Black Lab Makery, Come and see this, Female Power Project, What I'm Making

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Herself

I didn’t want to do a piece on Frida Kahlo when I started the #FemalePowerProject because it seemed to me that her work and her life have become kitsch and thus a minefield of meanings. I was urged by more than one advisor to proceed. But really, it wasn’t until that crazy election and the up-cry of female pain it elicited that I was able to frame my thoughts around the potent triumvirate of pain, anger, and creativity that Kahlo’s life exemplifies—that many women artists’ lives exemplify. Women’s experiences really are different from men’s, but still the male is seen as the universal. Here in our work female artists are showing that women’s experience is just as universal as men’s, and maybe more so, since there are more females in the world. The other is the self. The words on the shawl translate into English as “Here I have painted myself, Frida Kahlo” from her painting, “Self Portrait with Loose Hair” (1947). Design references: Tehuantepec textile designs; Kahlo’s imagery of drops (tears, milk) and binding ropes; floral hair ornaments; her eyes and brow.

I have a few of these shawls for sale in poly chiffon for $125. They measure about 3 feet by 7.5 feet. This design is also available on stretched canvas at 55 inches x 22 inches for $300 free delivery from the fabricator. You can contact me directly or find these shawls at Black Lab or Femme Fatale DC. There is a version on canvas for sale now at Femme Fatale. Look at the sidebar on this page for information on how to contact me or visit these locations.

“The Woman Who Gave Birth to Herself” shawl design honoring Frida Kahlo. Created by Leda Black (Creatrix), the work is part of the #FemalePowerProject Click on the image to enlarge.
artists books, photo books, What I'm thinking about

Revisiting “as in queen (the abecedarium of a typophiliac)”

I got a note from the director of the library at the National Museum of Women in the Arts to say that as in queen (the abecedarium of a typophiliac) is in the current exhibition “Hard to Define: Artists’ Books from the Collection” on view in the library, Monday through Friday, until March 23, 2018. This prompted me to think (a lot!) about this book that I completed in 1997—can it really be 20 years ago? (Here is the link to the book’s page on this site because it seems to have disappeared from the navigation! And here is a link to the “trade edition” available ((now!)) as print-on-demand from Blurb.) In particular I am interested in how this work prefigures the work I am doing now, both my digital fine art and my perSISTERS graphic art. Also, I don’t think I have ever published a full description of this work and the process it dragged me through. For one thing, it is essentially an “Oh! I get it!” reading experience and I didn’t want to spoil it. However, I also think it reveals a little bit of the madness my particular consciousness is subject to. First, let me introduce you to this book and its device.

the 16th Q
The page spread for the 16th Q, in the typeface starting with P (Poetica)

 

In the image above, scanned from the letterpress edition, look at the gray Q (actually printed in silver ink) and see the letter it is aligned over. It is the letter “p.” Then read down from that p: “poetica” is the typeface that this page’s Qs are set in. This device is called a “mesostich” (like an acrostic, but in the middle of the lines, “meso” means middle).  Each page spread features a different typeface, one for each letter of the alphabet, whose mesostich name is in alphabetical order, from “Anna” to “Zapf Book.” In the Blurb edition I have printed the typeface name in a different color so it is easier to find it. I would have lost a lot of paper and driven myself crazy (crazier) typesetting and printing the typeface name in a different color in the letterpress edition. It was hard enough hand setting the lead Century Schoolbook so that the typeface names would align vertically. Letter spacing in handset type is accomplished with tweezers and very thin strips of brass or copper to adjust the lines left and right. In this typesetting I also used tracing paper. Then, when I had it on press (I was running a Heidelberg Windmill at the time) I had to do even more adjusting based on proofs made while the type was locked up tight on press.

The basic idea of the book is that the Q is what we call nowadays “gender fluid.” I didn’t know the term at the time, I think. I do remember using the idea of continuum—that gender is a spectrum (rainbow!). The circle shape is “feminine” and the tail shape is “masculine.” The voice of the writing is of someone in love with the Q, celebrating its fluid and unfettered character. It is an expression of obsessive love, thus the term “typophiliac.”

