The Living Artist

(yeah, I know, been quiet and all that, busy doing actual art instead of yakking my trap off, so deal ;)

I’m headed back to Wiscon this year after a wonderful time last year clinched it as my go-to event for Memorial Day weekends well into the future. I’ll be exhibiting in the art show again, of course. And this time I’ve (*gulp*) volunteered to be a panelist!

Both of my panels are on Sunday, and are as follows:

1:00-2:15pm
We’re Not Contortionists: Ridiculous Female Positions in SF/F and Comic Artwork
Tracy Benton (m), Liz Argall, Heather Keith Freeman, S. N. Arly, Jessica Plummer

A fun (if slightly depressing) panel on how women are depicted in cover artwork on SF & F books and in comic book characters. Artist Kate Beaton and author Jim C. Hines, among others, have recently been calling out the silly and impossible poses artists are putting women into in comics and on covers. This panel is an Action Panel! The organizer creates a Powerpoint of the offending illustrations. After a brief presentation, the panelists take up the challenge of duplicating the impossible poses before the audience! (Panelists must be flexible and have senses of humor.) At the end, the audience votes for the most horrible book cover and the best panelist imitator.

2:30-3:45pm
The Future of School, Part 2
Jenny Nilsson (m), Richard F. Dutcher, Heather Keith Freeman, Jeff Hildebrand, Carl F. Marrs

The WisCon 35 Future of School panel discussed ways in which technology could optimally be used to improve education, both at the K-12 level and post-high school. This panel will continue the discussion, focusing on training students to deal with a rapidly changing work environment with many traditional jobs disappearing and new types being created.

Greatly looking forward to both of these. Also look for me at panels on reproductive justice and disability rights.

Are you going to Wiscon? Leave a shout-out in the comments!

The good:

• We’ve survived more than half of my son’s spring break (thanks to liberal applications of Grandma).
• I’m painting again – three different works in progress!
• Making plans to go to Wiscon again this year
• I’m mostly over whatever bug had me making and breaking fevers like a two-year-old makes and breaks block towers all weekend.

The bad:

• My sleep schedule is FUCKED. UP. Can barely stay awake during the day, then at night I go to bed and stare at the ceiling for hours. Can’t go nocturnal like I used to because, y’know, kid. Also middle age.
• Dishes and laundry are piled high like teetering towers of… highness.
• If I move too fast, I get so dizzy I start to fall over.
• Hotel rooms for Wiscon are sold out and my initial attempts to find a room split have been fruitless.

If I look at any larger patterns, I get even more depressed, so trying to keep my focus tight and just putting one foot in front of the other. Without getting dizzy.

courtesy of Chronic Illness Cat on Tumblr

Edited to add: Spoke too soon. Still doing the fever thing. At least it’s without the need-to-sleep-20-hours-out-of-24 thing.

My son told me a story the other day. It was about a girl who was hunting for treasure! She went to the pirates and asked to join them, but they said she couldn’t because she was a girl. So she went off and found the treasure herself (a chest full of buttercups and coins), then took it back to the pirates to show them she was good enough to join them. They were surprised and happy and let her come aboard, and then she found even more treasure!

I am slightly verklempt to have a child who is making up stories like this. (And no, he hasn’t read Captain Abdul’s Pirate School, though I keep meaning to get him a copy, or come across any stories that I know of about girls being rejected due to their gender and then proving they’re as good as anyone. It’s a bit Feminist 101, but hey, he’s 5 – I’ll take it!

I’m realizing that in some ways it’s more of a challenge to raise a feminist boy than it would be a feminist girl. As a girl, all of these things are much more real, much more visible. For a boy to get it requires empathy and logic working hand in hand, and to be taught to see the things made invisible by his male privilege. At his level of attention and abstraction, that can be a challenge! Hearing stories like this, though, make me think we may be doing okay.

I’m going to break blog silence today, and speak, as well as I can, about Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon Martin, 1995-2012

Have you heard his name yet? The 17-year-old boy who was shot dead by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman for carrying skittles and walking slowly home in the rain? Whose killer walked free without so much as a night in jail? Who you can hear screaming for help on the 911 tapes? Whose death screams were heard by a witness who was CORRECTED by a police officer when she said she heard Trayvon screaming for help?

