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Writer + Visual Artist

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@freudian_nipslip @makeupbyslater blessed my face yesterday AM with an evening glam and put a blazer on me- reminded me I clean up nice. It’s good for this practical and consistent earth sign to experiment, keeps the callouses off the heart and eyes. Keeps the soil fertile and malleable. It’s been interesting relearning how to get dressed with a short cut (which needed a lil brushing but still sweet); haven’t had one since I was a teen for my second big chop. This reminded me I can be more playful. It’s exciting to learn and relearn all the different ways beauty can reside in me.
I think of how many writers were told no hundreds of times and still had the audacity to believe. Sometimes it is a thing that makes you question what is real- this choosing the possibility of your soaring voice. Sometimes it is a battle. The story inside vs the one you are expected to live. I think about the people who haven’t the luxury to discover it. The ones who sit bewildered by the extent of their feeling. The ones with no outlets, no explanations, no apprenticeships. The tenacity of the ones who came before and the vision of the ones not yet born is my fuel. They lend me comfort in difficult times. Not all of us were spotted as prodigy and nurtured into our fullest being. Many of us weren’t given support or resources for our particular unfolding. Sometimes growing into your highest expression means chipping away at walls with a screw driver. Means holding close a knowing your surroundings do nothing to affirm. Means resigning to the label of insanity if it means you can one day live free. Audacity is a good word because it is both boldness and defiance. Sometimes it will feel like everything is working against you getting to your work. Sometimes it will be you, working against everything. Working against yourself. The hours pass and you are too exhausted to lift a finger. You are making the best work of your life and are still viewed as strange. As other. As alien. You show up to the blank page day after day and the words don’t come, the composition is incomplete somehow, the blueprint doesn’t align. You may be ahead of your time. You may be the first in your known bloodline to deviate from the sensible path, so you may have to seek the words of recognition and reassurance in myths and biographies. I line up the rejection letters, empty auditoriums, failed attempts and lack of response. Some days they do make things difficult. I sat with my tears yesterday. Then I remember it is a rite of passage. That I am of a rich lineage. That I am part of the keepers of time. That our collective memory is due in part to the fact that there were people like us bold enough to write the true things down. Our now due to those who painted a new vision.
Another print from a while back #gisellebuchanan
Pictured @hakkillo with my #loveletterzine at Lake Tahoe and @shreya360 with it in Japan. 🏔🏙 This is a very old project (some of the work pictured is 5+yrs old so don’t @ me 😂). I have evolved SO much and an artist and thinker. But it means so much to me when the work still moves through you all and carries resonance. It blows my mind that a big part of me has held space in lands my feet have yet to touch. 🌷Once I got an order from Finland and I was like wut? 🤯 The internet is amazing. I know the work will take me to those lands in the physical very soon. 🌱This project is out of print but you can get the ebook on my web shop for 🌞5.55🌞 if you’d like an entry point into my poems and inner world. You can also pick up my new zine incantations there as well. 30 pages of fresh illustrations and poems made in the past year. So much love to all of you and all the ways you carry my world alongside your own.
Lately, I’ve been being taught the importance of listening. Of making space for all that wants to be expressed through me without worrying about how it will make sense in the long run. Continuing forward even, and especially, when I have a rough idea about where I’m headed, but the exact route remains unknown. When where I thought I was going changes along the way. Reminding myself that the unexpected turns while enroute may not be the tragedy they seem in the moment. That often, they are a beginning. The birth of a version of myself braver, more clever, more innovative, more creative than I ever thought possible. Learning to trust that all will be revealed as I walk. That this living, this listening, provides me the tools I require. Advancing with the knowing that no matter what happens, I can trust my creative power to make everything that happens to me, within me, around me, and through me in my life a work of art (even while afraid!).
I got commissioned by @agapearl to work on a poster for #freedomcities on #JustTransitions and #abolition. So grateful to listen in on such important conversations and contribute my work to forwarding @mia.mingus’ insight and liberation for all people✨ Repost @agapearl “Join us tomorrow, 4/23, as we continue the conversation, learning how communities are creating new economy structures like co-ops and community land trusts as experiments for how we can be in right relationship with one another. We will discuss how directly impacted folks are taking their labor out of the prison industrial complex, all while creating mechanisms to reclaim and self-govern stolen wealth. To register: Bit.ly/EconWebinar + link in bio. this is an original piece of art by @gisellebuchanan, in response to a conversation we curated on #abolition and #JustTransition, and I am so honored to have collaborated with them on it! If you take a look at Giselle’s art, it reminds us that personal transformation is possible in each of us RIGHT NOW and this feels foundational for creating a new status quo where we take care of each other. Because if I don’t believe in my *own* ability to transform, I may not believe in yours, either. This powerful quote they illustrated by @mia.mingus makes me think of one of @adriennemareebrown‘s #EmergentStrategy principles. Fractals remind us that we need to create liberated building blocks between you and me first, so that we can stack these and create the homes, neighborhoods, cities and societies that finally allow us to feel whole and well.”
My new zine is finally finished🌿🌻💜 you can get your copy at the link in my bio. 30 pages of full color paper collage illustrations (a few with some digital edits) and poems. The people on my mailing list got first dibs so some new items on the site are sold out til I can refill. There are still some zines left. You can use the code HAPPYBIRTHDAY at checkout for 15% off today til Monday. I also put the Love Letter to Self zine on the site as an Ebook for people who have never read my work and want an inexpensive entry way before purchasing a physical copy of future zines. So much love to all of you!
Today is April 20th, the beginning of Taurus season, a national holiday, a pink moon and my birthday. I'm growing and changing every day. I'm saying yes to myself even when everything I see is unrecognizable. I'm learning to love my bare bones so that the adornments, when they come, are treasured but unnecessary. I don't look or feel as glowy as these photos suggest all the time but they are reminders that I have and deserve to~~~ so happy birthday to me 🌸💐☄✨🌿🌙🎨🎉🌟💜
 
 
 
 
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