Berenice Abbott black and white photo of two men in the distance walking on a bridge. Bright yellow embroidery floss emanates from each of their paths.

Best Berenice Abbott quotes in “A View of the 20th Century”

September 6, 2021September 6, 2021 Jackie Mantey

I recently subscribed to The Met on YouTube and found a trove of treasures from this institutional mainstay. Since 2020, the museum has released three to four films from the moving-image archive to celebrate its 150th anniversary. Called “From The Vaults,” the series continues through March 2022.

Hey, when you turn 150 years old, it’s your party and you can make everyone celebrate for two years if you want to.

I’m slowly making my way through all the artifacts they’ve posted; most recently, a 1992 film about American painter Ralph Fasanella, who was known for his depictions of working-class city life and born in the Bronx on Labor Day 1914 to newly minted Italian immigrants.

Berenice Abbott: “A View of the 20th Century”

One of the most compelling docs I’ve watched in The Met’s series so far was another 1992 piece, this one about the photographer Berenice Abbott. I LOVE Berenice and am often drawn to her Works Progress Administration images when selecting images for my embroidery collection.

As one source in the film so succinctly put it, Berenice took, “Emotionally resonant pictures of ordinary things.” That’s as working class as it comes.

What I didn’t realize was how accomplished Berenice was in other intellectual and theoretical pursuits beyond artmaking. Here are some of my favorite quotes from this legendary artist.

"I'm not a nice girl. I'm a photographer." Berenice Abbott

^{“This clear-eyed, insightful documentary, directed by Martha Wheelock and Kay Weaver, offers a grand tour of Abbott’s extraordinary life, from her youth in Ohio and apprenticeship in Paris through her later groundbreaking scientific photography at MIT and final years in Maine.}
^{Using the artist’s memories as a lens for apprehending nearly a century of American and European cultural history, this film pays homage to Abbott’s genius for invention, her free-spirited embrace of uncertainty and experience, and her unshakeable devotion the art of photography.”}
Watch Berenice Abbott: A View of the 20th Century

Best Berenice Abbott quotes

in “A View of the 20th Century”

^{Berenice Abbott photographing on South Street, New York, 1937. Photo by Consuelo Kanaga.}

ON BEING AN ARTIST

“The only pleasure you can get from creating something is the pleasure you have in doing it. Not the final product even. The pleasure you have in doing it. And that cannot be taken away from you. And it cannot be crushed. But you had a certain kind of joy creating it. And that’s all you can expect.”

“There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.”

“I think you have to be intensely personal and be true to yourself. The subject matter that excites you is something you want to photograph. You have to convey to the person who looks at it what it was that excited you.”

"The only pleasure you can get from creating something is the pleasure you have in doing it." Berenice Abbott

Embroidered ball pit of French knots by Jackie Mantey fill the gap under a highway as cars head toward a smoke stack, photographed by Berenice Abbott. — ^{“To the Pit” by Jackie Mantey. Embroidery floss on photo paper. // Original image info: Berenice Abbott, 1937, “Triborough Bridge, East 125th Street approach, Manhattan.”}

ON ART

“If you’re trying to express people, you have to be part of it because it’s an exchange. You’re a part of that time.”

“The art is selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.”

“I think it stands to reason that if you recognize and appreciate your heritage, it helps you with your future.”

Embroidered thread kites by Jackie Mantey peek out of black and white buildings, photographed by Berenice Abbott. — ^{“Social Distancing” by Jackie Mantey. Embroidery floss on photo paper. // Original image info: Berenice Abbott, 1937, “General view from penthouse, 56 Seventh Avenue, Manhattan.”}

"Art is selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about." Berenice Abbott

ON PHOTOGRAPHY

“Anything you photograph has to be exciting somehow visually. It has to be photographically important, visually important. Otherwise you write about it.”

“Photography is very much a prisoner of its time. You work within the framework of the technique at the time, and that’s the way you have to judge photography.”

