Index Card Art Workshop on 7/13 in NYC
Plus open calls, zine swap, and an update of how I'm doing
Honestly I was doing pretty well until today. I was really happy, motivated to create art and try new things, thriving in ways I never thought I would. Yet I got hit with a low. I don’t think it’s depression as it feels circumstantial beyond the constant ends of worlds.
Loved ones are going through it and I received distressing surprises, but I do think that those will resolve safely and I just need to be more careful. I do feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount I want to do for an artwork that I have no idea got accepted yet. Part of me wants it in the show, another part doesn’t because so much is left undone. I’m used to complicated works but this might be too complex given my timeframe.
But my therapist is right, my track record is fantastic and I’ll get it done somehow. Maybe not with so much of the detail I’ve been longing for, but I will be happy with it in the end.
I’m also worried that the below workshop won’t happen as I don’t have the minimum attendees but I’m gonna shoot for it anyway and promote. Maybe I’ll secure it. It’s worth trying for. I haven’t been promoting it and that’s on me. I’ll do better the next time for sure. I have to remember all the great opportunities that are presently in front of me, and you hehe. There’s a lot to be hopeful for, including our potential. We got this, just try.
The Card Catalog of Potential Index Card Art Workshop in Manhattan on July 13th
This coming Sunday from 3:30-4:30PM, I will be hosting an index card art workshop for The Card Catalog of Potential at Shuai’s Birthday Fest. It will be held in midtown Manhattan along with other cool events you can check out here. Either at 520 or 519 8th Ave. You can submit what’s your favorite physical flaw, the dedication you’d write in a book and present you’d give to someone you personally know, any patterns you’re obsessed with, and build a fictional city together by creating streets, citizens, holidays, etc. Read more about the open calls here.
I’ll be providing art supplies like glue sticks, scissors, magazines, pens, markers, pencils, and a ton of index cards. You don’t have to submit the cards day of. I will hand out for you to keep a zine with the open calls, brads, plastic bags, photo corners, paper clips, and a stamped envelope to my PO box so you can mail them back to me. Feel free to bring your own materials if you have an idea of what you’d like to make. I’ll print all submissions in a zine and mail a copy to you if you provide a mailing address. It costs $8 for supplies and printing.
Shuai’s birthday fest has a ton of cool activities and workshops, like archery, DNA extraction & resin, lockpicking, and water tasting hehe. Take a look. Much of the events happen in the same room throughout the day. I’m super excited to participate, it’ll be a great weekend for sure.
Shop at the Online Biggest Little Zine Fair til July 22nd
I have three mini zines up at the Biggest Little Zine Fair website. You can see all the available zines here, and my creations over here. They range from affirmations, a found text collage story, and a zine made by my heteronym, Sky. Check them out before they close shop on the 22nd!
Are You Still Living in New York? Exhibit in Jersey City til 7/12
I always wanted to be part of an apartment art show and knew I had to try for Yifan’s open call. It’s the coolest concept: artwork that actually takes place in a home. Like the kitchen, bathtub, bookshelf, etc. My interactive artwork “If Only” was accepted. It’s made from a vintage clock with 3 hidden drawers that I won from Shop Goodwill auction. Each drawer representing an era of Clarissa’s life: 2005 at 17, 2025 at 37, and 2045 at 57. She writes a letter to her older self and there’s ephemera and objects from each year. It’s largely based on my life, I even put in my senior high school photo. It was cathartic to write as a 57 year old, deeply reassuring and calming. You can read more about the exhibit here and please DM her if you wish to experience it in person.
What’s super cool is she’s hosting the Drifting Backpack, which “aims to engage local Asian communities through the sharing of publications and encourage participants to contribute their own reflections and creations”. It started in May in New York City and dozens of artist books were placed into two bags (A Bag & B Bag). They invite participants to contribute printed materials related to themes of diaspora and migration. So cool! I really wanted to check it out but didn’t know when I’d be in the city. What kismet that I’ll get to experience it! Read more about it here.
Submit to Graywolf Lab: Games by July 29th!
“Graywolf Lab is an online platform for interdisciplinary conversations and new writing hosted by Graywolf Press. Each Lab starts by gathering a small group of writers and artists for a virtual roundtable discussing a theme. Over several months, we invite responses to that conversation from more artists and writers.
In July, we will be accepting contributions to our latest theme, Games. We’re looking for short fiction, essays, and poems originally in English or in translation as well as short selections of visual, graphic, multimedia, multidisciplinary, and interactive pieces that engage directly with the work already posted under the theme.”
This issue is super cool! Incredibly fun and I know will be great fodder for submissions. I definitely want to submit, but please note they only accept one submission max. Submissions will either close at 300 or on July 29th, whichever comes first. Good luck and have fun!
Submit your journal entries to Journal Journal
“The guidelines are vague. A journal entry could be something as expected as a diary entry, or as abstracted as an accumulation of coffee cup stains on a tablecloth. It could be something that makes you consider the passage of time. It might be a list of every time you've fallen down the stairs, or an inventory of your dad's garage.
Entries of all types and formats will be considered. Examples include text-based entries, data, logs and spreadsheets, visual material, archival material, or any other formats that you might utilize to record or document something.
Material that is not in the public domain and for which you are not the copyright holder requires express written permission from the copyright holder to reprint their work in Journal Journal.
