things bare for me. I had still been holding to those old concealing patterns. Things weren't resolved and I guess I thought ... I guess I was still clinging to giving the benefit of the doubt (which is how abusers are allowed to get away with abuse, because people twist themselves up to make excuses for them instead of facing the reality and being forced to take action as a result). But then I talked with my mom and she knew. There wasn't a mistake. I wasn't "protecting" her. She knew, she just ignored everything to keep the peace. She's not a whole person, and she didn't care enough about me to take action on my behalf.

So fuck it, right? Why am I silencing myself to preserve something that oppresses me?

And I'm really angry, to be honest. We numb ourselves and go through the motions of life like things are fine, but if I stop and think, I realize I am so angry. I'm angry about the world as it is. I'm angry about my parents and what a lie our family is/was. I'm angry about fake christians who can't follow their stupid precious bible. I'm angry about hierarchies. I'm angry about how life is getting smaller and darker and meaner and stupider, and we're headed for a preventable collapse due to the insatiable greed of a tiny fraction of a percentage of people. I'm angry that we could/should be moving forward to a Star Trek future, not backwards to Mad Max and Idiocracy. I'm PISSED, honestly. This isn't what the world should be.

I'm not the only one. A lot of us are pissed and we have no tools to deal with it, because we've tucked away our fangs in the name of civilization. We go through the motions of politeness, niceness and getting along without thinking about what we enable. We take unethical jobs and work for exploitative monsters. We tell ourselves it's the fault of our politicians, those people that didn't vote, the algorithm, russian interference, whatever. And we go to work and get takeout and order some plastic amazon shit and try to pretend it'll be okay. Someone will fix it. Not us, though. Someone with more money, because we're barely keeping ourselves afloat. And deep down we're still angry, and we don't know why.

In a horrible way, Trump getting elected president gives us permission to explore this rage. If Harris had won, we'd feel the pressure to look at the bright side and focus on the moderate, incremental victories we're allowed. We'd make excuses for why universal healthcare isn't on the table, or why we can't seem to raise the minimum wage or do anything with real impact. We'd point at the home buying credit and student loan forgiveness and other tokens to give us hope that maybe real progress is coming, eventually. We just have to wait, you see. Be patient. We have to be nice and we'll be rewarded. Maybe they'll raise taxes for the richest a few points. Just enough to make us think things are going in the right direction. But Harris was never going to be revolutionary in a way that would really get us on track, just like Biden, just like Hillary. Everyone knew that.

But now we get to be really angry, justifiably so, and that is a gift of sorts.

I'm going to make some angry, ugly art. If I'm tapping into what I think I'm tapping into, it might be more popular than conventional wisdom would dictate.

I'm rereading this and thinking to myself, well that's the trap conservatives fell into. They got all riled up and angry about stuff, got led around by the nose by anyone who could manipulate those feelings, and now we have Trump. But I think the anger and the goals are different. The redhats are made up of people who have historically been allowed to be angry. White men of wealth (or those who aspire to wealth), along with white women who benefit from their husband's ambitions and are thus allowed anger on his behalf (not for herself, mind you, her identity belongs to her husband and family). People on the upper rungs of the authority ladder who want to keep those positions and feel threatened by what they feel is a dissolving of the historical order. It's the superiority of the healthy rich white christian heterosexual patriarch that they want to enforce. The immature rage of a population segment who has always been allowed to be angry and historically gotten their way when they throw a fit. Because they think they're the good guys - they NEED to be the good guys. They demand the hero worship they believe is their due. They want to claim the right of putting their names on places, of having statues made, of getting their names in the history books, of winning prestige, of molding other peoples to fit their needs and build their dreams, of being assured of their correct religious choice, of enforcing the rules of wealth, of being worshiped by their children.

They can't handle not being seen as heroes, descended from lines of heroes.

Meanwhile, the rest of us never had the opportunity. Our discoveries and work were co-opted, our art was stolen or discarded, our names were crossed out, our ambitions were squashed, our wealth was siphoned off or commandeered, our history was forgotten, our way of life was vilified, our children's admiration was turned from us. Some far more brutally than others. And we weren't allowed to be openly angry about it, lest we be branded as enemies and targeted for warfare for wounding their egos.

If we are to be genuinely angry, our anger must exist outside of that value system. We haven't got traction because if we still play by their rules, we're still accepting their hierarchy and it yanks the teeth out of any real movement.

Like, for instance, if you use corporate social media to post protest memes or coordinate protests. No. If you want to send a real message, get off corpo socials.

If a protest movement sells branded merch. No. If you want a wearable symbol, craft your own instead of purchasing mass produced.