The first impulse to create the book came from my obsession with typefaces and my fascination with capital Qs. The Q is often very weird, and the typeface designer can get away with this because we don’t use the letter very often. So in this sense also the Q is an exception to “the rules.” The Q is a traveler between categories—a trickster. As such, it calls attention to the artificiality of categories, and this is what my current digital fine art work addresses. The perSISTERS works, of course, address gender. Feminism is at foundation, in my opinion, the rejection of the tyranny of mental categories. Gender is a mental construction. The feminine is not ever just one thing, and neither is the masculine. Instead of saying, “This and NOT that” I believe the more accurate, positive, and less destructive statement is, “This AND this and also that…” This is what a “science of the particular” could be like.

Once I figured out what as in queen would be, it issued forth from me like something inevitable and right. I remember awaking in the middle of the night and writing in my studio (a small room near my bedroom) with the lights off, just using the illumination of the streetlight through the window. I didn’t want to wake my husband who is a light sleeper. In production, I spent so much time getting the type to align just right. For the cover, which I printed from plates made from digital type, I had to draw my own ffl ligature (in “affliction”) to get the type to look right at such a large size. I still have all the typeset lead on galley trays. I kept it even though I sold all my letterpress equipment in 2010, in preparation for my move to the DC area. It is the most physical of texts I have ever crafted.

When my husband suggested I could sell all that heavy stuff—I had been printing only occasionally—and buy something else with the proceeds, I knew immediately what I wanted to do. I wanted to print digitally. The tools had finally become affordable enough for me to make the jump. Photographic images have the benefit of seeming real to us—still—so it is a fitting medium to question reality. I work with words now less and less, except in the perSISTERS, where the words need to get at the very kernel of an idea. And Photoshop is so deep and so wide that I will always find more. What is more fine and obsessive than a thin piece of trace between letters? A pixel, of course.

cover of as in queen
The cover of as in queen with the introductory mesostich.

 

“lay open this book
and you will see
typophilia
undisguised
a quaint affliction
illustrated
by mesostich
paeans to
the queen of letters”

Of course “undisguised” is ironic. The whole book is a disguise. All my work is a disguise.

Defining, Female Power Project

Phenomenology of Message

What the Female Power Project is meaning

I am an artist and I have an art business. These are intertwining occupations, obviously. There is making, and there is making ABOUT making. Art is, among  other things, a mode of communication in itself. The object itself communicates. At the most fundamental level this is an interaction between an object and a viewer’s nervous system. An artist doesn’t have to be there when this happens. In fact, the artist is often—or almost always—absent when the communication happens. However, because I have a public studio—Black Lab—I often see people interacting with the objects I have made. This is part of the “Laboratory” aspect of the place where I make stuff. I don’t think I could make things without this kind of laboratory right now. Without this place my art production would be extremely slow, because communication, for me at least, needs to be tested in the world outside my head. So the business, the making about making, is also the art.

I have a long background in graphic design. This field has almost always been separate from fine art. Good design is supposed to communicate, visually and verbally, as quickly and precisely as possible—but not through direct and literal statements. Designs have to be persuasive and to that end they need to rely on culture-based associations and desires, and universal needs. Graphic design sells something through visual and verbal stories. These stories should have a natural narrative structure: this, then this, so this. This is the message.

I’ve realized that this website, this blog you are reading, is a poor design for the art business, although it maybe is okay as a document of art production. It has been created through time as the work is being made. I start out presenting my work here before I entirely know how to talk about it. I throw this content into the world before I know what the narrative structure, the “business story,” should be. This is probably true of many artists: I make something, and I’m thinking in a certain mode about what I want to say with the object, or how to externalize a particular image that has stuck in my head, then I make it, and the object turns around and starts talking to my own nervous system. Then I figure out what the object really means, or could mean, and what it is for, especially when I get to see other people interacting with it. For example, the perSISTERS prints: at first I called them “Positive Protest Principles Posters.” That was essentially their message. This made sense from the perspective of the development of the work. But then later I thought of a better name with which to approach the work after it already existed for a while.

I thought of writing about this here because I’ve just been rewriting the promotional postcard I have for the Female Power Project. This is a card with my contact info, studio location, photos of some works, the logo for the project, and a short description. The short description is the hard part. I first rewrote it because I adapted it for the display of my Female Power Project works at Femme Fatale DC, a pop-up shop for women-owned businesses. When I rewrote it, I thought, THIS is what I really want to say about this work, THIS is the message. Then I thought, I’m running out of the postcards, I should update and reprint those too. So I looked at what I had rewritten, and realized, no, not exactly, that’s not what this project is really about! I need to rewrite. Again. There’s a rushing of thoughts and ideas, but the words have their own flow, and sometimes, almost always really, these two processes just don’t line up right. The message is very slippery for me. That is what I am saying here: the message is slippery. Any message.