Found, anonymous material, such as a handwritten grocery list, will be considered on a case by case basis with consideration of privacy concerns.”
Check out the site here. I love how open ended it is. I can’t think of any journal entries I want to submit but maybe you do.
Poetry in Motion Workshop on July 23rd, online and in Brooklyn
“Artist and filmmaker Michèle Saint-Michel invites you to Poetry in Motion—a hybrid workshop that explores poetry filmmaking as an embodied, intuitive, and collaborative practice.
Each participant is invited to submit a short (one-minute or less) cell phone video ahead of the workshop. Your clip should include:
— one poetic object
— one scene of life
Email info@millenniumfilm.org with the subject line Poetry in Motion - Your Name by July 16 to take part in the collaborative piece we’ll build together.
This is a space for curious creatives of all backgrounds; anyone who feels drawn to the space where image and language meet. The tone is spacious, experimental, and deeply human. No experience is needed.”
Read more here. Michèle curated Quantum Intimacies which I was part of and I really adore her art and work. I really want to take the class and I’ll be taking it online. What a beautiful chance.
Submit to Analog Community Zine by Bird’s Nest by August 15th
“What do we mean by analog? Think VCRs, cassette tapes, pen & paper, film photography, clocks that tell time with hands, and other things that exist outside of the digital world.
Submissions can be short stories, comics, poems, drawings, photos, collages, etc. The maximum length is 1,000 words or 3 half-size pages (8.5” high x 5.5” wide).
Send to Bird’s Nest Zine Library:
Email: birdsnestlibrary (at) gmail (dot) com
Snail mail:
P.O. Box 1779, Spokane, WA 99210, USA”
Link to the open call is here. Instagram post here. I really want to use up one of my expiring one-time use cameras and mail the prints in! That would be so cool.
Mail in your Tote Art for Scannners Archive Art Show in San Diego by July 21st!
“Make a tote a work of art and we’ll put it on the wall!
The SCANNNERS Archive gallery group invites you to join our newest multi-artist show opening August 2nd.
Seeking:
-Artist Totes
-Sculptural Totes
-Painted Totes
-Mixed Media Totes
-Totes as Poetry
-Conceptual Art Totes
We’re accepting your totes through July 28th (delivered or postmarked by the 21st) to 3131 Adams Ave, SD, CA, 92116”
Form to submit can be found here. Instagram account here. I really want to go for this. Just need a cheapy tote bag, I’ll find one hehe.
Zine Swap by abc no rio and Bluestockings Bookshop in NYC on July 19th
“food not bombs & don’t forget the streets are bringing zines & harm redux supplies 🫂 our friends at centro corona are teaching a know your rights workshop midway through the day 📝paperthirst will be running a zine-making station & abc zine library will be having open hours throughout the day 🎶
bring a zine, make a friend, don’t overthink either” It’ll be at the Bluestockings Bookshop which is one of my favorite bookstores ever.
If it wasn’t so pricy to get to NYC I’d totally go. It looks like so much fun, damn.
Submit to Wear and Tear Art Show in Metuchen, NJ by July 19th
Ah this is so cool: “Wear and Tear is inspired by a conversation on near imperceptible ways we exist in the world. We believe no one is looking at our every move, but we leave behind markers that hint at our habits: dusty photographs, distressed toys, marked walls, and pillow stains. Even a gaze changes things, and those things look back. It requires sensitivity to notice these changes and what caused them. Even if we disappear into a corner of an industrial white room, we eventually create dust. When we leave and look back at that corner, we may create so much dust that we would see an empty spot where our foot planted into the floorboard. When guests walk by, how do they understand what happened in that corner of the room? Through wear and tear, we transfer memories and that speaks of and for us.
We invite you to submit a response with your art. Paintings, performance, or object-based works. It is up to you what you want to share with the public of Metuchen and the friends you bring to the opening. Even if you are unsure how it relates but want it to be shown, submit it anyways. We would love to see it!”
More information and the link to google form can be found here. I had no idea there was an art collective so close to me! I emailed the curator about whether they accept interactive artwork, I hope they say yes. If they don’t then that’s okay, I’ll create something new and it’ll be fun hehe.
JSTOR Recommendation
Everything and More by by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
Over the phone, a boy tells me now, his voice newly husky with hormones, that he wants to kiss me on the spot where each week I plunge a fine-gauge needle into my skin. A boy. We are both of us well past thirty in this story, me farther past than him, both well into becoming-but what is the word I should use? A man? It seems too settled, too definite, for either of us, we whose soft bodies are still changing from the cold pierce of those needles, the oily elixir we plunge slowly in, faintly gold where light catches the syringe. I listen to his words and imagine drawing a little x on the soft fat around my belly button, an inch to the left of it, to guide first the metal point and then his mouth. We use boy to name each other: dear boy, we say, good boy, sweet boy, offering shelter we never had. Fuck, boy. Offering joy. Testosterone brings the breakouts of puberty, flesh suddenly pockmarked as though with our own histories. Sometimes, too, it brings heat that crawls over me in a flush, as though a flash of a future I've turned away from.
An exquisitely written account on being trans, constraints, and the naming of things. Absolutely stunning. It was published in 2022 by Agni and you can read it here.