The day after Christmas 2019, I jumped into the Adobe deep end and purchased a year’s-long subscription to Illustrator. I was eager to learn the program, though I can’t remember why? Less expensive than buying canvas and paint, maybe?
Regardless, it turned out to be the best investment of 2019 (and we bought a French press that year!). Making an artwork every morning proved to be an anchor of consistency in a chaotic 2020, a way to visually track my growth in a moment when time started to feel like an unreal flat circle.
And you know what they say: When life gives you time that feels like an unreal flat circle, turn those flat circles into abstract illustrations. Or something.
Three benefits of a daily creative practice:
It breaks down big tasks into bite-sized baby carrots. Doing something daily means you can pick a task that only takes 20 minutes a day and still feel (and be) very accomplished by the end of the week. This makes finishing your Big Project feel mostly carrot, minimal stick.
You learn to trust yourself. I mean, it’s similar to why you teach kids to make their bed every morning. It doesn’t really matter if the bed is made; they are going to just sleep in it again the next night. But it does matter that you learn to trust yourself to do small things in service of your future self. Getting into a made bed at the end of a long day feels so much better than getting into a messy one, right? The self-loving follow-through is what becomes the habit, not the act of the habit itself.
You get better at whatever you’re practicing. And you make some cool ish in the meantime.
In other words, I’ll be back at it in 2021. Cheers, friends. I hope you have the happiest, healthiest new year!
Get a free limited-edition tote bag when you spend $100 or more at shop.JackieMantey.com Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday (November 26-30).
The special tote bag features a heat-pressed print of my photography, embroidery, and illustration collaged into one awesome sack design appropriate for any and all sack-related things.
The boy slurppin’ on some soft serve while barefoot on a sidewalk is one of my favorite moments from my 2018 gallery show at Slate Arts. It was fun to bring him back out to play again, this time in Adobe Illustrator.🍦
Like always, tax is included in the shop list price, and shipping is free!
I’m drawn to every version of it. Bubblegum. Neon. Fuchsia. Pepto Bismol. Patent leather (my favorite).
My senior year of high school my mom made me a hot pink crochet blanket as a graduation gift. I loved it. For a while. Then I stored it away in the top of my closet for about a decade. Why? Pink feels authentic to me, but I became embarrassed by my love of the color.
Pink seemed too conventional, too basic, too one-dimensional. That was how I perceived others perceived it. It was as if pink had already been claimed by women who weren’t like me, representing identities of the shopaholic bimbo that I wanted to distance myself from. I felt like pink had been claimed by a consumerist or sexualized society that made me feel less than valuable.
By my mid-college life I had veered away from pink’s statements, shamed by how the color has been weaponized to sell women shit and commodified to represent a whole community (i.e., who should like it and who shouldn’t). I was also cowed by the seeming conventionally of it (this, my own confused internalization of the weaponization of the color), and instead dabbled for a bit in punk rock black or wannabe-queer camo. Color and pattern are so tied to identity in that way.
Eventually, as I settled into myself, I came back around to pink, and I think it’s no coincidence that I fully embraced its powerful hold on me in my 30s, an age profound in its allowance to let me be myself. My true self. My awash in pink, sadly joyful selfhood.
Pink is a symbol of my roots, my discontent, and my self actualization.
I love when men wear or like pink, but I am not too interested in using the color as an obvious gender statement in my artwork, though it probably can’t be unthreaded from that experience in a small capacity. No, I use it in my artwork as a reclamation of the color individually. Pink is powerful. I don’t find it feminine necessarily, but I myself am feminine and find power in being feminine—and power in accepting my femininity.
As an artistic element, pink makes anything and everything pop. Pink is a bold choice. It draws your eye and doesn’t let you go. I like that it’s still a bit divisive. It is the most stereotyped hue, as far as non-bodily pigment is concerned.
Pink draws attention to itself. Pink makes you look. Pink says, “I am not what you think I am… even though you are looking at me because you think you know precisely what you think I am.”
