Blog
January 30th, 2010
It’s just about that time again: Jessica and I are working hard on the next Dead Feminist broadside. She’s poring through texts and historical facts, and I’m pencilling as fast as my tendonitis will let me. This time we’ll be unveiling the new piece at the Washington State Library near Olympia; the staff invited us to give a lecture about the series next month.
The library boasts the entire collection of letters and personal papers of Emma Smith DeVoe (pictured above, right), women’s rights activist and leader of the Washington suffragist movement. And since this year marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Washington, we figured Emma would be a perfect fit for the new piece.
So a couple of weeks ago, Jessica, Zooey (R.I.P., J.D. Salinger) and I took a field trip to visit the archives and conduct a little research. When we arrived, we realized what they meant by “collection:” twelve enormous boxes packed full of letters, clippings and souvenirs. A “little” research obviously wasn’t going to happen.
Luckily, the incredibly knowledgeable and helpful library staff (thank you, Sean!) let us take as much time and as many photos as we needed. So we cozied up to a work station and dived in, one box at a time. Together we went through literally thousands of pieces of paper.
What we found was a fascinating collection of souvenirs, business cards, newspaper clippings,
leaflets and other propaganda,
fan letters (Emma had an impressive array of admirers),
telegrams, notes from sitting U.S. senators and presidential aides, and reams and reams of correspondance between the members of the Washington suffragist movement.
The trouble was, most of these documents were utterly mundane—letter after letter simply acknowledged receipt of previous correspondance, or gave detailed instructions for planning events and delegating tasks. Worst of all, Emma rarely made carbon copies of her half of the correspondance, so there was very little in her own voice.
We spent nearly four hours poring over every folder and box, and the only potential Emma quotes we found were mined from this instructional card. Still, it didn’t feel like we had found our inspiration—just a few weeks from our talk, we had no quote and no social topic for the piece.
What we did have, however, was a much clearer picture of the women behind the fight for suffrage in our state (that’s May Arkwright Hutton above; she and Emma didn’t exactly get along), right down to addresses of homes and buildings still standing in Tacoma (the headquarters of the movement).
From the documents themselves to the individual script hands of each letter writer, we had an incredible window into political life from a hundred years ago.
And we found a good lead. Just as interesting as Emma (and more forthcoming with their own voices) were Cora Smith Eaton King, M.D. (pictured above, right)—correspondent, fellow leader of the movement, and one of the first women to scale Mt. Rainier!—and Bernice Sapp—friend, activist, and the one who compiled this collection of documents and donated it to the library.
Bernice’s letters were full of quirky character and wit. We loved how she called Emma “the General,” and referred to herself and other suffragists by male titles: “Brother King,” “Mr. Hutton,” or simply “him.”
Cora, on the other hand, was a real firecracker. Her letters (often scribbled on scraps of paper, even her own prescription pad!) revealed an eloquent intelligence and a sizzling sense of humor. We fell head-over-heels for Cora, and began to doubt that Emma was the right voice for the broadside—still, though, we had no quote from any of these women.
A few days later, Jessica hit up the astounding Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library, and hit the jackpot. She discovered a document that linked all of these women together, which decided us on a slightly different approach to quoting historical feminists. That’s all I’ll say for now, except that the new broadside may or may not depict a certain quivering, questionable “food” substance:
If you want to be one of the first to see what the heck I’m talking about, I invite you to come check out our talk at the Washington State Library. Here are the details:
Pressing Matters: an evening with Chandler O’Leary and Jessica Spring
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00), free!
Washington State Library
6880 Capitol Boulevard, Tumwater, WA
Libraries and archives face a tough reality in the current economy—especially here in Washington, where a regressive tax system has left the State Library with a 30% staff reduction and major cuts to its operating and acquisitions budgets. The 2003 earthquake damaged their building on the historic capital campus in Olympia, and forced them to relocate “temporarily” to a suburban office park a few miles south in Tumwater. Even when the economy recovers, it is unlikely the library’s funding will return to the levels it enjoyed in more prosperous eras, so the move to Tumwater is looking increasingly permanent. Despite these setbacks, the State Library continues to acquire new items (including our artwork!) for the collection and provide an essential service in preserving our state’s history. So please come and show your support for the library—a good turnout will help them provide more public events in the future, and might just go a long way toward saving them from another visit to the chopping block.
January 26th, 2010
I’m currently working on the illustrations for a cookbook being published this year, so I’m drawing a whole lot of hands lately. Hands carrying dishes, maneuvering chopsticks, folding samosas, kneading dough, etc.
Since I usually work by myself, I often have to be my own model. For the most part, this works out fine, but hands are a tricky business—especially when you need to draw both hands at once, and you need one to operate a pencil.
Enter the lovely Zooey—who could both photograph my hands for me and be hand model herself. We took turns ripping a baguette to shreds for the camera (to mix up the hand anatomy), and mimed with nearly every dish in the house, just in case.
I can’t tell you how helpful it’s been to have her here while I’ve been doing these illustrations. Whenever something wasn’t quite right, I could say, “Hey, Zooey, can you pick up those chopsticks again? I need to sketch a different angle.” And Bob’s your uncle, I’d get what I needed.
This week we spent a couple of afternoons shooting reference photos. Zooey rolled and unrolled pretend spring rolls made of fabric and made “samosas” with a scrap of denim.
It was probably tedious for her, but the end result was a bunch of instructional illustrations that actually made sense!
