My Adventures as an Oddities and Curiosities Expo. Vendor

Last weekend I wrapped up my short tour with The Oddities and Curiosities Expo. I did three shows with them that were close to home, Louisville, Columbus and Indianapolis. This was my second year working with them so when I applied I wasn’t sure how many shows I would get or what my commitment level could be. I made the mistake of holding out for a different convention that was highly anticipated to happen but turned out to be a flop so needless to say I will not be doing that again. Next year I would like to make time for 6-8 shows with O&CE if they’ll have me. I’m honestly amazed at how well I did being just a small table vendor. The talent at the convention is incredible and it’s overwhelming and very difficult for me to not just give all these lovely vendors my money. I had to set a rule for myself which is I can only buy one item for myself at each convention. This year I bought a woodcut print in Louisville by Travis Lawrence and in Columbus I found a Muntjac deer skull that I’ve been wanting for a long time. Deer will always have a special place in my heart but this is a very interesting and unusual little animal that I like to put in some of my art pieces. Look it up online if you want! I kept my cool in Indianapolis and didn’t come home with any collectibles but I let my daughter spend some money so that counts.

My best sellers all around are anything from my Cordyceps series, the Last Supper aka Prima Cena print, the print of the Winter Witch aka Winter Solstice, the Ritual Night print, the individual ghoulish cherubs and all of my stickers. Every copy of at least one of my art pieces finds a home but those I mentioned are my most popular. When I was in Indianapolis I decided to bring a few original paintings because I had several people in Columbus ask me if I had originals. I was shocked that one of them was purchased with in the first hour of the show. I regret not asking the nice woman that bought it for a picture of her holding it but I think I was just so excited to see someone buy it that I didn’t think of it. My daughter was inspired by all the vendor artists and started to draw some pictures while she sat with us. I let her put some of her pieces on my display board for a small price and a free sticker by mom and she got some buyers! I didn’t push anyone to buy her drawings. Most people would see it and ask me what the story behind it was and once I told them it was my daughter’s art they would insist on buying it. She has a tough time dealing with attention as it makes her anxious so sometimes it’s hard to tell how she feels when people talk to her but she lets her guard down around us and she was very touched. It was so great to get her involved. Her father and I were a little concerned about having her in the booth all day with us because she would get bored. We were both glad to see her drawing instead of playing video games or scrolling on her dad’s phone all day. She loved the sideshow performers and kept asking us all kinds of questions like, “How does that guy not hurt himself really badly when he hammers that nail up his nose?” I just kept saying they are professionals and don’t try that at home kid!

This is the type of art exhibition I am loving. I think I am done with gallery exhibition unless I’m asked to be in a group show, but for now vending has been the best way to share my art and also find buyers. I believe people are more inclined to buy when they can meet and talk to the artist and be a little more hands on with the artwork. I love setting my table up where people have to look through the bins at the prints. It also helps that while some people might come to the expo to just look or collect from a specific vendor, they want to be there to see all the things. I like that bars, coffee shops and restaurants want to display art but I feel that generally people are in a different mindset and might acknowledge an artwork hanging on the wall for a couple seconds but not really think of owning it or researching it more.

It has been great making friends with other vendors. There is a real sense of community with the O&CE vendors and that’s refreshing to see because when I first thought about stepping into the world of vending I was worried their would be negativity or pretentiousness. I was in a group chat room for arts and crafts vendors in Kentucky that was unrelated to O&CE but I was put off by one of the participants attitude towards the O&CE. This individual was upset about not getting into the exposition and started talking negatively about the O&CE and its vendors. They were claiming that the O&CE didn’t care about local/regional vendors and only picked the same people for their shows and that the work in the show wasn’t any good. After listening to them speak negatively about the vendors I chimed in and said I was in the show and applied just like they did. It was so off putting to read such disdain simply because they were not accepted that I left the group. I even tried to offer some professional advice but only got a passive aggressive response. DIY makers should be supportive of each other no matter where we are from. I am grateful to be accepted and welcomed in cities and states outside my own. If I had the negative attitude that this individual displayed it would be counterintuitive to be a vendor.

While I am done with O&CE shows for the rest of this year I am not done with vending. I am in one show every month until November with most being in Kentucky but I do go down to Nashville in June for the Rotten Revival Show and then to Ohio for the Halloween Market in July. You’ll find all the information on my Events page.

My shirts arrived and I can now sell them. If you went to Indianapolis you were able to grab one there as some of you did,, thank you!

I started sketching out a design for a linocut with the grim reaper in the famous Marylin Monroe pose where the street vent blows her dress up. It screamed to be on a shirt and a sticker so I ran with it. The color variants are rust and citron as I wanted to get away from everything on a black t-shirt. I love a black t-shirt but this just needed to be on a different color. You can purchase your shirt and a sticker here, Web Store or if you are local you can buy one at Mothers Tattoo in Covington KY.