“I think all photography is documentary or it isn’t even photography. Most photographs are documents by their very nature of the realistic image. When they try to make it a nonrealistic image, they’re imitating another medium. Selectivity is key.”

“Many interesting things aren’t photogenic at all.”

ON CITY APPEAL

“It isn’t just that you think the city is beautiful. It’s that the city is very interesting. Everything in it has been built by man. It expresses people more than people themselves.”

“The city is full of every period, every epoch. Everything there comes out of the human gut. Everything that’s built. Every sign that’s put up. The new, the old, the beautiful, the ugly. It’s the juxtaposition of all this that is an intensely, immensely human subject. You’re photographing people when you’re photographing a city. You don’t have to have a person in it.”

"I think your work is the most important thing in your life. To spend more time with it." Berenice Abbott

"I believe in nature and truth and common sense, pursuit of knowledge." Berenice Abbott

ON BEING A WOMAN

“He said, ‘Nice girls don’t go down on the Bowery.” And I said, ‘Well, I’m not a nice girl. I’m a photographer.‘”

“My assistant got the job. A young man whom I had trained. I think the last thing the world really wants are independent women. I don’t think they like independent women much. Just why I don’t know. But I don’t care.”

“Yes, I’ve always been a loner. I’m certain that some people marry and it doesn’t spoil their independence, even women in some cases. The vast majority seems to snare the woman and she can lose track of her directions and her desires and her interests. I’ve heard so many women say, ‘Oh I would like to have done this but after all my family came first. I had to look after my sons.’ So apparently that was more important to them. To me it would be like losing yourself. I think your work is the most important thing in your life. To spend more time with it.”

"I always thought that there was nothing smarter than an old woman." Berenice Abbott

"I'm planning to live to be 102." Berenice Abbott

ON BEING

“I believe in nature and truth and common sense, pursuit of knowledge. Nothing is any good unless you sort of live up to it. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. That is very valid and can’t get you into any trouble. But you don’t need religion to have morals.”

“I always thought that there was nothing smarter than an old woman. You’ve lived so much, you’ve seen so much, in some sense you’ve been on the passive end of it, which means that you have observed plenty. But my impression was always that most ordinary women, if they’re old, have some remarkable quality that no other people have.”

Embroidered thread kite by Jackie Mantey peeks out of a black and white building, photographed by Berenice Abbott.

“I had no idea I was getting older. I’ve never worried about getting older. I don’t see why people make so much of a thing about aging. It’s so natural to age. Everything is aging all the time. Everybody’s aging constantly. Why worry? It’s slow. You’re not aware of it.You just take it in your stride. But women are so harassed with the idea because of the social attitude, the unfairness of social attitudes between the aging of men and women is so ridiculous and so dreadful that women’s years seem to be only good as long as she can procreate, but a man can be very attractive at 80.”

“I’m planning to live to be 102.” 🙂

See more From the Vaults

See more embroidery art

Three side-by-side images of a tan brown phone with five white dial buttons, numbered one through five.

Mid-year check-in: Four productivity tools I’m loving for creative projects (and how I use them)

August 17, 2021July 27, 2021 Jackie Mantey

In January, I wrote about six smartphone apps and creative writing productivity tools I planned to use to stay motivated on my personal projects throughout 2021.

Am I still using those? Yes.

But now, seven months deep, I’m still trying to avoid work about work.

Aren’t we all? Hell yes.

“60% of time is spent on work coordination, rather than the skilled, strategic jobs we’ve been hired to do,” according to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index 2021.

Yellow and pink text reading, "We spend more time on work coordination than on the work itself."

I feeeeeeel that. In my professional work certainly, and in my personal work as well. Even though I’m not coordinating with a team of designers, clients, or account managers while, say, drafting a novel or making a new embroidery collection, I still find myself tinkering away for hours on planning, documentation, and (my ultimate seems-like-work-but-isn’t guilty pleasure time suck) video streaming Skillshare/Creative Live videos.