And we made a mess of the bread (doesn’t make it taste any less good!), but Zooey can say she has some pretty, uh, unique on-the-job training under her belt.
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In other news, I did a little website tweaking over the weekend, and added an F.A.Q. (it makes me giggle to pronounce it “Fack.”) If you ever wondered what I mean about half the things I say around here (and judging by the volume of questions I get on a nearly daily basis, you might), go and check it out here—it’s a whopper.
It ended up being a lot of fun to write, because I got to play the part of the snarky interrogator (not that I get many of those, but it’s fun to write like one). I did practice some restraint, however; I was tempted to include a question I get more often than I’d like to admit: “Wait, aren’t you a guy?” True story. Sigh.
Also in the running was “Will you print 1000 coffee mugs with ‘World’s Number One Dad’ for me?” Because I really did get that email once, along with quite a few others mistaking my business for something entirely different. Maybe this will clear things up just a bit…
January 23rd, 2010
After weeks and weeks of typical winter rain, the Tailor and I took advantage of a rare sunny afternoon and headed to Point Defiance for a stroll on the beach. We quickly discovered that nature had a few surprises for us today—beyond the perpetual shock of Mount Rainier appearing out of nowhere, that is.
The tide was way, way out today; not quite a spring tide, but almost. It was a steep descent down to the water, the crazy slope creating the optical illusion of standing below sea level. At the water’s edge we met a couple of unlucky creatures left high and dry by the tide:
first a half dollar-sized jellyfish that strayed too far into the shallows…
and then a hapless sea star who apparently made a bad choice in real estate (talk about being upside-down on your mortgage).
But the surprise of stranded jelly- and starfish was nothing to the shock we received on our way back, just a few blocks from home:
Camellias. Blooming in January. Now, I’m quite confident that I can adapt to the short, snow-less winters in these here parts—but flowers in January? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wrap my brain around that.
(Not that I’m complaining, mind you.)
January 17th, 2010
Thing number 386 that they don’t teach you in art school: how to navigate local business excise tax laws.
My wonderful and brilliant accountant takes care of the heavy lifting of my federal business taxes, but since the deadline to pay the Washington piper falls before the federal paperwork even arrives in the mail, I file my state taxes on my own. To be perfectly honest, I take a kind of perverse pleasure in bean-counting—there’s something satisfying about the annual financial housekeeping rituals of compiling and tallying. But now that I own a business in a state that relies solely on sales tax revenue, business excise taxes and weird, archaic, late 19th-century property-assessment laws that tax my homemade bookshelves and vintage filing cabinets (I kid you not), the annual tax ritual has turned into an entire weekend curled up with my calculator.
Since I’m obviously a tax-happy liberal gal who loves her some socialist blueberries (not to mention public libraries and paved roads), I’m perfectly glad to fork over the revenue—I’d just love it if they’d just levy an income tax instead, and spare me (and all those poor state employees) the paperwork nightmare!
Political grumblings aside, I’m just chalking this up to All Those Really Important Things You Have to Learn on Your Own When You Start a Business. I’ve got some fun stuff to share with you, but I’ve gotta get this stuff done first. In the meantime, playing in my head over and over again is that little diddy Bobby McFerrin sang on Square One: “Anything you wanna be, you’ve got to know math.”
So true, Bobby. So true.
January 10th, 2010
I find I’m spending more time at the drafting table these days, and far fewer hours chained to the computer. This month I am blessed with an assistant—a brilliant young woman who is helping me with my administrative and production work, in exchange for school credit, a little professional experience and the chance to beef up her design software skills.
We’re lucky to have here in T-town an arts-magnet public high school, and part of the curriculum for juniors and seniors is an internship opportunity during the winter term. I was completely ignorant of this until I received Zooey’s email last fall, asking if I would be willing to take her on. I almost turned her down, simply because I couldn’t imagine I’d have enough to keep her busy and interested for three 40-hour weeks.
But then it occurred to me that I might be able give her an accurate idea of what it’s actually like to make one’s living as a full-time artist—which largely consists of being one’s own secretary, account manager, bean-counter, marketing department, production assistant and gopher, as well as coming up with all the creative ideas. That’s something I wish I had known as a student, and yet was certainly never taught in art school.
As it turns out, there’s plenty of work for both of us, and it’s been a mutual learning experience. Zooey (not her real name, in keeping with my little privacy policy) is picking up design skills they aren’t teaching at the high school level, attending client meetings and press checks, learning the ins and outs of seeing a project from concept to completion, and contributing her own ideas to creative discussions and brainstorming sessions. And I’m able to spend more time actually creating artwork, rather than endlessly playing catch-up with back-burner projects that should have been done months ago (although I crossed my heart and made her a solemn vow that I would get my own damn coffee).
The best part is having good company during the day. Running a one-woman shop is pretty solitary work, and learning that Zooey is not only a talented artist but also a mutual audiophile and movie geek made her an instant kindred spirit. (It was funny to discover that we both have a habit of singing along with the background music, but often choose different vocal parts to follow: harmony is so much more fun than a solo.) So these days I’m churning out new work and ideas faster than ever, while Zooey keeps a hand on the metaphorical wheel—and all the while the studio is filled with music and laughter.
I’m a control freak by nature, so I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself capable of letting go of the reins a bit. And I was even more surprised to learn that Zooey is the only student working with an individual artist this year (everyone else is working with firms or large companies). Here’s hoping that other artists and freelancers open their doors and minds to future students—there’s so much to learn, on both sides.
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