Pink in an artwork makes you confront something inside yourself.
That something could be big or small, upsetting or comforting. Doesn’t matter. The confrontation is what’s important. A confrontation is a question that makes you pause. It can be as small as a stitch, or as big as an elephant. A confrontation is a question that you’ll answer almost immediately with your intuition. That’s what I’m interested in. The naturalness, primality, invoked by such an unnatural color.
Pink is a loaded adjective as much as it is a color. It is something we culturally face everyday so we’re bound to have associations with it.
Pink cloud in sobriety refers to the typically short period of euphoria that some people feel soon after quitting their drug of choice.
Pink tax is the term for how women are nickel and dimed on toiletry products made for their gender.
Pink line(s), one or two depending on your situation, is what we look for on pregnancy tests as the minutes tick by.
Can’t we just like something? Sure, but what we like has connotations, meanings, and layers. I don’t judge these. Just find it interesting. When we confront our connotations, meanings, and layers as individuals and as a whole, nonjudgmentally, we are closer to making change.
In the path from girlhood to adolescence to adulthood, the color identity shifts along with one’s self and understanding of their persona and place in the world.
Assumptions can be made. Let them.
What we like can change. Let it.
Who we are can change. Let’s.
The color though. The color never changes. And maybe that’s it. Maybe pink is some form of—some outlet for—controlling the narrative of my own life. Seeing my self, my life, my color for what it truly is: Whatever I make of it.
And I want to make it beautiful, fun. I want to make it pop.
I’ve been learning how to cut out photos in Photoshop and decided to use a cutout of my embroidered pizza-party-boy patriot as a starting point. The exhibition prompt: “Express creative activism and promote democratic participation in the lead-up to Election Day and beyond.” ✌️🖕✊
All the artworks in the exhibition (on view online and in the windows of Hubbell Street Galleries at California College of the Arts) have been made into free, downloadable posters that you can print out and share to encourage others to get involved in their communities.
I took a playful angle with my entries, but there’s some really striking work up there, including a participatory Google maps photo project that pins found, littered masks—American Values by artist Amy Tavern.
Go to creativecitizens.cca.edu to see all the stellar work and download your favorites. Then go vote and/or eat pizza while you wash your face mask.
My wristwatch broke a few days ago, the hands frozen in a random high V. I’m inappropriately bummed about it! It took me a while to find a watch I liked, and this one—a mesh banded and metal mixed babe, silver and gold—goes with everything, looks classy af, and has basically become my sartorial security blanket.
She was even New Year’s Eve party appropriate. 🙁
A 32nd birthday gift for myself, the watch has factored into my daily routine for the past two and a half years. I put it on each morning and take it off each night… like, well, clockwork. Now it is a phantom accessory. I keep catching myself staring at my naked left wrist after absentmindedly pulling it up to check the time.
I’ve decided to take the watch to a repair shop rather than simply buying a new one. The former has proven an infinitely more complicated choice than the latter. (But really not complicated at all, dear reader. I’m just comparing the work involved in finding, reviewing, and connecting with a reputable repair shop versus, you know, clicking around Macys.com for a few hours. Hours I can no longer track with my darling watch! <cue first-world wounded howl>)
Beyond the feeling of style and consistency a wristwatch offers me, I love my arm candy because it helps me pick up my phone less. And no need to light up my computer screen to check the time and risk dicking around online for 15 minutes before I come to and realize I’m late for a meeting. Just as a for example.
So now, as I find a place to fix my cheap but cherished timepiece and wait for her to be returned to me in tick-tock shape (ha), I’m considering a purchase of a wall clock to achieve a similar kind of stylish analog present-mindedness effect. Here are nine I’m choosing between from my macro.baby shop on Society6 as I hand off my Skagen to the nice clock man with the glass eye and await my beloved’s return.
Are y’all still in lockdown mode? Justin and I are, and I’m confused about people who aren’t? Wtf is going on? Is the pandemic over? Hahahaskldjflaskjdfhahahaha aaaahhh!