So in July, I reassessed how I was working on these things. It was time to think about my time. Given that the pandemic wasn’t keeping us under lock and key anymore, I needed to adjust my routine for the quicker post-pandem pace and packed schedule. Here are four new tools and strategies I implemented to get myself in a rhythm—and keep myself making.

For writing: Airtable

OMG! I love Airtable! A friend told me about this spreadsheet app while we were on our final quarantine walk. It’s free and the UX is intuitive, especially if you’re familiar with Excel or Google Sheets. My favorite aspect of Airtable is that I can upload documents, jpegs, and various other things directly into a cell block.

I have one Airtable project set up with three tabs, one for each of my writing projects: a novel, a book of creative nonfiction, and my blog. From there, I’m able to schedule out each piece of the larger work, add photos for reference or posting, and drop in both the Google doc link and the Word doc of the final version so I can move on.

Pink and yellow text reading, “Writing will always be interesting to me, because even if life has no meaning, writing does. It’s all about discovery, personal and otherwise.” Jo Ann Beard

I know I could keep a folder on my cloud somewhere with all of this content, but it’s so nice to have it linearly lined up, with deadlines attached, and the ability to just dump it when I’m done so it doesn’t take up space in my drive.

Writing tasks can be overwhelming to me because I get ~too~ into them and, when I’m in that addictive headspace, I feel like I have to write the entire book in the next month. But writing is also my most important thing. With Airtable I don’t fold under the demanding weight of such self-imposed pressure. I just keep ticking things off, bird by bird.

For reading: GoFullPage Chrome extension

App fatigue is real. According to the Anatomy of Work Index, U.S. employees jump between 13 tools an average of 30 times per day. Yikes. I think I hit even higher numbers when it comes to things I want to read. GoFullPage has helped with this personal brand of digital distraction. When clicked, the extension will basically scan the entire web page you’re on and turn it into a PDF or jpeg.

Pink and yellow text reading, "On average, we jump between 13 tools, 30 times a day."

I use GoFullPage for saving things I want to read later as well as for capturing clips of my professional writing. I capture what I want to read, download it, and save the PDF in a “To read” folder on my drive. I have time set aside on Saturdays that I scroll through the folder and read whatever still intrigues me and then delete the damn thing when I’m through.

I tried using the “Reading List” feature on Chrome for a process like this, but then I just racked up links on links on links and never read any of them. With GoFullPage, I don’t have endless tabs open, and there’s just enough effort required to capture and save the page as a PDF that I must decide if I truly, truly want to read it. Adding it to the Reading List was way too simple. The potential discards clogged up the line.

For getting sh*t done: Do not disturb phone setting

I mean, it’s obvious what this does, right? Turn it on for your phone and it will quiet all alerts. I get by with a little help from my robot friends, etc. Every morning I block out my day hour by hour. (I know this is a little intense, but my Meyers Briggs Personality Test confirms this kind of planning is best for my sensitive lil heart/mind. INFPs are for lovers.) I use Do Not Disturb when I’m on an hour-block that requires focus, which is usually writing, but this can also be helpful for administrative work or artmaking.

Pink and yellow text reading, "Focus sprints of uninterrupted worked time made teams 43% more productive."

Productivity research from UC Berkeley’s Becoming Superhuman Lab found that 92% of people believe that “carving out a daily block of uninterrupted time called a ‘Focus Sprint,’ where they do not need to toggle between apps or constantly monitor the inbox, would positively impact their and their team’s productivity.” Teams that used these Focus Sprints reported they were 43% more productive. Sign. Me. Up.

For regular to-do tracking: Asana’s board view

“Individuals could save 6 hours and 5 minutes every week—290 hours per year—through improved processes,” like clearly defining roles and responsibilities, the Anatomy of Work Index found. Plus, nearly 70% of respondents said they would feel better-equipped to hit personal targets with clear processes to manage work. This seems obvious, but do you give your personal creative work the same approach? Why not?