Here is the most recent iteration of the Female Power Project message. I would not be surprised if I change it again in a month.

Imagination is the Seed of Power
Female Power Project Shawls, Scarves, and Pins
perSISTERS Prints, Posters, Cards, and Stickers
Inspired by the powers of human and divine females, I have created these objects to represent a person as well as her attributes and message—or power—in words and images. The perSISTERS series reminds us of the positive actions women use to improve all of our lives. Because of the history of women’s oppression, these actions are often heroic and are messages we should celebrate. The shawls, scarves, and pins allow us to wear, and virtually to embody, the powers of exalted females. Women’s experience is human experience.

Here is an expanded version of the story I tell when people ask me how I came up with the Female Power Project and the perSISTERS prints. I’m going to use bullet points to break it down:

  • In 2015 I decided to make some shawls with Catholic themes because the Pope was visiting the neighborhood of my studio.
  • I made one with a dove image and another based on the iconography of the Virgin of Guadalupe—the Catholic image that I liked that I was most familiar with from growing up in New Mexico. I thought a lot about making such an image: I’m not Catholic or Latina, is it unacceptable appropriation to use this image? What is my approach to the image—is it respectful? What is the story of the image, where did it come from?
  • I made the shawl and watched someone put it on her shoulders. It seemed sort of magic, like she was wearing the Virgin’s power. I started thinking a lot about costume and dressing up and how that engages our nervous system. What an interesting thing to do with a work of art!
  • I thought that it would be interesting to make shawls about other females. I asked my friends about human and divine females they admire. From there I started with a short list: Harriet Tubman, Maya Angelou, Marie Curie, Erzulie, Malala Yousafzai. I added scarves because I could make those less expensive. It wasn’t enough to do a little research on Wikipedia and then produce something. I really wanted to visually capture something important and fundamental about these characters. Then I wrote about this process here on my blog. The writing became part of the artwork and I print out these short essays and include them in the box with the scarf or shawl when someone buys one. I give them to people who don’t buy, if they ask.
  • The graphics I made right after the Women’s March were mostly complaints. There were lots of wonderful signs at the march, but most of them were poorly designed, so I thought that was something I could contribute. I made 10×8 posters with many colors and layered images, using a technique that was relatively quick and allowed me to print the images at any size. I printed them on canvas, varnished them, and supplied pins so you could attach them to your coat or bag and make every trip into a demonstration. The style of these is the seed of the style I use in the perSISTERS. But I ran out of complaints and I got tired of complaining in my art.
  • There are women who interest me, who don’t seem like shawl people. Ieshia Evans is one of those. She became famous because of a photograph taken of her. I made other artworks about her and that image. After the election I made posters based on photos of three women who were famous for such photos. The posters seemed to be a better way than shawls to express the powers they represent. These posters are BE PRESENT (Ieshia Evans), BE BRAVE (Danuta Danielsson), and SHOW UP (Tess Asplund). This is how the perSISTERS graphics came to be, although I didn’t call them that until I was making labels and packaging for the cards and small print sets. First I called them Positive Protest Principles Posters, because they state ideas in active verbs describing how amazing women have acted in the world and what message I think they are telling us, as women.
  • I want people to be able to imagine women as powerful and competent—as leaders—as heroes and strugglers. That is what I think the perSISTERS graphics help with. I believe that one big reason why we don’t have a female president is because of a lack of imagination. That is why I said “Imagination is the Seed of Power.”
  • I was surprised at how strongly and positively some people react to the images I have made. I don’t really remember what I was thinking when I paired the image of Ruby Bridges with the meme-ing phrase “Nevertheless She Persisted.” My inspiration must be related to the potency of that photo of the six-year-old leaving her school surrounded by federal marshals. Unlike the other three I mention above, Bridges isn’t just famous for that photo. In any case, many many people love that poster and must have it for their own. It seems to fill a need. We need to imagine what it is like to be a hero.

I Make Things Out of Words, Mostly