#Art Forum

[hydeordie]

When eating lunch is a cry for help

[ludyer]

[nineeyedartist]

The following is the script that was prepared for the A3 artist talk. While I deviated from the script a bit during the artist talk due to shortened time constraints, this is the original 6 minute script that was prepared.

'Mother-Father, You Guide Us' was chosen because it contains several layers of convergence between seen and unseen. Primary among these is the co-creation of the painting between three of the spirits in our system. System is a term we use to describe our collective being. The painting is deeply symbolic, depicting events which occur simultaneously in the material and metaphysical worlds: a journey in which all four spirits in our system are guided by the blood of our ancestors, ancestral spirits, and ambiguously gendered gods.

'Mother-Father, You Guide Us' is a depiction of the spirit world which is layered with the physical world. The journey that occurs in unseen realms is inextricably linked to the journey that is occurring right now in the seen physical.

In the painting we are all together in a mythic form, rowing along a river of blood. The river represents the guiding ancestors and the path they lay for us. The blood is that of our deep ancestors, who we call the Mother-Father and depict as an intersex bovine. The Mother-Father relates to Nut who is the goddess of the sky and of the heavens guiding the dead. So we are guided through several lives and through this life. The bull’s head calls forth several mythological figures like Hathor, Attis, Apis, and Dionysus. The Gorgon mask on the boat represents an ancestral spirit and goddess who protects us. The firelight is our collective ancestors who guide us.  Flanking the Mother-Father are the Sea and the Volcano which represent venerated ancestors of place. The stars surround them all and beneath the river of blood is the endless river of souls living and dying and being reborn.

We chose color shift paint and a limited pallet to highlight and obscure various details. 

+ + + + + +

Our work frequently engages with the underseen and unseen. It’s integral to our practice and not only because of our being multiple. Ultimately our work is about storytelling. We are telling underseen and unseen stories by sharing our own story. We are also telling the stories of the spirits we interact with.

We recently put together a fairly large body of work called Spirits We Are that showed at Anchor House of Artists in Feb. This was our first foray into allowing ourselves to be seen. 

The first piece here, Beloved Guide: A Sun Darkened Moon, is one of several five foot tall banners we painted as mythic portraits of ourselves. Still on view at Anchor House in Northampton.

Our work has become focused on telling our story from our perspective as a form of personal healing and a way to help destigmatize experiences that are considered outside the ordinary. 

Typically stories of people who hear voices, see visions, share a body, or have other “unusual” experiences are told by people who have never experienced these things. Often the person is depicted as sick, crazy, evil, or dangerous. At best, these stories spread misinformation. At their worst, they legitimise dehumanising others.

By telling our own story we are taking back our humanity and autonomy. Part of our way of saying this was to use scale, vibrant colors, and symbolism to present ourselves as mythic persons who claim our humanity and assert it with vivacity. 

Continuing with this theme of destigmatisation, we have our next piece, “The Sacrifice”. This piece is actually a digital study for a future painting. The Sacrifice is part of a larger story that was revealed to us via ancestral spirits. Here we are telling the story of our ancient queer ancestors who have been largely erased from history.

We identify as transgender and third gender, so connecting with these ancestors has been integral to our art and spiritual practices.

Depicted in The Sacrifice is our interpretation of an ancient devotional rite that dates back to the Neolithic. For thousands of years, people with male genitalia would partly or fully castrate themselves before becoming a priestex of one of several Mother goddesses. Such as Cybele, Rhea, Isis, Diana, and so on. These stories simply aren’t being told in the US. Third gender people continue to be a part of cultures in the Mediterranean. Yet few in the US are aware of this rich and continuing queer heritage. 

So, we are adding our small contribution by sharing these stories through our art.

Finally, we have two pieces that were created in relationship with the land where we live. 

The last piece here is a painting of a land spirit. It was painted from a drawing done in meditation with the land we live on (image right).

Here we are attempting to show something that we did not see with physical eyes. The lines act as storytelling devices that hold encoded information about movement or matter or energy. 

What you see at first glance is only part of the story. To understand it fully, you have to read the lines. But we haven’t completed a codex yet.

The first, a living mask, was created with guidance from the rushes, starling, moth and from the spirit represented (image left). This mask is treated as an individual and is considered to have a spirit and to be able to channel the depicted spirit. 

The mask is renewed each year and so looks slightly different each cycle as old or damaged materials are replaced with fresh ones.

Overall our work is created in cooperation with the unseen with a purpose to reveal stories that are hidden by a society that demands homogeneity.

[postmodernart81]

Art Forum

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[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[art-bank]

Art Forum

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[kaijutegu]

Yesterday, I went to Baltimore with the intention of visiting a friend in hospice. Her health had taken a sharp nosedive over the weekend, and on Monday evening, the doctors said she maybe had a week left.

What actually happened was I went to Baltimore to help clean out her stuff, because she died at 8:44 on Tuesday morning and my plane didn't land until 8:50. So me and another friend helped another friend/her roommate (before hospice) find important documents, as well as save sentimental items for her actual loved ones because her family, well.

Her friends were her family. But because she died intestate, the people in her family of choice were entitled to nothing under the law. Instead of her beloved, disabled partner, her estranged family has legal rights to her savings bonds and the rest of her estate. (Sometimes common-law partners can inherit but they weren't together long enough to meet that criterion.)

I knew this was coming for a long time. You don't recover from the brain cancer she had. But it still really hurts. And knowing that people she hadn't spoken to in years are getting that money instead of the person she loved most... well, that hurts too.

Please, if you don't have one already, make a will. It's not hard. We don't like to think about it, because nobody likes thinking about post-death legal matters, but you need to make a will. If you're in the US, you can use websites like Free Will. You don't need an estate attorney or anything like that. In many states, a notarized letter is fine. I don't know enough about international estate law to say anything in that regard, but take half an hour to google estate laws in your jurisdiction and put together a will.

If something happened to you tomorrow, who do you want taking care of your pets? Do you have a collection of anything that you want looked after? Do you want your money to go to a person, a charity, or something else specific? If you don't have kids, everything reverts to a spouse. If you don't have a spouse, it goes to your parents. I know I don't want to burden my parents with figuring out what to do with my tegu, my skeletal collection, or my library. But if I died tomorrow, my will would take care of all of that. Thinking about mortality isn't fun, but dying intestate is worse. Make a will.

[ludwigplayingthetrombone]

Daily life stuff

Gai: Morning, my love [kks hums] Gai: GO TO BED!! Kks: Taste. Matcha Mousse Gai: Tenzou's coming over today!! Kks: Nice Both: OOOOOO!!!

[ludyer]

[teuzmoonlit]

アズールレーン RKGK コレクション ✍🏻

Amagi ❤️ (妻😍✨)

• アズールレーン RKGK | Azur Lane RKGK

[girlboyburger]

cow cuddles commission for @/halfcrazydaisy featuring @/sleepycowtails !! 🐮💕🌾

[kugisakiss]

I watched M27!! it was fun so here's some thoughts

[deoidesign]

Worry free, guarantee!

loved painting this one, I love illustrated advertisements

[bathroomtrapped]

'Sometimes the tests are harder than what you imagine.'

[gaysexunfortunately]

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