How to save 290 hours per year of wasted work time? Get a better process.

I have been using a free version of Asana for my personal tasks for a while now, but I simply could not make a calendar view of tasks work for me. I would just blow right by the deadlines when paying-work had to rise to the top of my to-do list. I tried switching to board view, et voila. Now we’re cooking.

My board view is essentially a habit tracker with four columns, or boards, set up: Monday-Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monthly. Under each column I have five or six tasks that are related to my creative projects. For example, I write one paragraph a day on my novel every weekday, Saturdays are for embroidery, etc. The task descriptions never change, I just check and uncheck items as I complete them each day.

This process has been ideal because I don’t have to hold every task in my head or copy-paste the tasks to every day’s to-do list. They’re not tied to a time-specific requirement, so I am able to remain flexible depending on what the rest of my day looks like. And then, since I have a slew of separate Asana projects set up for more detailed notes on each creative task, I can stay within one program to jot down notes as they arise.

I tweet about these things sometimes

Six smartphone apps I’m using to stay motivated this year 🤞

January 7, 2021January 7, 2021 Jackie Mantey

Yes, 2020 pulled up the floorboards of our contemporary societies and shoved our noses in the rot. We’re all glad the year is done, while also recognizing that a change of the Gregorian guard means pretty much nothing except a mindset shift. I got you. Same floorboard-free boat, baby.

So, armed with a fragile optimism and a new year’s-inspired reaffirmation that the only actions I can control are my own 🙃, I’m sharing six apps I started using in the past 12 months that have helped me feel not so gross about everything. And you can too!

For current events: Audm

This app offers audio versions of magazine articles from a range of national and international publications. I like it because I don’t have to buy a million magazines or subscriptions (which I used to purchase in a flurry and follow-up only with a sweaty regret of the space they eventually take up on my bedside table). And Audm saves me time. I can listen to the latest issue of The Atlantic, for example, while I wash my face masks or clean my zombie-repellent flare gun.

Audm is one of two apps on this list that isn’t free (see also: Sun Basket). But at only $8.99 a month, it’s worth the time it saves me, the depth of knowledge it offers through the articles, and the variety of publication sources—not to mention their archives—to choose from.

For fitness: Pumatrac

Rarely does one download a free app and, soon after trying it, find one’s self exclaiming, “HOW IS THIS FREE?” But it’s 2021, anything is possible, and Pumatrac blew my cynical lil millennial mind. This ~free~ training app is from Puma, so there are ads for the brand’s clothes and workout items, but only on the homepage, and the ads are shockingly unobtrusive; way less distracting or overwhelming than most banner ads or YouTube spots. (Trying to read an article on a newspaper’s website at this point is like trying to uncover a dusty old article from the bottom of a stuffed time capsule.)

The app has video workouts in a variety of themes, like HIIT, pilates, running, and ballet. You pick a workout, download it to your phone, and then go through the circuit with your “trainer” in tow describing the technique and doing the workout with you. It’s as close to an in-person class as I’m going to get right now. My other favorite aspects: It tracks your runs, connects to your Spotify so you can listen to your own workout playlists in the background, and includes a daily calendar feature so you can plan your workouts for the week in advance and, hence the name, track what you’ve done in the past. The calendar automatically records your workouts to each date after you’re done.

For food: Sun Basket

I signed up for Sun Basket, a subscription meal kit delivery service, mere days before the pandemic started. It’s proven essential during our continued shelter-in-place predicament. The food is nice and fresh, and the app where you select your meals for each week is easy to manage. Sun Basket is based in San Francisco so, as you might expect, it has the sustainability thing down; the food is responsibly sourced and the packaging shows up with recycling and composting instructions.

I also like that I can order more than just meals for the week. The app has a la carte options for snacks, pre-wrapped breakfasts, yogurt, dips, juices, soups, salad kits, cuts of meat, and more. In a time when long, luxurious grocery shops are a thing of the past (oh, to spend a day dillydallying in the magazine or pasta aisles!), this app has been a game changer for my desire to eat healthier and more thoughtfully.

