This is Freak Flag, made from undonatable jeans and my favorite hoodie from a previous era. Here it is on the wall in the gallery at Wheeling Artisan Center in Wheeling, WV (somewhere around 2015).
If you’ve never had the pleasure, it’s a huge gallery. And since I was doing it solo, I had to fill all the wall space by myself.
It took me almost 12 months to create enough new work to fill the walls. And I stabbed myself with an upholstery needle about eleventy-hundred times, and yes, there’s blood on this.
Freak Flag seemed huge while I was making it, but the massive gallery wall dwarfed it. I gave it to my sister, who now keeps it folded up because it’s too big for her walls. Maybe we could wrap it around a corner …
Fast fashion makes no sense to me, but I was taught not to waste things. I hate shopping and wear clothes till they’re in tattered, paint-splattered ruins, Since they’re usually halfway there, anyway, I turn them into art.
Goodbye, favorite threadbare hoodie. I wore it long after the zipper pull broke off. And now it will be in my portfolio.
Update: I had to throw this away along with a lot of other stuff when I moved out of my apartment. Because of the cockroaches.
Sometimes it’s fun to remember you don’t really know anything and you better just shut your pie hole and crack a book before you make an ass of yourself.
That’s called beginner’s mind. Try it sometime — it’s more fun to imagine things than know things.
I like to mess around in Gimp with my graphics tablet. Maybe one day someone will build a wet brush function or some other way to simulate dirty mixing.
Hey, if you write Python scripts and don’t mind taking payment in the form of stolen deviled ham, meet me tomorrow night at 10:00 behind the Applebee’s by the airport. I’ll be standing by the dumpster wearing a pink chiffon dress, a life preserver, and a blonde wig.
A woman can’t be too careful these days, so wear a trench coat so I know it’s you and not some weirdo.
And the day came when she realized that some things aren’t worth the effort. Like trying to start a trend wearing pants with one leg cut off, or reading all of Ron Popeil’s patent applications aloud to sick children.