-love and light always

Beltane

Beltane- Beltane is a Gaelic holiday that is celebrated between the spring equinox and the coming of the summer solstice. It is a holiday for fertility and the returning of the warmth and light of the sun. It’s commonly celebrated with decorations made of flowers and dancing around bonfires. Here my Nomadiskeli adorned in a dress blooming with flowers holds a burning crown of thorns to symbolically show the burning away of pain and sorrow in life.

Why the eye? Eyes express the innermost feelings and desires of the heart. Eye’s are symbolically associated with intelligence, light, vigilance, moral conscience and truth.

May 1 is Beltane and last year I made this artwork for the holiday. I thought I’d share it because it hasn’t been a big seller for me which kind of surprises me. Maybe if I would have used a different animal skull and not a wolf to represent the holiday or perhaps adorned her with a headdress. All my focus was on her gown and making it turn into flowers as if to blanket the land in new growth. I thought maybe the crown of thorns burning might have made people uncomfortable but I never get any questions about it. It’s not at all about burning Jesus Christ but more about what the symbol of the thorns mean which is suffering. You can purchase Beltane here, https://nomadical.bigcartel.com/product/beltane or you can find her with me at all my exhibition events. This coming weekend I’m in Indianapolis with the Oddities and Curiosities Expo. Event details are on my Events page as well as other vending events that I will be doing.

My time has been consumed but I have another artwork that I’m putting together for a copper plate etching that will also be about Beltane. It’s nowhere near ready just because I’ve been so busy with conventions and tattoo work. My process for creating is slower when I’m not using the iPad to make the art but the results are empowering. I look forward to showing you that process and hopefully some good prints.

I also have a t-shirt coming out and I might even have them at this coming weekends expo. I’m making updates to my print store in May and will add prints, stickers and my shirts for you to buy.

Thank you very much for all the love and support for my creating endeavors. I am deeply touched when people find me at the conventions and tell me they are fans and wanted to meet me in person.

-love and light always

The Angels Revolt and the Eternal Rebel

Some people will look at my artwork and say I’m anti-Christian or anti-religious which is not at all true. I think religion can be very useful for some individuals who might feel lonely or trapped by an unhealthy lifestyle. I have nothing against practicing good morals or ways to bring peace and compassion to a person, but I do have a problems when one religion wants to conquer the world like a foe and rule over it like a tyrant.

We stopped traveling abroad around 2012 because my partner and I decided to become parents. When I was homebound with a tiny baby I started paying more attention to the news and social media. What I saw was fear, anger and fierce patriotism lined with Christian beliefs. I’ve always loved the comedian Bill Hicks and something he once said took my mind there upon seeing what my country was becoming.

-“The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see us all as one.“

There is more to that quote but that particular part stuck with me. As a traveler I have no fear of the world and the many cultural/religious differences of humanity. I never felt that everyone had to believe the same way or that there was only one right way to exist on this earth. When I started noticing a more aggressive divide between those that we now call conservative and liberal it upset me because I believed at this point in time we would all be more unified and accepting of our differences. I felt uneasy raising a daughter in a world that was closing itself off and possibly stripping away rights from her. I was uneasy being told that Christian values could possibly dictate the rights of all people.

So I rebelled.

A found a book titled, The Revolt of the Angels by Anatole France. In this fictional story a small group of earthbound angels who pose as artists, decide to start a war against God and the heavens after the archbishop’s guardian angel begins reading books on art, philosophy and science. The angels believe God is a cruel tyrant and must be overthrown for the good of humanity. The angels ask Satan to start a revolution but, “spoiler alert” after an unsettling dream Satan realizes that if they overthrew God then he would eventually become just like the tyrannical God he wanted to destroy. Nobody wins for we must overcome our own jealousy, fear, superstition and ignorance to cultivate compassion, wisdom and curiosity. Victory is a spirit and it is in ourselves alone to overcome the constraints of a tyrannical God.

After reading this book I started channeling my artwork to this theme of fallen angels rebelling from a controlling jealous god. The idea was to focus on seeing empathy not from worship and prayer to a higher power but to feel it inside oneself. The love of good doesn’t exist because of a love of god. I made some of my art portray these ideas by making it seem wrong or rebellious to experience compassion as a godless life form.

It’s been an interesting series for me and the reactions I get from my viewers. I mostly get praise for it but there is always a couple individuals that get scared or angry over what they see, but I understand why. It’s easy to attach to superstitious and horror themed ideologies that make godless people out to be purely evil and cruel. No side is perfect and both the followers of God and the unfollowers of God have made mistakes and are guilty of cruelty. I believe we can only do what is right for ourselves and would like everyone to respect that religion is a personal choice and that not everyone will want to follow the same path. I get called a rebel, an outcast and sometimes a weirdo for feeling this way, but I’m okay with it.