For books: Libby

My brother, who is a gentleman and scholar and a librarian, recommended Libby last spring after I complained about OverDrive, the app I was using to download and listen to library audiobooks. He was, as he often is, right. I love Libby (which is by OverDrive). Superior to any other audiobook-related app I’ve used, Libby’s books download fast, the audio is smooth, and the download and returns (and remove-from-phone!) processes work efficiently.

I also like that Libby directly connects to my Chicago Public Library branch, which means when I log on to the app, I’m visiting my branch’s homepage. It’s become my one-stop app to place holds on physical books, as well as peruse, request, and listen to audiobooks. I like that Libby tracks my progress as I listen; lets me set my preferences for item searches, like format and availability; and has an intuitive UX that makes me excited to find my next read—err, listen.

For time management: Asana

I love learning new project management tools. I’ll admit it. Asana, a familiar program to me thanks to several freelance clients who use it, is far and away my favorite. Asana is just so easy to use and manage. The flying rainbow narwhals that occasionally shoot across my screen when I check off a task don’t hurt either.

The user friendly simplicity of Asana is exactly what I need for my individual *stuff*. When I started building shop.jackiemantey.com last April, I wanted a place to dump all the tasks I was racking up—a list that kept getting bigger by the hour as I moved through the process and realized how much work it would be. I tried Asana for this purpose, and it delivered.

With the free version, I’ve created several channels for various projects, separating them by art, writing, and personal goals; then I divided those up by project; then projects by tasks; tasks by dates; and so on. The board view is better for brainstorming than a Google doc, and the calendar view is more ideal than putting tasks on my personal cal. I also like that I have a place to dump related links I find or ideas I have that correspond to a particular project, versus putting them in a notes app or emailing them to myself to place later.

For calm: Insight Timer

This meditation app is free and lets you choose from numerous guided recordings based on meditation type (i.e., sleep, yoga, singing bowls, cello music, mindfulness); intention (i.e., feel grateful, don’t freak out, really don’t freak out, calm the f*ck down); and, most valuably, timeframe (i.e., 5 minutes, 30 minutes, an immortal’s nirvana-ish eternity). With Insight Timer, you (I) can easily find a five-minute “calm the f*ck down” meditation, for example, to help you (me) out between Zoom calls. Or zombie attacks. Or whatever embarrassing, disheartening news is next. 🙃

Six things I’m loving this month

June 18, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

@misfithistory

For fellow fans of the immensely popular Instagram account @historycoolkids, don’t miss the newest cool in old stuff: @misfithistory. This account serves up stories and photographs you definitely missed in history class, because they definitely weren’t in the syllabus.

“Meet Patti McGee the first female professional skateboarder. “My first board was one my brother Jack made in wood shop. He had swiped the wheels off my rink skates to make it and hollered to me to come and try this!” — Patti McGee. After a hiatus from professional skateboarding to raise a family, she returned to the fold, forming The Original Betty Skateboard Company with her daughter Hailey Villa — to support the next generation of female skaters.” @misfithistory on Instagram

The Tennessee Kid

A killer with cadence, stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze’s recent special on Netflix, “The Tennessee Kid,” is a 10 ya gotta see.

No B.S. Skincare

As a world-famous celebrity, I’m very interested in keeping my face flake-free and have invested mightily in creams, lotions, and potions since flipping over to the other side of 30 (I like it much better over here, but I also know gravity’s coming for me). I first heard of No B.S. Skincare at a sobriety conference I attended in Chicago a few months ago; they were a supporting sponsor and giving away free handouts.

