Work in progress: barnacles and clinginess

My great-grandmother had both of her children by the time she was 22 years old. I got to thinking about that, and which direction my assemblage about her should go, on a gray day at the beach...

... and then I noticed the barnacles. They'll cling to whales, to rocks...

and I imagine Mickey found her kids clinging to her about as appealing as barnacles are to a boat owner. (Remember: she was not a Mother of the Year candidate.) I created my own using a papier mache recipe, and scattered them along doll arms.

Everything I've heard about Mickey sounds like two children were too early, and too much, for her. Her relatives told me Mickey constantly stashed the kids with her siblings or her father, to go out drinking. I'm going to add a drinking glass to the assemblage as well, one that I gave a faux-mercury effect.

But as I mentioned in the last post, I don't have an image of Mickey as a young woman, sober or not. So I'll use a stand-in image I painted over. More on that in the next post...

Work in progress: It came from the deep

I have lots of stories and photos of my mom's side of the family, but on my dad's side I have more stories than photos. That's one reason why my last three assemblages focused on my mom and her parents.

"Greener", which tells a story about my mother as a child

But lack of photos hasn't stopped me from working on a new assemblage about my dad's maternal grandmother. In my head I call her by her nickname, Mickey.

Not a pretty woman, or kind either. She grew up poor in rural South Carolina, and had a hard life, most of which was her fault. Her relatives described Mickey as a mean drunk who abandoned her kids and trashed two (maybe three) marriages. I wish I knew what her reasons were, horrible though they probably were, for lashing out at her kids and nearly everyone else.

Her harshness made me think of a cold sea with a rocky shoreline, which led me to thinking about barnacles.

And what do barnacles do? They cling. Much like kids do, even to a negligent mother. I'll tell you more about the barnacle thing in my next post.

Looking good: working with a graphic designer

I've tried making my blog and other online accounts look attractive, but I am clearly an amateur. I suffer from Kitchen Sink Syndrome. Every idea into the pool!

Good graphic design is kinda like what they say about smut: I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it. So I've been working with McKinion Design Studio on a total makeover of all my banner images. You see the blog is revamped. So is my Facebook friends page...

Twitter...

I'm even making plans to raise my Etsy shop from the dead. Gradually.

I've summed up my work as "Stories. Family. Sanctuary" for several reasons:
I've always been a writer, and now I incorporate text within my visual storytelling.

I'm inspired by images of people who could be (or were) my relatives, and the stories they've kept locked away.

And with my art I aim to build a sanctuary: a private space in which I create, and where others can let their imaginations wander through other people's lives.

First off: no, it wasn't free. But as art business coach Alyson Stanfield points out, sometimes it's worth it to delegate a task. A simple search should give you basic tips on what to look for in a graphic designer. But here's what struck me about working with Bernita McKinion:

Scheduling flexibility: Like me, she's a night owl, so I didn't have to wait for regular business hours to get things done.
Responsiveness: Bernita often emailed preliminary results by the following morning.
Free-resource suggestions: We used Skype and Join.Me (which allows you to share your computer screen with someone in another location) to clarify specifics. I could tell her "Make that thingy bigger. No, bigger. No, not that big" instead of having to email three times or more to get things the way I wanted them.
Tech support: The original Twitter banner didn't work out, so she sent me four simplified versions within about two hours. BAM.

And now it's up to me to make it worth the effort. Eeek. But you know how you often feel good when you look good? It's the same with this new design: I look like a million bucks online... now I feel that way too.