-image below is a combination of a woodcut and mono print I made titled, The Eternal Rebel. Completed March 2024

The Next Destination

I’m back! February was a little rough in my household as both me and my daughter caught a respiratory virus and between recovering from that and business picking up at the tattoo studio I haven’t had a chance to focus here.

Where were we? Oh yes, the next destination after my time in a Buddhist Sangha. I want to say one more thing about the Buddhist Sangha because I just recently found out Lama Ponya who ran the group passed away. He had long since hung up his red robes to become a minister but he was a beautiful human full of compassion for humanity. He was a shining light for many and will be missed.

The next destination became many destinations. I was looking outward instead of with in and my husband and I took to traveling abroad. The world is vast and while we did see quite a bit we are nowhere near to seeing the whole world but that was never the goal. In Europe we visited, Ireland, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the Czech Republic. In Africa we stayed in Morocco for three weeks. In Asia we visited, Nepal, Mongolia, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia. Lastly we went to Guatemala, Belize, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

It would be hard for me to go through every country and describe some of the unique experiences of each place without turning this into a novel and I’m not sharing this as a travel guide for you. So, what is it all about? Why go so far away and throw ourselves in places where in some circumstances we stuck out like a sore thumb? Sometimes it was very dirty and uncomfortable with illness mixed in. We did really want to see the beauty of the world but you have to shed a lot of fear and assumptions to do that. Many people that knew us would want to argue that the United States has all the beauty and culture one needs to see to appreciate the world. Maybe for us it was something deeper like to understand the meaning of life.

I was 10 when the true reality of death hit me. I can remember exactly where I was on a school playground. I don’t even remember anyone saying anything to trigger me to think about it. I just suddenly realized with chilling fear that someday I would have to die. That day I changed. That day faith in a God died in me and I questioned everything. My interest in other cultural beliefs began at this age, but at that time the library was my gateway to those parts of the world.

There is something unique about leaving one’s comfort zone. It will either boost your confidence or you will retreat and vow to never be removed from it again. I always felt there are two different types of travelers. Those that plan their travel around being comfortable like for example going on a cruise ship and those that buy a plane ticket, a guidebook and go. We were the second type. When I first stepped into a foreign city that from my perspective felt unorganized and chaotic my first few emotions were fear and panic. I am talking about places that are far less westernized and that are culturally different in language and physical appearance. It’s crowded and you can’t understand anyone or read the street signs, it’s very dirty, sometimes smelly and traffic is loud and abrasive. It’s always surreal to be in the calm of the airport when you are clearing customs and walking through the terminal because it still feels like your home. Then you step through the doors and out of the taxi and you are suddenly thrown into it all and have to figure it all out for yourself.

It’s empowering to break out of your sheltered world and you realize that behind the curious gaze and the language barrier that strangers are incredibly kind and willing to help you find your way. After a few trips like that I never worried about it again and I loved returning to that tumultuous atmosphere.

The kindness of strangers and the natural desire to connect is lacking in more westernized countries. I haven’t traveled like that since 2013 and I wonder if smart phones and social media has had an effect on these connections. When you are removed from those devices you are better able to experience empathy. At the time of our traveling days there was social media, just not as much and people were more focused on network news to influence them. It is taught even today that the world is dangerous and meant to be feared. You see through all of that after traveling like we did. We learned that people are simply people just like us. It’s easier to hear me say it than to truly believe it, but life is simple. There is great beauty in being simple but we are taught to look down on that and push, push, push to be something more grandiose.

I’m not saying life is simple because the people we meant were simple. I am describing the simplistically of removing yourself from what you are familiar with and living in the moment. We truly did live in the moment letting each country show us where to go with very little preparation. If we met a stranger and they invited us into their home to drink tea we would do it. If a car full of French tourists offered to drive us to the desert we did it. If a Mongolian nomad puts you on a horse and takes you to his grandparents ger/yurt to drink fermented mares milk then that is what you are doing.

My heart opened for the world and life itself didn’t need to have any meaning at all. It just is.

That’s all for now.

Image below was taken in Nepal 2001 while crossing a suspending foot bridge over the Kali Gandaki River

The Train Station

I love to write even though I do not think I am perfect at it. I’m sure I make about a million grammatical errors, but writing is meditative for me so I tend to not be too overly concerned with my shortcomings.