We need to withdraw as much as possible from their playing field of money and corporate interests. Are we angry enough to abandon corporate social media? Are we angry enough to avoid unnecessary purchases, especially from big business? Are we angry enough to give up modern luxuries like streaming memberships? Are we angry enough to go to the library for books and entertainment? Are we angry enough to spend time building local communities?

I've birdwalked again. I meant to be talking about making angry art. Because what they want is safe, polite, pretty things to hang on their wall and admire. Because safe art reinforces their hierarchy and the illusion that everyone is happy under their benevolent boot. Because they want to be the arbiters of taste, the magnanimous patron who uplifts the grateful starving artist who flatters them (I've seen the walls covered in oil portraits of wealthy benefactors in the national gallery of art - this is an old story). If you make spiteful, bitey art, you ruin all that for them. For a half second, they have to look at something beyond their control. They can look away, but they know it was there.

They have AI to make their safe art for them. I'm sure they'll continue to rub that in our faces. Let them have it.

Is this a war? Yes, yes it is.

--

Monday night I gave spouse a fresh haircut. I joked that I needed to make sure he looked fascist enough for his new fuehrer.

It's not good with spouse's agency, or any government agency. They are looking at firing probationary employees, including a couple he works with directly. We somehow threaded the needle timing-wise and spouse is out of his probationary period. That doesn't guarantee safety, but we are at least not first in line at the chopping block. Can you imagine, going through that fucking miserable year long hiring process, jumping through all the hoops for the opportunity, packing up and moving across the country, and then getting shitcanned out of the blue thanks to a malignant narcissist felon president? Thousands of people are having the worst week of their lives, getting their careers and security ripped away from them. Spouse's agency is on Trump's hit list so we are buckled in for a rough ride. They want/need a lot of manpower for going after undocumented immigrants. Could they just yoink personnel (like spouse) and reassign them to border control? That's not work spouse wants to do. Then who will do the work spouse is currently doing, which is actually needed and helpful? All this chaos will impact the US population in surprising new horrible ways. And of course, it's the small businesses and lower income people who will suffer the most if federal government services are crippled. Nevermind the impact of disrupting the undocumented immigrant workforce. There's so much uncertainty. Spouse and I are taking nothing for granted at this point. If I think about it too hard I want to throw up.

I have been going down the doom rabbithole this week. The maelstrom of chaos is in full swing and it'll be nothing but batshit crazy infuriating drama news for months and months and months. It's just like during covid - I got sucked into tracking down rumors, somehow thinking that it will help us avoid the unavoidable. I need to leave it alone. Paying attention to the spectacle gives it power.

I lurk in r/fednews and r/1811 - this week I was passing rumors to spouse. Then some of his coworkers were wondering how he got info they didn't and turns out, the rumors were true. As much as I love feeling like I know things, I really gotta knock it off. Curiosity is nothing but a trap these days. I've ordered masks and I'll probably stock up like I did before covid in the next week. Nothing crazy, just assuming that things may not be on the shelf right when they are needed. Looks like bird flu info will be suppressed so if second pandemic happens (and bird flu seems to be gaining steam), it will be a total clusterfuck and we'll be on our own to determine when we should mask, etc. I'm checking our stock of basic over the counter meds, pantry staples like rice and beans. Cat food and cat litter. Did you know over half the world's lentil supply is grown in Canada? Yeah. That tariff is going to suck.

I'll probably have to be more vague going forward. I don't want to get spouse in trouble ("look, this guy's wife is a dirty democrat who likes graffiti, get him!!"), and since we live in Alaska along with, like, ten other people, our identities are more exposed. Anonymity is tough to maintain in such a sparsely populated state. Even if I had made an effort not to name our location, the unique weather and latitude would give it away. I wouldn't be that concerned if I were one in a herd of misc art/jewelry/soap/crochet makers, but oh no, I gotta do something oddball. Not that anyone reads this, but it's the internet and I have to assume the worst.

I've been writing more freely than is smart, considering everything. In 2021 I didn't know this is the mess we'd be in. I'm not going to stop (cat's out of the bag, in some ways), I'll just be leaving out parts.

Before November I wasn't that worried, but we don't live in normal times anymore.

It's a shame because this has been the one place where I can be the most honest. I have spent most of my life unable to express myself freely to the people supposedly close to me. My parents and my sister don't know me. My best friend died in 2008. Spouse is the closest relationship I've got, but his work does create certain barriers.

So I guess that's the lay of the land. Best case scenario, we white knuckle it until midterms, things are rough but spouse keeps doing what he's doing, then people turn out to vote because Trump wrecks shit so badly nobody can ignore it, the senate flips and things lighten up and stabilize, maybe. Two years of waiting for the boot to come down and wreck our lives at any moment. Good times.

And here I am trying to make and sell things when nobody's going to have spare money to buy it ... Not the greatest timing.