It’s been a month now, and George Zimmerman is still free. This is far from an isolated incident, though the circumstances may make it more blatantly a travesty than some. This is what every black mother is afraid of every moment that her son is out of her sight.

Do you know what it is to be afraid for your child’s life? Not afraid that they will do something stupid, or there will be an accident – but that they will be killed, just for existing in their own skin.

All parents have moments of fear for their children. When they don’t nurse like you are told they should. When they fall off the bed the first time. When you turn around at the zoo and find them nowhere to be seen. As terrible as that lurching, dizzying pain is, it is mundane, normal, and thanks to my mostly-neurotypicality it lives in the background, only coming out occasionally.

This is the fear that black parents must live with every moment of their lives.

And in the end I know that if my son gets lost at the zoo, say, he can depend on not only his bubbly cuteness and his wits to find his way to safety, but on the color of his skin.

Because my son is white, he is not automatically seen as a threat as a black boy would be, even at the tender age of five. Imagine a five-year-old black boy wandering alone at the zoo – do you think people would be as quick to offer him help? They would justify their inaction by thoughts that “those people raise their children to be more independent, so he’s probably fine”; or they would call security rather than offering a kind word. And if you think I’m wrong, then you’ve deliberately chosen not to see what is right in front of you.

A few weeks ago we hired a couple of men to help us move. They were black men, charming and friendly and guys I wish I’d met before moving out of the neighborhood. One of them arrived early, and our next-door neighbor, who’s never even spoken to us, told him he looked suspicious for sitting on our doorstep, waiting for us to get back. Do you think a white man would have gotten the same kind of questioning?

Yesterday I took my son to the playground, where a young black boy about his age was already playing. My son barged in front of him and took over the toy he was playing with. I intervened, scolded my son, and took him to play on a different piece of equipment. My son is impetuous and not the best with his social skills, and might have done that to anyone – but I couldn’t help but wonder if he would have pushed so quickly in front of a white kid. I’ve done my damnedest to teach him to treat everyone as equally worthy of politeness, but I’m new at this myself and am fighting a world created out of white supremacist poison that seeps into all of us from the moment we are born. I try, I will keep trying, but it’s not enough, will never be enough – and still my discomfort is nothing next to the pain of a black mother who must fear for her son’s life every moment of every day.

White American culture teaches us not to see race, not to talk about it. Calling someone a racist is the worst thing you can do, worse than pointing out the sort of injustice that led to Trayvon’s death for Existing While Black. We live in a segregated society that allows us to continue our racist stereotypes unchallenged, allows us to live without ever even asking why it is that you don’t know any black people, or thinking because your one black friend acts totally “normal” (read: “white”) you’re totally not racist, nevermind that you never go to “those” parts of town or approach the black salesperson when a white one is free, or even realize that you never quite make eye contact or let your fingers touch the black cashier’s at the supermarket.

Yes, all these things are totally normal and happen every day. Don’t get in a huff and say “well, we’re not *all* like that!” Instead listen to the people of color who talk about these and countless other microaggressions happening to them every damned day, and then ask yourself why they might be a tad tetchy just because you “didn’t know it was rude” to come up and touch their afro without asking. (Would you touch a white woman’s hair without asking? Seriously?)

And if you’re still so convinced that you’ve never done anything like this, how about you get mad at the white people who do, rather than the black people who call it out for what it is – institutionalized, normalized white racism, designed and perpetuated for the purpose of making black people less than human, giving the prison-industrial complex fodder for its money machine without the need to muck about with tawdry things like evidence and justice.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am. And yet this is not about my life. I can post this secure in the knowledge that nobody will appear in the comments calling me a n****r because I too have the unasked-for power of my white skin protecting me. I wear black today in memory of Trayvon and his fallen brethren, but I can never take off my white skin or know what it is to be black in this country. I can witness, and listen, remember, and let people of color mourn in their own way, and try to speak up when I see other white people doing stupid racist shit.

