Because I’m not gonna bury the lede:
Welcome new subscribers! If you’re wondering who I am, I’m that artist at Portland Saturday Market/Hillsboro Tuesday Night Market/First Thursday in the Pearl who makes the images with text written in the negative space…. And the Resting Bader Ginsburg Face stuff. Hi!
Many of you have asked me when I started making the art with the text on it. My original answer was during grad school (2002-2004). Then I realized I’ve been trying to compensate for my aggressively mediocre drawing and writing skills—by pitting them against each other—for much longer than that.
(Also, you should know I’m a HUGE fan of parentheticals—and em dashes.)
Here’s the earliest evidence I have of my awkward aesthetic sensibilities, from 1997:
For the young’uns in the crowd, nobody had smartphones in 1997 because they didn’t exist. (I know, I know. You should see the look on my kids’ faces when I try to explain TV commercials.) So my college’s Student Activities Committee would give me a list of all the happenings around campus each week, I’d write them on a piece of paper, someone would photocopy it, and someone else would tape them to the inside of the toilet stall doors in all the dorms (it was a teeny campus). Thus the Stall Wall Weekly. I am someone who gets bored easily, so naturally I couldn’t just write out the events and be done with it. I had to add thematically appropriate, hand-drawn emojis before emojis were even a thing! (I’m lying. We used emojis all the time—on ICQ.)
For those of you who were alive to remember this bygone era, please note the event on October 30 (the middle of the purple sheet). I had a chance to see De La Soul at the Roxy (in Atlanta, GA), for free.
Did I go? No.
Why?
Mistakes were made. Lots.
I mean, like, sooooooo many mistakes.
But I’m here now, so let’s not dwell, hmmmm?
Thanks for reading all the way to the end, and take care of yourselves,
Melanie