This isn’t character work this time! Or at least, on paper. Last year I got a book called “The Field Guide to Witches”, where artists reimagine different types of witches from sketch to full illustration. One of those steps was to design and imagine where the witch would live. I thought that was interesting, so I decided to apply that step to my character Sigi, who is a Volva, or the Viking version of a witch.
Sigi lives in a Nordic-inspired, urban, poor, factory-and-unemployment-heavy area with a lot of waterways and heavy winters. She also works at a lace factory. I imagine her living area to have a heavy gilded-age aesthetic – lots of industrialization and income inequality. I referenced bay cities like Montreal and Copenhagen, as well as industrial-era factories and environments. I wanted to get across that Sigi lives in an area with lots of struggle, and that struggle makes people party harder.
Today is about celebrating women around the world. You will see pretty pictures, stories about female leaders, statements from university and government officials about historical figures that “make women proud.” However, tomorrow all of this will magically disappear and we will go back to the reality of what it’s like to be a woman in the modern world*:
In North America, 32% of women suffered intimate partner physical and/or sexual violence in 2020
43% of respondents experienced discrimination against women in the past year including hearing sexist comments, witnessing sexism in the workplace or sexual harassment
Only 32% of companies worldwide have women in senior roles
The gender pay gap is 76% closed in Europe and 75% in North America. According to Statista, it will take 95 years with the current trends to completely close it in North America.
The US ranked only 43rd out of 146 countries examined for gender equality by the World Economic Forum according to the 2023 Global Gender Gap report
Globally, 58% of men and 49% of women agree with the statement that giving women equal rights has gone far enough in 2023
Let’s share those pretty pictures, let’s say the kind words, and let’s focus on female leaders and heroes today. But let’s also remember that it shouldn’t stop there, and the fight for equality continues beyond days like today.
Women’s protest, Ann ArborCristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president of NextGen AmericaPersistence, Ann Arbor (USA)Model & idea: Julia JaworskaFriendship, Urubamba (Peru)Thoughtfulness, Rabat (Morocco)Future – Annalena Baerbock, German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Potsdam (Germany)Reflection, Krakow (Poland)Potential, Fes (Morocco)Strength, Krakow (Poland)Responsibility – a young preschool teacher,Urubamba (Peru)UN-PAC Fierceness, Virginia Waters, UKDedication, Michalowice (Poland)Adventure, Tatra Mountains
Here my objective is to create poster design for musicians to advertise themselves and help them look for jobs and add on their own website page. A lot times, we see very talented musicians with reduced visibility. Musicians might find it difficult to stand out and attract the attention of potential fans or concertgoers. With their basic information and past achievements on poster, able to achieve the purpose of promoting their music work and themselves as musicians. In this poster design, I specifically want to make the poster giving out a sense of record style so that my audiences could tell the poster is about music from distance without even reading the words.
The Art of Involvement: The Unfortunate Need to Rest
“Time is a wall we all share” and there are so few doors. I am unsatisfied. I am always unsatisfied.
I write this with a pounding headache, while eating half of a chocolate chip cookie for dinner. It’s that time of the year: burnout central. Most would call it midterms. I know I am most definitely not alone in my exhaustion this week. Being a student is demanding, not to mention someone who chases passion and community around as much as I do while having to drive 30 minutes there and back, and work, and meet with friends, and… Well, you get the idea.
Art is wonderful, and art is something that feeds me and drains me all at once. I definitely think it’s something worth the extra effort to support. I am always swept away by how much I love being around people that value art as much as I do, but as much as I loathe to admit it, I can’t experience it all.
Even now, as I dedicate this small amount of time to expressing myself, I know I could be relaxing. Soaking in the tub or annoying my cat with unwarranted kisses sounds wonderful. I also know that I regret it when I don’t force myself to sit down and write. I find myself too often taking a passive role in my own life, scrolling endlessly through mind-numbing content rather than reflect, engage, and create on my own terms.
I avoid life because work and school are already quite enough, thank you very much, but then I feel less myself… It’s a dilemma I’ve always struggled with.
My current solution is attending the events painstakingly put together by the people around me. I overcommit, of course. Not only am I a chronic people pleaser, but being busy tends to make me feel happier until I hit the wall.
Hello again, wall.
Part of the wall right now is due to my own spent energy in coordinating other things, such as the literary magazine, Lyceum. My baby. My creative outlet since Freshman year that I have struggle to let go of now that I’ve helped it hobble along for almost 4 whole years. Now we are getting over 50 people each semester to submit their work and its going great! Right before I have to leave.
Graduation looms, and it’s exciting and terrifying all at once. And there’s another reason: I need to do everything I want to now, before I leave student life behind. A college campus is such a brief, wonderfully compact time and place to connect, explore, and grow. My time here feels like it’s been so brief (and partially it was, due to the shutdown that left me adrift in Zoom purgatory). I found my places and my interests, and it was only through me throwing my all into things and being open. I’d say my frantic attempts to avoid regret might end up rather successful.
Here I am, tired and setting up for another full day tomorrow, knowing I am not going to sleep enough tonight–head swimming with plays, drag shows, and open mics and I feel happy. I’m glad for the reminder of my personal limits as well… maybe it will click this time? It usually does, at least for a small stretch. Then I throw my alone time to the wind once more, only to be violently reminded that I am, in fact, an introvert. That I am, in fact, just human.
For the record, this is not the post I wanted to write for this week, but it is the one that won’t leave me alone until I push it out of my system. And here I am, forcing you to be a witness. Isn’t that the nature of art? Maybe you relate, or roll your eyes, or award me with a brief nose-exhale. Maybe you don’t read this at all, but it’s still here for you.
And hey, my headache feels better.
Of course the sun stretches itself so wide, to touch all that it can I want to scatter too, selfishly. Afraid to lose touch. Do not compel me, put the focusing lens away I will wash All in fragile warmth / Sustaining.
How is St. Louis? Is it St. Louis-ing? Is it Arch-ing?
Ahmo’s, 6:00PM, 2/1/2024
the metro is a closed loop, a sleeping dragon. you point out one of the buildings, veins throbbing, heavy against the rain; the train squeals against the track and you are robbed of my reply, my sympathies, as if they would do anything but raise the hairs on your arm. what happens when you let stitches sit in too long? your skin shifts, a chameleon in twilight. the sun sets, the skin darkens. the leaf-rot smell of autumn returns, and i know you will not be around to watch the flowers bloom in the spring.
What if I get lost?
You’re not going to get lost, you just need to walk in a straight line. If you get lost, that’s on you.
Markley Hall, 3:00PM, 2/8/2024
the world is full of lines, hard and soft, good and bad. sometimes the world is grayscale, allowing me to sort everything into sets, rigid containers, labeled and discarded. road lines = good. scars = bad. cracks in doorways and mirrors and cement foundations? // then the world resumes in color, and the containers begin to spill. the cracks pile up, multiplying, threatening the edges of my vision. in trying to blend the lines, you erased the figure; in trying to straighten the branches, i destroyed the roots…
Nah, I could barely see it… don’t ask any questions about that night, I don’t remember any of it!
Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 1:30PM, 3/3/2024
we have learned to associate lack of memory with a good time. if something went south, we would remember it, right? the brain fills slowly, in hindsight, fabricating memories, forging alliances. you call it breaking down problems with a hammer and a drink. the worst punishment of all: force-fed my own thoughts until i choked them up and spit them out. my reality lives on, isolated, trapped like chac mool: free and fictitious ocean, only real when it imprisons a snail.