You can do the same. Start by listening. And if you don’t know how to confront someone who is being a racist ass, consider that a well-placed raised eyebrow can work wonders. Don’t let it pass unremarked. Don’t laugh at racist jokes. If you don’t know if it’s racist, flip races and see if it’s still funny. (The same trick works for genders and sexist jokes.) Even if you don’t think you’re racist, this stuff gets in you and becomes normal because it’s so pervasive. Learn to see it. Learn to see.

Good places to start:
Angry Black Bitch
Angry Black Woman
Dumb Things White People Say
Love Isn’t Enough
Racialicious
TransGriot
Womanist Musings

My challenge to you: add some of these blogs to your feed reader, and take a few minutes each week to listen to the worldview of a POC.

“Source of Light” by Heather Keith Freeman
7″x8″, pen and ink on paper

Image description: A cloaked woman holds a globe of light, from which emanate a galaxy of stars.

So many things going on. Posts stream through my head, coalescing and dissipating in shimmering torrents. When I’m out driving, a thesis may rise above the rest, building upon itself until I begin to hope that I will hang onto it long enough to write it down… and then I get home, and it evaporates into twinkling motes of faery laughter.

In therapy this week I bemoaned the lack of energy I have had to put into writing and business-y things for the last several months. Even my sparkling new newsletter sent out two issues and then went on hiatus. I’m overflowing with painting ideas but have so little time to put them into practice. I was even considering shutting down Fire Sea Studios for good. My therapist wisely pointed out, though, that it’s not that I’m not doing anything; even with all the demands on my time I am still painting, still thinking and plotting and absorbing inspiration. My muse follows its own cycles, and I have learned many times that attempts to force it to follow my conscious agenda will only result in frustration. Rather than wasting energy fretting about what I’m not doing, I will simply do what I am doing and see where it takes me.

So yes. I have been quiet here and don’t know when that will change. But I am still working, painting, reading, plotting, dreaming. Marinating, as the subject line says.

As long as I’m here, however, I will finish this off with the barest of nods to the winter holiday season, pointing out that my “Source of Light” greeting cards over at RedBubble make lovely Yule or Solstice cards :)

I’ve been going through a bad time.

So many days confined to bed, frantically resting so as to have enough spoons to do the meager amount of parenting left to me. Despairing over my son’s behavioral issues, wondering if they stemmed from anxiety over my erratic ability to be there for him and knowing that I was not helping him in the way that I could if I was not in constant pain. Feeling so guilty for leaving my son to the care of others, struggling not to weep every time I tell him “No, I can’t play with you right now. Please don’t give me a hug. I can’t. I want to, so, so much, but I can’t.”

But then I read this amazing story from Goddess Leonie about struggling with post-natal depression. How even through the worst of it, she knew her daughter was meant to be hers, and how she could smile with utter sincerity through the tears when she met her daughter’s eyes.

And I started to wonder. Maybe, even with this pain and disability that was forced on me when my son was not even two, I’m still the right mother for him, and he the right child for me.

He is so affectionate and cuddly, and it breaks my heart when I can’t snuggle him endlessly as he craves, but that same affectionate nature gives him the empathy to happily bring me things when I need them, and ask if I want a blanket, and to spend an hour in bed with me one morning as our hands pretended to be a family of spiders playing hide-and-seek in haunted houses.

This wonderful, amazing child found a way to involve me in his play even with me flat on my back, unable to do more than move my hands.

Just as a couple of months ago he came up with the idea of “spider hugs” when my body hurt too much to take a full embrace from his bony, wiggly body – just his hand holding mine, but through the power of his imagination transformed into a full embrace with all the love in the world.

And armed with empathy and imagination, I can hope that he will grow up able to use his privilege to help and not to harm. That he will always know, supported with the experience of his childhood with a disabled mother, that bodies with different appearances and abilities from his are still valuable, that their lives are no less worth living, no less worthy of respect and care, than his own.

(Talk of fatalism and destiny usually makes my skin crawl. I believe wholeheartedly that we create our world moment by moment, pushing against the skin of the world to define our own spaces. But there is comfort in the idea that maybe some aspects underneath all this chaos and misery were meant to be. I can adjust my beliefs to better support me, while still allowing others to have their own.)

So you know how last week I posted about my meds not working?

