November Update

November 1
Brain storming 1 hour
Self portrait- Sarah’s beard and makeup, no other covering?
Portrait series?
Gender identity- photomanip combining male and female parts (find people to photograph (art and sindu? Justin and elaine?)
Bi- painting shadowy figure playing claw game with men and women stuffed animals inside, addresses biphobia
Lady in red painting
Gender roles- putting traditional men and women in the “wrong” settings
Something with Timm!

November 3
Love Library Research 1 hour
Searched and Checked out books:
Blake, Nayland, Lawrence Rinder and Amy Scholder. In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995.
Horne, Peter and Reina Lewis. Outlooks: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities and Visual Cultures. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Hovey, Jaime. A Thousand Words: Portraiture, Style, and Queer Modernism. The Ohio State University Press, 2006.
Sherry, Michael. Gay Artists in Modern American Culture: an imagined conspiracy. University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

November 5
Obama Painting Concept and Sketching 1.5 hours
I decided to start a painting of Obama. Queer art often focuses on politics, and the ways the government is working and changing. Also, the fact that Obama has been elected is monumental. It is one of the biggest and most historical things to happen in my lifetime. This fact makes me reflect on Dorothy Allison’s recent visit to our campus. She told us that we are writing history right now. We have to keep record of our lives so we can teach the generations after us about them. This is a small part of my own record keeping. I wrote a bit of poetry to go with this painting, and I think I might add some of the lines to the background of the painting itself.

Finally, I'll leave you with an exerpt from the written piece as well as some photos of the sketching stages of the painting.

We are the writers of our own history
We are the witnesses of change
Both good and bad
And we are taking part in it ourselves
We record the timelines
And we make men into immortals