I wanted to share a little more about myself regarding religion and philosophy because I know some of you wonder about it. This does all relate to how I create the themes in my artwork so it does make sense to talk about it here. I also needed to be ready to discuss it because I am aware that some of the things you visually see going on in my artwork might make some of you uncomfortable. It can be hard to have a peaceful dialect when people are attached to certain ideologies and assumptions about different ways of thinking that rebel against traditional theologies. I’ve always believed and still believe that ones religion or non-religion is a private matter and that there isn’t any one right way for all of us to be in this world. We all have to do what individually works best for us. Do what makes you feel good and happy with the mindset that it doesn’t impose or cause harm to any life form on this earth.

I would describe my own philosophical/religiously inclined path like a train station. In the station there are many platforms waiting to take me to various places. Sometimes I read about the place the train wants to take me and I don’t even get on because I know it’s not for me. I have however boarded a few and stayed with them for a long time. One of these was Buddhism. I was just out of high school when I became interested in Buddhism. I liked the ideology that life was suffering but that I could over come it by practicing to see the beauty of life through meditation. I’ve never been one to believe in a higher power like in the way that followers of linear religions believe in God. Buddhism was appealing to me because it was more cyclical in nature and the stripped down version of it didn’t pertain to godly worship. My favorite book was Hermann Hesse’s, Siddhartha and it still stays very close to my heart to this day. While I did ride the Buddhist train for quite some time I found that I could never go all the way to its destination, disembark and firmly plant my feet on its ground.

What happened? The more I connected with the community the more alien it felt to me. I joined a sangha that practiced Tibetan Buddhism which is visually a very beautiful religion and as an artist I loved all the imagery and lore surrounding it. There was a day we took a trip to a Zen Buddhist retreat center and as we walked up the steps to see the temple there was a white stone statue of the Buddha seated before the entrance. Some of the members bowed down and began prostrating before the statue which is not at all unusual especially in Tibetan Buddhism. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t feel any spiritual drive to look at this statue as the Buddha himself and worship him. While I have great appreciation for the art of depicting Buddha, the statue was just a statue. I can look at the statue and remember the teachings and even have a good feeling about it but expressing adoration with bowing and praying didn’t feel right for me.

The dream. Then I had a very memorable dream not long after where I was in the Himalayan mountains at the entrance to a Buddhist monastery. I was alone but loaded with backpacking gear. For those that do not know my history, I’ve really traveled and hiked in the Himalayas of Nepal so for this to appear in my mind is not completely foreign. Anyway, I walk up some steep steps passing a couple red robed monks and when I get to the top I enter the monastery. The room is smoky and bathed in muted golden light because the windows all have yellow tapestries covering them. The floor is covered with overlapping oriental rugs that are weathered and dirty as if they’ve been walked on for years. Directly across the room from me a lama sits in lotus position on a high alter with two monks on either side of him. He is wearing a teardrop shaped yellow hat that is common for lamas to wear. He is elderly and smiles at me to come forward to him. I remove a white prayer shawl from my coat pocket and hold it outstretched in both of my hands as I slowly walk forward. He’s going to bless it I think in my mind because thats what we foreigners want when we visit a monastery. I’m standing right below the alter and he is towering above me and I hold the prayer shawl up towards him. He is still smiling kindly at me but says no words. He then places both of this hands over my hands and gently pushes the shawl back towards my chest. I’m confused by this and somewhat resistant to letting him push the shawl back towards me and I gently try to reach it towards him again while his hands are still holding mine. He continues to only smile and I feel my arms pushing back until the prayer shawl is touching my chest. He holds it there and just looks in my eyes smiling. I woke up after that.

What to make of all that?! It’s a dream I’ll never forget and it’s now been something like 22 years ago that I had it. I took it to mean that I wasn’t supposed to fully commit to being a Buddhist. It didn’t feel cruel or unwelcoming, a little surprising, yes but not ill fated. Did I receive a divine message from a high lama? I doubt it and sometimes I feel our expressive mind likes to take our memories and mash them around when we sleep to create the dreams we experience. Whatever is was it did have a profound effect on me. I continued to carry some of the aspects of Buddhism that I adored but for the most part I stopped practicing and exploring literature after that dream.

I know I’m writing quite a bit today but I’m not going to dissect every direction I’ve gone. The point is getting things to where I am now. It felt necessary to talk about Buddhism as it was such a big part of my life for many years. If you visit my home today you will still see that I have many relics, statues and artwork depicting the culture of Buddhist practice.

The next destination.

I’ll continue all of this in a new blog post on another day. Pictured below is from 2010 when I was in Thailand at the train station in Bangkok.

January 30

Good Evening, I’m actually testing this out because I’ve been wanting to add a blog but it was hard to establish the design on the format I was working with. So here we go. After the Oddities And Curiosites Expo that happens this coming weekend I’ll write something more profound for the month of February. I’ve had some interesting things come my way that I’d like to share with you. Until then enjoy this test post!