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Surprise hello, sad goodbye


Over the weekend I made a last-minute trip back to Ohio for two things: 1) The impromptu Columbus Alive farewell gathering and 2) my nieces’ dance recital. My visit was a surprise for all but about three people I saw that weekend, and man, I gotta make more surprise visits because the reaction was amazing. I felt so loved! Thank you guys. <3⁠

I’m bummed Columbus Alive newspaper closed. That job validated to me that I am a writer. It gave me so many experiences, discoveries, and friends. Alive’s end is a loss for a community I once loved and I hope the professionals still there find a way to fill the hole left in its wake.⁠

My top two Alive experiences came at the beginning and end of my time writing for it: ⁠

2) Seeing Nina West perform while covering Drauma for the paper early in my tenure and returning to the newsroom with a mission: Convince everyone we should write about her AMAP because baby was a S-T-A-R. Shelley was more than game. Covering drag and affirming it as an Arts subject area and creative pillar in the city was a big deal to us 12 years ago, especially under the ownership at the time.⁠

1) Getting to know Alix Reese was an honor and writing about her changed my understanding of writing. I always felt insecure about my extreme disinterest in chasing down a lead or ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS™. In journalism school I once had to go cover a fire at a movie theater and I thought the whole time, “I’m in the way. I really hate this.” I wasn’t cut out for hard news. I do not have the right kind of emotional stamina for it.⁠

But I recognized with Alix’s feature that what I brought to the table was important too. My emotional stamina is built for a different kind of writing, and the storytelling it generates can be just as valuable as the hard-nosed journalists getting the scoop. ⁠

A newspaper needs both.⁠

Alix’s feature showed me that when I put my own understanding of life into a piece of writing — particularly about a story as powerful and moving as hers — I can do something meaningful. It’s less obviously important than breaking news, but it still mattered. ⁠

So did every version of Alive and its many contributors. ⁠

Farewell, friend.


May the flower crowns be with you


This guy is from Augustus Sherman’s collection of Ellis Island portraits. The photo is dated 1906. He’s listed simply as “Romanian shepherd.” 

I looked up the May Day celebrations and rituals of Romania (nearly every country’s got some), and this apotropaic one charmed me:

“The entries to the animals’ shelters are adorned with green branches. All branches are left in place until the wheat harvest when they are used in the fire which will bake the first bread from the new wheat.”

To be clear, the fire is to bake the bread. 

Definitely only the bread. 

Definitely not the sad American co-ed’s bad boyfriend dressed in a bear suit. 

Midsommar’s ending explained by Screenrant

ONLY. THE. BREAD.


Women Getting Coffee for Themselves


A new collection of art mugs has arrived straight from my brain to your lips! YUM!

  • Ceramic 11-ounce mug with black rim, handle, and inside
  • White outside printed with collage design art by meeeeee
  • Dishwasher and microwave safe
  • $20 (that includes taxes, and shipping is always free xoxo)
  •  Bottomless refills*

* (of cool, not coffee)


Al Fresco


Strong Pour


Coffee Forever


Cheer Cafe


From the Saucer


Breakfast Time


Coffee Table


My 36th birthday was siiiiick


I had food poisoning the day before my birthday, so I’m just now catching up on life and everyone’s super kind greetings from March 15, usually the best day ever (just ask this little party animal circa 1988).

THANK YOU! It was, shall we say, not a great day this year, BUT, I’m grateful for it all the same.

I think the rest of my 36th year is going to be awesome.

Here are a few reasons why:

  • At the beginning of the year I got accepted into StoryStudio Chicago’s Novel in a Year program. They only accept 12 writers per cohort AND I GOT IN. I have been too shy to apply for years, wary of my fledgling fiction-writing skills, but I finally got the courage last fall and am honored to now get to study under the author Abby Geni for 12 months. The program is giving me the final push I needed to finish this manuscript I’ve been tinkering away at for years. (It’s fiction about two people trying to save their hometown roller skating rink. That’s all I’ll say for now, but I love the story, the characters, and the rink.)
  • Justin and I are moving to a much bigger new place in the same Chicago neighborhood we’ve loved living in the past few years. It has enough room for us each to decorate our own space of the apartment (a divisive issue in our last spot, because Justin’s style is very 90s hip hop music video house meets minimalist chic and my style is very OMG DOLLY PARTON AT GRACELAND meets “never met a shag carpet or a cheetah print I didn’t like”). I’m turning the sunroom into my office and I can see Metra trains cruise by on the treeline and above the rooftops as the sun sets and, fuck dude, I die everytime I see it because it’s all I imagined a sunroom to offer. The best part is that a dear friend of mine found the spot for us randomly on Next Door and it feels like friend-fate/ the power of my home-is-inside-yourself approach to life coming to fruition IRL.
The minuscule overlap in the Venn diagram of our styles = a blue velvet couch.
  • My new-ish job is chaotic but overall great. Did I post about this last June? Anyway, I got a new fully remote, full time senior writing and content strategy position at a creative studio last June and I’m doing a lot of tech writing. It’s a fun challenge to flex a new writing muscle and learn about computer science and engineering on the clock. I still pinch myself that I get to make such a great, intellectually stimulating living through writing. Writing has paid my bills for the last 18 years. Eternally grateful for the natural talent and the hard-driving teachers who got me here.
  • Making lots of new art. Last year I started incorporating acrylic and watercolor paint into my practice, and I’ve been obsessed with making collage animations in PhotoShop recently.- Still crushing that auntie game! I love all the little babies! I feel like kids just need a lot of “Yes, and…” when they play and I am excellent at that. I get a lot of joy out of getting to know my nieces and nephews as they grow up. Such cool people my people made!
  • I finally learned how to make orange eyeshadow work on my dumb face!
  • It’s worth repeating ad nauseam: My narcolepsy diagnosis a few years ago was life-changing and the medicine I take now to fight my extreme fatigue has been life-giving.
  • Six years sober in April, baby. My second birthday, as my anonymous friends like to say. 😉 Fingers crossed I won’t be sick for that one this year too. ❤

