(no subject)

[nfotxn]

My intention in making paintings using my menstrual blood is to create beauty from something that most people would rather avoid. I consider my paintings as personal and political images presenting a positive and celebratory attitude toward menstruation. Yay, she's menstruating. Tell ya what honey, I'm gonna smear my fecies on a canvas to create a personal and political image presenting a positive and celebratory attitude towards defecating.

Comments

[brucelloyd.livejournal.com]

Why waste good canvas? Just shit in your underwear, and leave it at that..

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Good plan, but what to call it? I'm thinking either "Galaxy Crossing" or "Last Night I Had Corn".

[brucelloyd.livejournal.com]

Brown, the New Black.

[lostncove.livejournal.com]

um EW

[sultmhoor.livejournal.com]

Damn, you one-upped my Cloaca!

[scottbear2000.livejournal.com]

Umm... actually, I think that some artist actually DID use shit as a medium and sculpted christ on a crucifix with it or the virgin mary, or something like that... People were VERY offended....

And as gross as the menstruation-turned-art is, I think it's kinda pretty!

[oni1111.livejournal.com]

i think it's a great idea... i see no problem with it....

[brucelloyd.livejournal.com]

My new art installation: I'm going to squirt a whole whack of pimples onto a canvas, creating a lovingly sprayed yellow pattern. Call it Sunflowers..

[enigmacub.livejournal.com]

Well alot of artists have used such things as blood, feces, urine, and cum for artwork or other expressive media. Some that come to mind are load and reload album covers by Metalica and an artist who used urine with a crucifix sumberged in it. The artist wanted to use cum but he didn't think he could produce enough of it for what he wanted to do. Art is meant to provoke, inspire or just look pretty. Personaly I'll stick to pencils and computers, but to each thier own voice for expression. Oh and by the way is this suppose to look like a dragon or bird?

Ragtime!

[queerdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Although I wouldn't personally create art using my menstrual blood, there is something really powerful about the images. Menstrual blood seems to be something that many people feel is dirty and gross and being a woman it can be hard to find beauty in it.

Re: Ragtime!

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I like the painter's attitude though, she's not presenting this as some Clever New Thing that she's thought up, but rather something that's been going on probably as far back as people have been making marks on purpose; and (more telling, to me) she invites other women to participate. She talks a lot about how this is a way of expressing commonality among women, and is very positive toward other artists working in the same medium. She very clearly sees herself as a woman working in this medium, not the artist standing alone on the hilltop defying, um, whatever it is artists defy.

At first I thought it was a rerun of what in the 80s we used to call "tampon art" (literally tampons but also blood paintings, items adorned with vulva images and vulva-like objects etc) but it doesn't seem to be done in a spirit of (I use the phrase advisedly) one-upmanship.

Re: Ragtime!

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

I don't think it plays one-upmanship with other women but the presentation of menstruation as some sort of unparalleled devine process strikes me as a bit offensive. Celebrating difference is great but the implication that woman are somehow more devine or spiritual because they bare children is downright sexist in my books.

Or maybe I'm just jealous.

Re: Ragtime!

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with you, but I didn't find that attitude in her writing: she says menstruation is sacred, but I didn't notice her saying it was *more* sacred than male anything, or that men were less, or anything like that, in fact she says nothing at all about men. I admire the way she just says what she thinks is important without denying anyone else what they think is important - it's something I aspire towards myself.