Since then I’ve been enmeshed in legal hell (can’t talk about that), my child care vanished into thin air, and I got new meds but my insurance is refusing to cover them.

So…. yeah. Amnesty (or is bankruptcy a better word? I don’t have the spoons to fine-tune this) on everything under the sun, until further notice. I’m only painting what I have to in order to stay sane, I’m not reading blogs or twitter, I’m only responding to the most important emails, until I get Aiden back in school, myself back on decent painkillers, and the other unmentionable stuff sorted out.

My only comfort is that frequently everything goes to hell right before it all clicks together again at a higher, better level. So I can hope, and just try to hang on, day by day.

My thanks go out again to the amazing sisters of the Goddess Circle, who have held me in their virtual arms through many long dark nights when I was convinced all was lost.

Basically, the medication I’m on for my chronic pain issues – syringomyelia and fibromyalgia from a car accident 3 years go – is no longer working. My doctor and I will be working to find a solution, but in the meantime my ability to write cogent and interesting blog posts is practically nil. I rant occasionally on Tumblr, post the occasional link to Facebook and Twitter, because those outlets take fewer spoons; and of course I do as much art as I can, but even that is barely enough to keep me from sinking.

I’ve got so many plans, so many ideas. But most days, these days, I am in too much pain to be able to form complete sentences.

So yeah. Having a bit of a rough patch. But please, stick around; I will be back.

“Love” by Heather Keith Freeman
8.85″”x11.75″, pen and ink on watercolor paper

Image description: Two women embrace against a rainbow background.

On June 24th, 2011, along with thousands of other people all over the United States, I sat glued to the live video feed of the New York State Senate as they finally voted to pass marriage equality for same-sex couples. The sixth and largest state to do so, New York joins the ranks of those who recognize that marriage has its basis in love, not a magic combination of genitalia.

I tried in this image to communicate that love, steering clear of the common representation of woman-to-woman affection as something performed for the male gaze. These are two women deeply in love, and if they live in New York, one small step closer to having their relationship recognized as equal to any heterosexual one.

I am a woman married to a man, and I declare that my marriage shall be worth more on the day that marriage rights are extended to everyone, not less.

There’s a long, long way to go yet. Not just marriage rights, but employment and housing non-discrimination, proper support and assistance for GLBT youth who have been kicked out of their homes, and the elimination of the shocking murder rate of trans people, just for a start.

My right to live as myself does not take away from your right to be a bigoted asshole. Hmm – that could make a good bumper sticker for my Zazzle store.

“The Sun and Saturn Conjoined” by Heather Keith Freeman
18″x24″, acrylic on masonite

Regardless of one’s personal view of astrology – ancient science or souped-up quackery – I often feel drawn to its compellingly nuanced language for describing personality and the rhythm of life. With the language of astrology you can take something as complex as a person whose ambition is repeatedly stunted by perfectionism and a need for control, and sum it up in the phrase “Sun and Saturn conjunct.” I even did a painting, years ago, based on the concept (pictured at right), which is one with which many people strongly identify, regardless of whether the sun was actually conjunct with Saturn at the time of their birth.

Aaaaanyway, right now is that astrological event, occurring for a few weeks at a time, three times a year, known as “Mercury retrograde,” namely that period where, thanks to our relative trajectories around the sun, Mercury appears to be moving backwards in the night sky. Astrologically speaking, this is a time when communication and travel get snarled up like nobody’s business, and is generally not considered a good time to start new projects or to cut corners. Rather, it is a good time to go back over things, tie up loose ends, make those final adjustments that you didn’t even know you needed until some time gave you fresh perspective.

All that is an absurdly beat-round-the-bush way of saying that I’m not going to have any new art for you this week. I’m this close to done on a whole bunch of stuff. One painting got signed, sprayed, and scanned before I realized I’d managed to forget to paint in one of the subjects’ nipples! Another which you have seen, NOT YOURS II, did get posted, but I then realized I needed to entirely re-do the text, as it was the wrong scale for the piece. Still a third is on ice until I get the proper patience level for finishing up some rather tedious text work. And a fourth is knocking at my brain, begging me to get it out while the inspiration is fresh.

So, uh, yeah. No new stuff just yet. Blame it on Mercury retrograde if you will.