Introducing the Peekaboo Collection


The journals your mother warned you about!

  • Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a mixed media collage
  • Metal wire-o binding
  • Soft-touch coating cover
  • 5 inches x 8.5 inches, 140 dotted pages
  • Sourced from the U.S.
  • $20
  • Sexy and cuuuuuute

Hair

Sweet dreams.

Swingers

That’s kid stuff.

Newlyweds

Gimme a ring.

Fur

A perfect angel.

Cat Lady

Meow!

Sisters

It’s only natural.

Legs

Squats! Squats! Squats! Squats! Squats! Squats!

Bedtime

Saved you a spot.

Mirror

Who’s the smartest of them all?

Introducing the Rosa Collection


The Rosa Collection is a series of spiral-bound notebooks with printed front and back cover collage designs I made, inspired by the 1799 botanical etchings of Mary Lawrance.

  • Metal wire-o binding
  • Soft-touch coating cover
  • 5 inches x 8.5 inches, 140 dotted pages
  • Sourced from the U.S.
  • $20 (shipping cost and sales tax included in price)

These soft-touch cover notebooks are hard to resist.


Pink + Tangerine

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Damascena.”

Orange + Goldenrod

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Lutea-Bicolor.”

Burgundy + Blush

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Centifolia.”

White + Blue

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “White Provincialis.”

Yellow + Mint

Spiral notebook with printed front and back cover of a collage design by Jackie Mantey. Flower etching: Mary Lawrance, 1799, “Rosa Sulphuria.”


The best quote of 2021


Highlights from my 2021

  • We saw our families for the first time after more than a year away.
  • I earned the best job I’ve ever had.
  • I was published in one new literary journal.
  • I was exhibited in two new art galleries.
  • I was accepted into a prestigious novel-writing program.
  • I found a new place to live with my best friend / creative partner / husband.
  • I deepened fledgling friendships into true sisterhood.
  • I learned to boogie board in Maui, which scratched my itchy wild side in a way I haven’t felt since I quit drinking.
  • I celebrated five years sober. (!!!!!)
  • I passed through something, some darkness I have been navigating for 20 years. I have finally found my way to the home inside myself. I’ve opened the front door. I’ve stepped inside. Next year, I’ll figure out how to turn the lights on.

And, of course, I got to know Tina Turner better. 😉 This quote from the documentary TINA is my favorite of the year:

Look at what I have done in this lifetime with this body. I’m a girl from a cotton field that pulled myself above what was not taught to me.

Tina Turner


I hope you have the very best new year. (“Simply the best,” perhaps?)

Stay strong.

Keep pulling yourself above what was not taught to you.

We’re almost home.


Gallery opening: Christmas Show at The Latent Space


Tonight is the opening of the Christmas Show at The Latent Space Gallery in Irving Park!

The show will have more than 50 unique art objects for sale under the gallery’s Christmas tree. Two of my original embroidery artworks and a gift pack of my collage notebooks will be wrapped up all pretty under there. 🙂

The gifts will have the name of the artist who made the work on them (so guests can have an idea of what they may be purchasing) but the contents of the gifts will be a surprise.

Every gift is $300 or less and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Brave Space Alliance in Chicago. 

Come in and buy a gift of artwork, hang out, and enjoy baked goods from Gingham Baking and eggnog. What a Saturday! There’s word Santa might even show up…

The gallery will be open Sunday as well so you can still hit up the tree if you can’t make it Saturday. They’ll have items available on the online shop soon too. 

Yay, art! Yay, gifts! Yay, art gifts!


Gallery opening: Journey / Explore at Fulton Street Collective


Chicago friends, come see two of my newest pieces in person, plus work from these awesome other artists!

The Fulton Street Collective group show Journey / Explore opens this Friday, December 10, from 7-10 pm.

The address is 1821 W. Hubbard St. (on Hubbard between Wolcott and Wood, and NOT on Kinzie… that’ll send you to the alley, and that’s not where the show will be though perhaps that’s a cool idea for next time??)⁠

Tickets are $5 and there’s a capacity limit (because 😷), so snag yours now!