When I’m not silently dread-screaming, trying to mentally prepare myself for a whole winter spent in our one-bedroom apartment, a time when we won’t even have a day at the park to quell our discontent (hahahaskldjflaskjdfhahahaha aaaahhh!), I’m focusing on my writing and visual art practices. Those, quite honestly, make me feel safe and in control.
I’ve spent the past six months building my own website/online shop for the embroidery art (launching October 10! aka 10/10 would recommend!). Building a website from the ground up has been surprisingly fun—surprising because I typically have very little tolerance for long term tasks of the technological variety, and fun because it has helped me understand my aesthetic and purpose a little more.
As I build the shop, I’ve had to think through many aspects of my visual practice, including theme, visual language, and intent. I always have a million ideas for a new collection or series, but having a shop to focus on versus, for example, the pursuit of a gallery show or getting into an art fair or residency or something (all on a pandemic pause), has put some valuable constraints around what I’m working on visually and the ideas I choose to pursue. It’s like bowling with bumper lanes on.
Here are three places I’ve been finding motivation as I work.
For education: Creative Live and Creative Mornings
I bought a year-long pass to Creative Live, an online learning platform, so I could watch hours-long lectures on how to use Adobe Creative Suite. And, friends, best creative investment I’ve made in a long time. I got my money’s worth the first month in, slamming through hours of Illustrator courses. With the year-long Creator’s Pass I can access any course and its accompanying materials, so I’ve been learning the technicalities of painting, photography, photo editing, email marketing, and so much more. My favorite aspect of Creative Live is that the classes—since they don’t need to fit into a one-hour time slot—can get deep in the weeds, a comprehensive journey I currently have the time to take. 😉
Other virtual spaces I’ve gotten fewer but still great tips from are free virtual field trip events hosted by Creative Mornings. Upcoming lectures around topics range from the technical (ie., how to produce your own podcast) to the manifestational (ie., how to ohm your dream career into existence).
For inspiration: City Arts & Lectures interviews
San Francisco-based City Arts & Lectures is a longstanding interview and events series held in the historic Sydney Goldstein Theater. In the spirit of Interview magazine, the format is supes-hot-artist-interviews-other-supes-hot-artist. Much to our non-Californians’ benefit, in the time of corona they’re streaming new discussions online for free.
For courage: Arts podcasts
What I’m listening to is in constant rotation because I am fickle, but recently I’ve been enjoying The Jealous Curator’s Art For Your Ears and a new Chicago output from Victoria Hines, Creative Journeys. Both pods feature interviews with working artists and makers about their process and approach.
A bunch of poets I follow on Twitter liked this Tweet today, so it magically showed up on my timeline, and it’s perfect:
“I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.”
Georgia O’Keefe is famous for her flower paintings that look like, ahem, hoohas. That’s a reductionist distillation of her work, but it’s genpop-accurate because, whatever, we can only maintain so much info in our brains so it’s easier to identify her contributions to the art historical cannon by the most “memorable” thing about her work.
OK, Georgia!
Perhaps, though, with the following passage of her own writing, we can see beyond Georgia’s ~flower vaginas~, and remember why she picked flowers as a focus of some of her paintings in the first place. Because they’re freaking beautiful.
Georgia decided to zoom into the blooms and paint a magnified perspective of flowers after being drawn to a tiny flower in a still life painting by Henri Fantin-Latour.
Here’s what she wrote:
“A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower—the idea of flowers. Still, in a way, nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small—we haven’t time—and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. So I said to myself—I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they’ll be surprised into taking time to look at it. I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”
That the busy New Yorkers didn’t see flowers, necessarily, and instead mostly saw vaginas (or at least the art history did) is totally predictable and, like, what are we gonna to do? Georgia’s voluptuous flowers have caused celebration for the fornication-fueled folds of the most tender of lady parts, and so be it. Hell yeah. Let us toast the vaginas! Long live the labia! But also, as we cheer, may her idea of magnifying flowers as a means to share with the world what a pause to stop and look at the lilies can do for one’s, well, soul, hold meaning for us as well.