The benefits: responsibly made in the U.S., no animal testing, “no shady shit” (ie. parabens, phthalates, sulfates, and synthetic fragrances), and a whole page dedicated to how to recycle your No B.S. bottles. Bonus: The products that I’ve tried (below) actually do work, no bs. I’m particularly a big fan of the Vitamin C+E Serum, which I use each morning. It keeps this face o’ mine as bright as a paparazzi flash. 😉

This vegan shepherd’s pie recipe

Its official title: Vegan Shepherd’s Pie with Whipped Sweet Potatoes from the Simply Quinoa blog. The photo I took of my finished product is startlingly bad, but I’ll share it because we’re all friends here. This dish was so delish. I’m convinced cooking the lentils and quinoa base in veggie broth, fresh thyme, and bay leaf and then adding a balsamic vinegar and veggie broth to the mixture before throwing it in the oven were the key taste-elevating moves.

This photo is misleading. Far from a Pinterest fail, this recipe is a must try for vegans and carnivores alike.

The triumph of Andy Ruiz

While we’re on the subject of packing a surprisingly yummy punch, did you see the recent boxing bout between heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua and the 11-1 underdog Andy Ruiz Jr.? It was an upset for the ages!

American Experience: Stonewall

Happy Pride month! Here’s a brand new must watch by my best boo, PBS American Experience (I just got Amazon Prime and I CAN WATCH ALL THE SEASONS WITH MY MEMBERSHIP). Love is love, but sometimes you must fight for it. Stonewall changed everything. Thank god. Thank these brave humans.

“Once Stonewall happened, the whole house of cards that was the system of oppression of gay people started to crumble.”

“When police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City on June 28, 1969, the street erupted into violent protests that lasted for the next six days. The Stonewall riots, as they came to be known, marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement in the United States and around the world.”

Art you should know: Robert Frank’s The Americans

May 27, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

Capturing America’s inconsistencies and contrasts is practically a pastime now for the average artist. We owe a tip of our baseball hats, emblazoned in racist symbology, to those who developed this aesthetic with such originality that their historical influence is practically cliché. I’m thinking the hard-nosed, coked in empathy narratives of Dorothea Lange; the searingly lonely dream-scaping of Edward Hopper (#1 all-time fave). An artist who deserves to be part of this lineup of artists that the gen pop rattles off when considering Great American Artists Who America-ed America is Robert Frank.

Actually, Frank, a photographer, was Swiss-American, and his new-citizen status gave his work a non-sentimentality surrounding American Life. In the 1950s, this translated to an incredibly unique source of truth for what was happening behind the technicolor and catchy slogans of the post-war pop culture.

I am always looking outside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what’s out there. And what’s out there is constantly changing.
Robert Frank

In 1955, Frank got a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. For the assignment, he spent two years traveling the States with his family and taking photographs of everyday life in places like Detroit, Savannah, Miami Beach, LA, Salt Lake City, Butte (Montana), and (of course) Chicago. In those two years he took more than 25,000 photographs and 83 of them became The Americans, a book of images that “changed the nature of photography. What it could say and how it could say it,” wrote art critic Sean O’Hagan nearly six decades after the book’s publication in 1958. The Americans, he says, “remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20^th century.”

Selections from The Americans was recently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition “Out of the Retina, Into the Brain: The Art Library of Aaron and Barbara Levine.”

Frank’s imagery was subtle but impactful because grandiosity took a backseat to themes of boredom, toil, and blind patriotism. These are everyday Americans who live under the spell of American lore with a sort of dumbfounded despair. (It feels achingly familiar to our social media age—ie. if I’m supposed to be happy here, why am I so sad/mad?)

Frank’s compositions depicting race in America are particularly powerful. Prescient, even, considering hindsight of social photography and the incredible civil and human rights upheavals on the country’s horizon. This theme is, again, where Frank’s individual experiences and characteristics gave him a honed eye for making these observations about our country’s racial cruelty. As a Jewish man, he experienced profiling while photographing in the South. He was put in jail in Arkansas. Told he had an hour to leave town by a deep-South sheriff. This racism indelibly shaped his view of the country, which indelibly shaped everyone else’s view of it too. Moreover, he gave brutalized communities a chance to show their strengths, despite all they faced in 1950s America.

