No Actual Skeletons (NSFW)

I just cleaned out my old closet and found four boxes FULL of old artwork I did back in High School. Yes, most of it is fucking awful compared to what I'm probably capable of today. What the Hell did I really know back in those days? Digging up moldy and torn sketches of my friends, a couple of still-life images of a glass bong, an improperly mounted and primed painting (made before I even knew that you HAD to mount and prime a canvas before you could paint on it) of my High School God: Marilyn Manson. 

I guess you can still see paint "scribbles" on the unfinished concrete floor, most of them have been there since 1999. 

I was pretty heavy into Evangelical Christianity as a teen, which was all kinds of awkward for me because at around the same time I discovered Jesus, I also fell head over heels for the work of Swiss artist H R Giger. I also began to eventually realize that despite what my purity-pledging friends insisted, my vagina did in fact very much enjoy having something comfortably nestled inside of it. Later on in college I fell out of favor with Christianity all together and embraced marijuana, drum circles and the far-less-threatening path of Wicca. I meandered and meditated on the phases of the moon, mystical properties of herbs and trying to store my "energy" in crystals for almost 11 years: I used to be a member of a Circle back in Portland Maine being led by a man who apparently still calls himself "Z" and has moved his base of operations to nearby Westbrook. 

Don't waste your breath talking to them, last I heard their official platform is that I never existed.

After a string of VERY fucked up incidents during my deployment, on top of reading some work by Hitchens and Dawkins, I tossed religion aside for good just in time for my 30th birthday. I'm now out of the Army and staying with family up in Maine, but now after going through all this ... STUFF ... it's such a weird feeling sifting through such badly rendered visual representations  of things I no longer believe in (or even want anything to do with.) Not only that, but all of my artwork depicting my inner conflict and turmoil of just being a misguided and sexually repressed teenager is just disturbing as shit to look back at.

How bad could it possibly have been?

Okay, a little odd but not so horrible, right?

The whole Virgin vs. Slut thing, yes that is in fact a severed Barbie leg. A cut-out from a clothing catalog and a postage stamp featuring Mary and Jesus on either end of this strange collage I made in the summer of 1999: I had my first boyfriend that year, his name was Nate. Well, how about something else? 

That's Satan boiling a Furby alive! I still don't trust those little fuckers, but considering THIS drawing was done using ONLY MARKERS (and a mechanical pencil) I thought it was pretty damn good at the time. 

I had a MAD crush on this one dude and so I made all kinds of crazy pictures to try and catch his attention. Images like THIS coupled with scenarios like THAT might otherwise unnerve most people, however he was the one who got me hooked on Nine Inch Nails, TOOL, Marilyn Manson and other things my Pastor told me to steer clear of. We may have fooled around once, maybe twice, back in the day, but nothing really came about it between us aside from an outlet for angst and the very slow dawning of critical thinking. 

Shall we move on?

Oh my...

... Um, yes that is exactly what it looks like: A dragon vigorously fondling a bound and gagged hermaphrodite.

I'm not going to bull-shit with you, I had some SERIOUS ISSUES with sexual identity as a teen: Suppressing sexual curiosity and desire doesn't kill it, it just makes it stronger (and weirder) until SOMETHING bursts forth into the real world. I will say this, I regret not finishing this one if only because I want to see if I can bring myself to do so without choking on my own laughter.

Hey, I did this next one after college...

Holy shit, it's Moogle-thulu! Hahaha, I can't believe I still have this! Anyone want to buy it?

I only lasted one year at Maine College of Art, the other students were (at the time) a bunch of yuppie-scum trust-fund-eating hipsters who made it abundantly clear that I was not going to be welcome among their cliques. The leather-clad metal-head living in a house full of vegans had very few friends indeed, but I found ways to cope. I should note that my first week of college 9-11 happened, and boy it fucked EVERYONE up. 

One more, okay? It's nothing too weird, I promise. 

I painted this rather comical Self Portrait back in 2006, to this day I think it's one of my best pieces ever. 

In truth, this is a close-up shot of the original painting. It's painted on a perfectly square wooden panel, which is considerably more expensive than canvas but I find that I have a lot more creative leeway with a more solid surface. It still has to be mounted and primed, but unlike canvas it won't stretch or tear and I like that: A great piece of work should last a long time. 

There were A LOT of boxes of old, unfinished and decayed artwork. Some of it was too badly damaged to pick up without tearing, a few doodles somehow managed to remain absolutely immaculate since High School: It's a bit like taking a time-machine into an art gallery. 

I have LOTS MORE images, I'll do another post at some point in the future. 

Vae Victis

I have a "War Story" that I need to tell, it's long and ugly but I need people to hear me. I've alluded to this particular incident in some previous blog posts, but I just recently wrapped up making a recording that goes into more explicit detail. It's almost 20 minutes long but I just wasn't able to edit some stuff out, even for time (I'm still using the same piece of shit laptop that I've had since AIT in Ft Gordon, I want to replace it with a tablet but I haven't found one that really works out for me yet.) 

12-AUG-2013 EDIT: If you can't get the above video to work, try it HERE.

I'm so royally fucking DONE choking on this ordeal, time for SOMEONE ELSE (preferably those responsible) to start losing some sleep and facing themselves for a change. 

This was a defining experience for me, this whole situation changed the way I think about everything: People, the law, religion, sexuality and relationships ... EVERYTHING. Among many years of experiences and situations, especially while I was deployed, THIS was the ultimate moment where I realized that not only were people going to look for any reason they could think of to justify their own bad behavior, but that I was in fact an atheist. 

When "doing what's right" involves getting people hurt, especially in such an extreme capacity, it ceases to be what's right: At that moment, it becomes justified and rationalized evil. And yes, I purposely excluded the part about trying to kill myself by stealing my roommate's medication and trying to OD with it. THAT, for some reason, upsets me more than the incident itself.

I'd be quite grateful indeed if this could acquire massive re-posts, tweets & re-tweets, shares, pins and such: This shit has got to stop.

Thank you, I really do appreciate your help.

Chains are Broken

As of the 4th of this month, I am no longer in the Army. Honorably Discharged, GI Bill bennies and a month-and-a-half of paid vacation later I am finally free to be my bad self. I'd like to take a moment to thank all of the good people I met along the way who were there for me when I needed them, I wouldn't have made it without you guys: Good Soldiers and outstanding leaders are indeed too few and too far between. 

Ian, you are the Silent Bob to my Jay: I'm alive because of you. 

So what are my plans? Since the 18th of June my husband and I have been driving our 1996 Dodge Ram across the country from Arizona to Maine and various points in between. I've posted a couple of 'highlights' on YouTube for people to check out, including our truck hitting it's 200K Mile mark on the odometer. It may not sound like a huge deal to many of you, but road-tripping across the United States is no small feat. It's not as easy as getting in your vehicle and driving off, but so far it's been worth it. 

There will be more blog posts to come, I'm in the process of assembling my application to the University of Arkansas in Spring of 2014 and this is more complicated than I thought it would be. I haven't applied for college in over 10 years, I have no idea what I'm doing. Fortunately for me, the Assistant Dean of Admissions pointed me in the right direction and now I know what I have to do, once everything is together and submitted I'll be consciously trying really damn hard NOT to actually cross my fingers. 

There will be more later, so stay tuned.