What can you take time to appreciate more closely this weekend? Might I suggest Ram’s Head with Hollyhock? Or your nearest adult, consenting vagina?
Y’all. Ruth Asawa had six kids. Did you know that?
What an impressive human. To raise even one offspring and have an internationally successful and personally meaningful art practice seems like a near impossible achievement. Actually, having an internationally successful art practice AND/OR personally meaningful art practice child-free seems like a nearly impossible achievement.
Here she is with four of six. FOUR OF SIX.
I learned this fact about Ruth in ^this video promoting new USPS stamps featuring her work, intricate wire sculptures that explore how “the relation between outside and inside was interdependent, integral.”
How very relevant in a pandemic that has us all stuck inside and having sweaty pastoral dreams! Also relevant: Stamps, supporting the post office, sending care packages to all the people you miss, etc.
Also, also relevant: The following quote from the USPS video about how Ruth found time to meet her practice, continually pushing her process and forms (all while being, let me just say this one last time, a mom of six, in the mid 20th century).
“Use your little bits of time. Your five minutes here, your 10 minutes there. All those moments begin to add up. … Learn how to use time when it is given to you.”
It’s my four year sober-versary! Four years ago, if I’d been wearing the same pants for a week, it was because I was hungover. Now it’s just quarantine life, baby!
But seriously, hell yeah. Four years feels remarkable because it doesn’t feel remarkable. Sobriety has become a given, a constant in a life that used to feel like constant chaos. This past year was profound for me internally. I experienced a revolution of self… a lifting, turning, and resettling.
Going sober after almost a decade of and a half of daily binge drinking is fucking hard. It is a physical, mental, and emotional obstacle course, and you have to do that work inside yourself—not alone, necessarily, but all that work is going down inside an already exhausted and, honestly, scared self. It’s all happening to and relying on you. You you you. There’s no escape hatch. No out. You’re faced with facing the world exactly as it is and exactly as you come to it, day in and day out. Nights too. You you you.
There is a special and instant knowing between people who have gone through some form of addiction recovery. Whether it’s alcohol, narcotics, food, gambling… I think the healed and the healing show up in the world differently. It’s often subtle, but if you’ve walked through that kind of fire yourself, you can recognize the ember in others. These people have an I’ve-seen-hell tell. I think it’s almost a survival tic? Like, I’ve become alert to the people who can help me in a way no one else can if I run into trouble of self again. And I will. Because that’s something the recovering know too—this is our thing and it will always be there. Caged, but still there.
I love who I used to be. I love the people I spent time with then. I love many of the memories I made. My worst fears of sobriety came true. I lost friends, some perceived social clout, the identity I had built. I don’t care. I would have lost them anyway if I had continued on the path I was on. But now I have a peace and quiet self power that would have been impossible without walking through that fire.
To the recovering: I love you. Keep going. It’s a muscle. And it’s worth it. You are worth it. You you you.
On the newest episode of Zero Proof Book Club podcast, Shelley and I discuss “I’m Black and I’m Sober” by Chaney Allen, the first autobiography written by a recovering African American woman. Jackie and Shelley talk about the low number of sobriety memoirs by people of color, how women who drink heavily are judged more harshly than men, and the unique challenges faced by black men and women during recovery.
What to expect: An important work, this is the first autobiography written by a recovering African American woman
From the book jacket:
“I’m Black and I’m Sober traces author Chaney Allen’s life from growing up poor and hungry in Alabama through her gradual addiction to alcohol as a young mother in Cincinnati, Ohio. This powerful story documents Allen’s journey into the soup kitchens of Selma, Alabama, to the tenements and late night joints in Cincinnati, and finally to sobriety in San Diego, California. Allen, a minister’s daughter, discusses her relationships with her mother, brothers, and children; the impact of discrimination; and the obstacles African Americans face as they become sober.”
— I’m Black and I’m Sober: The Timeless Story of A Woman’s Journey Back to Sanity