There are too many images, too many cameras now. We’re all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. It’s just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art anymore. Maybe it never was.
Robert Frank (in 2008)

Art you should know: Genieve Figgis’ haunting paintings

April 9, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

The past few months I’ve been grooving to a morning routine that’s 100% helped me get 85% focused for each day. It involves some variation of tea (I’m that person now… tea drinkers are to blogging about being a tea drinker as marathon runners are to 26.2 bumper stickers), journaling, reading, and watching a meditation or an affirmation video. I know, affirmations seem so corny, but I swear to 20-something granola Jesus, they have helped me out of many a morning funk.

While I try to watch the meditation or affirmation videos ~mindfully~, I sometimes—almost all the time—end up getting distracted and, instead, mindlessly scroll through Pinterest (I figure my subconscious is picking up on whatever’s audibly streaming at me in the moment, so all is not lost). Pinterest is one of the few (two) social media platforms that don’t make my blood pressure rise (the other being Instagram). I end up pinning artwork the most. It’s such a visual platform and has helped me discover many artists whose work I really enjoy or feel inspired by. Or, the best, feel rapturously in awe of.

Genieve Figgis on being a mother, the challenges of being an artist, what she loves about painting, the darkness in her experimental work, and who she finds inspirational.

Genieve Figgis was one such morning scroll find.

The Ireland-born and -based painter creates murky, dramatic scenes that are at once recognizable but elusive. They continuously capture my attention and then do something with said attention that’s increasingly impossible in an oversaturated visual culture—hold it.

“Not doing what was told would be my future, avoiding that, was just so fantastic”
Painter Genieve Figgis

Her work makes me feel like I’ve been in it before. Not just seen it; known it intimately. Like when you see, for a split second, a face on the street and you do a double-take because it kind of looks like a kid you used to know in high school. And that kid definitely died three years ago.

“The Swing After Fragonard,” by Genieve Figgis (A la, “The Happy Accidents of The Swing,” the 1767 oil painting Jean-Honore Fragonard.

The familiarity I feel toward her acrylic paintings is partly easy to explain: We’ve all seen some crisper version of it, as she often uses 18^th century paintings of aristocratic life as her starting point. But her work also feels familiar because of its ability to evoke the kind of primal dread that is exciting and addictive. The kind of dread you can’t turn away from. The kind of dread where you don’t understand you’ve sauntered into something deadly until the teeth around you have already closed… you were just stunned by the beauty and sipping your Earl grey and then BOOM, you’re falling down the throat of the beast.

The dramatic danger, the warning, her paintings seem to emanate is made fully clear after you spend more than a scroll-click-Pin with it. In fact, the more I look at her paintings, the more they seem to melt before my very eyes. I find that darkly exciting too.

“If you’re really enjoying something you don’t need to see the end of the road, the finishing line. That’s not always going to be the ultimate triumph, you know? If you’re not enjoying the journey, the end result will be no good.”
Painter Genieve Figgis

Published: Photography in Honey & Lime Lit

April 1, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that two of my photographs were selected for publication in issue two of Honey & Lime Lit magazine, entitled “dancing into oblivion.” I love this publication’s dreamy visual aesthetic and am honored to be included (they had over 300 submissions for this issue!).

Check out both of my photographs here, and then read through the issue here. I’ll let you decide which of my images caught my eye because standing in it made feel like Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks. A girl can, ahem, dream.

Seven things I’m loving this month

March 29, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

“Killing Eve”

Thanks to a beloved cousin’s wedding and some previously planned plane-hopping home to Ohio, I’ve been doing a lot of traveling this month. I needed a new TV show to binge while I was airport bound, and “Killing Eve” did not disappoint.

The BBC America series is about Eve, an M15 security guard turned international spy (played by the incomparable Sandra Oh), who is on one twisted (and surprisingly funny) hunt for a psychopathic murderer named Villanelle (played by the also awesome Jodie Comer).

Seeing some ladies lead the psycho game trope is really fun. And def bloody. If you didn’t love Sandra Oh already (who even are you?), you will after watching this show.

“The Philosophy of…” on YouTube

re: Psychopaths, the Wisecrack channel on YouTube does some excellently down-the-rabbit-hole worthy videos on The Philosophy Of our favorite cultural characters, movies, and TV shows.

One pot vegetarian meals

Recipes here.

In my effort to be a better, environmentally friendly human (ie. not a psychopath), I’ve been trying to eat more plants. I’ve found vegetarian recipe how-to videos on YouTube to be more helpful to me than the static veggie food porn I find on Pinterest (though I like those too).

The Good Ancestor podcast

Particularly, this brand new episode with writer Glennon Doyle. You can and should listen to all of author and speaker Layla Saad’s episodes here. My Zero Proof Book Club co-host, Shelley, recommended this episode to me (Glennon’s big in the sober movement) and tuned me into Layla’s important work about how white feminists can be better advocates for racial justice.

Seltzer Squad podcast

re: Sober movement, the Seltzer Squad podcast has been getting a lot of buzz about not getting buzzed. Each episode covers a topic that inevitably comes up in sobriety.

This body meditation

Since we’re not peeing the bed anymore, and all that.

My kitty cat

My main squeeze is now roomies with my ‘rents, thanks to my husband’s atrocious allergy to anything cat. Hanging out with Little Dude when I’m visiting home always makes my heart grow 10 sizes. ‘Till next travel, cuddle buddy.

On writing: Find the lie

March 20, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

I signed up for author K.M. Weiland’s Helping Writers Become Authors newsletter about a year ago, but only recently have I started really digging into her work.

It’s good stuff.

Her book “Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story” helped me finally understand the difference between the hook, the inciting incident, plot points, and pinch points. The breakdown, in fact, was so enlightening and easy to understand that it was key to me finally wrasslin’ all of my ideas into a workable plot structure (!!!).

The notecards method was doing me no good (so overwhelming, so much trash), and the thought of the time-suck-potential of “pantsing” made me feel super itchy (and breathy with anxiety).

That was a tough egg to crack, and girlfriend has got me cooking with gas now! How do you like your omelettes, baby?!

Weiland produces her own podcast (she’s already 450-something episodes deep) and has free e-books up for grabs on her website for newsletter subscribers. If you’re trying, like me, to wade into the vast waters of writing your first novel without drowning, her stuff is a good place to start to understand the mechanics of the whole thing.

As I move forward with my own process, I’ve been trying to work on character arcs. I encounter a sort of chicken-or-egg headache (no omelettes) when I try to think of plot and character arc as separate entities. In her podcast interview with Bulletproof Screenplay (below), Weiland once again helped me see the light!

I know that in a good novel or story, a character has to change in some way, for better or worse, but, as Weiland explains, an easy way to imagine this journey is to first consider the lie that a character believes in the beginning of the story and then consider what truth they have to face near the midpoint to do something climactic toward the end. So simple. I was really forcing matters with outlandish external events, but this pro-tip helped me understand that the writer has to understand the character’s internal events first. Because of course.

You can listen to the interview here:

Published: The 10 to 10 on Neighborhoods.com

March 17, 2019August 21, 2020 Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

I know I keep writing about how much this winter has been one relentlessly cold yuck, but the silver lining is that it’s got me jazzed for when warm weather finally hits and Justin and I can do full-day sessions of The 10 to 10. I’m so excited about it, in fact, that I recently wrote about the game (from the mind of Justin Golak TM) for Neighborhoods.com. Check out my piece titled “How a Roll of the Dice Helps Me Explore Chicago neighborhoods.”

When you walk a city’s neighborhood with no particular place to go, you end up keeping your eyes open for things to do, more than if you’d arrived at your destination with a set plan.
ME!

​​Berenice Abbott: “A View of the 20th Century”