Neurotic Eagles

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I’m up! Didn’t get a sleep in the way I was hoping to this morning, I’m very short of sleep lately. But I got a rest! Pain levels are bad, but my mood is great – and if I got a choice, that’s usually the way around I’d choose to have it. 😉 Life has been busy lately. I feel like I’m skating on ice, it’s all going a bit fast and too much, but I haven’t crashed into any trees or fallen through any holes so yay for me. I’m on track with my college work, good business plans are in place, I’m getting some housework done, I have cupboards full of food because Rose got paid finally and bought a car full of food to say thankyou for all the support through unemployment, and I had a great conversation last night that’s kicked off a really good mood.

Business stuff is undergoing big changes. I’ve done my last gig this weekend where I travel a long distance, for no hourly rate, for a fundraiser. Rose is working full time now, and I’ve dramatically noticed the loss of this caring and diligent person who encourages me, lets me soundboard ideas, drives me when I’m too tired to make it back from a gig, cleans brushes, and all the other thousand ways she’s supported my work. I’m now supporting her work, trying to help come up with good routines for meals and exercise and downtime. This week we prepared lunches on Sunday and took wonderful salad-in-a-jar, fruit, and homemade brownies to work. 🙂 Mmmm! I’m also still healing up from a bad bout of tendinitis in my right wrist, which has meant having to turn down a lot of work over the past few weeks. I have learned how to make beautiful dreads but can’t do too many in a week without trashing my wrist. I can’t take art gigs that involve lots of hours plus long drives alone. I have some great plans and ideas about the beautiful studio, although we’ve all had to do a lot of creative thinking about the studio as there’s been a bunch of problems and plain bad luck that have made things very difficult.

The long and short of it all is that I’m basically needing to relaunch my business with new products and services and a new format. And I’m finding it hard! I’m so tired and not getting time off, I’m all worn down and lacking in the spark you need to start something new. I was talking to Rose about it all last night, how blocked and stuck I’ve been feeling. I haven’t had a spare moment to write in a week, which is really sad. Every single time I go along to college I realise afresh just how hard it is for me to work as an artist. I have such huge blocks in my head about what art is and what it means to be an artist. I’ve grown up with a lot of rubbish, unhelpful ideas that have limited me. Some of them – like it’s wrong or bad to be queer, I’ve been able to make a lot of progress on getting rid of. Some of them are just super stubborn and I feel like I’m constantly bashing my head against them! Art is one of these. Rose’s amazing support has made what I’ve done so far possible… with her extremely busy and navigating the stresses of transitioning from shift work over night to a a regular 9-5 job, there’s just me and my head. It feels like being tied up and thrown overboard and told to swim. I’m trying really hard, but it’s not working! Last night I talked about how insecure I feel, how inferior my art seems, how exhausting it is trying not to be overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy and self hate. It’s so hard to keep putting myself out there and finding that place of confidence where my self esteem isn’t tied to my work and where I can connect with the a customer and what they are feeling and need instead of being overwhelmed by the storm going on inside of me.

Oddly enough, just being able to name the block, to talk about how ashamed and afraid I feel, how small and insignificant, how presumptuous, grandiose, inelegant, and ignorant I feel, has made a huge difference. Oh, there’s days when I’m not like this, parts who don’t feel this way. But wow, there are a lot of days where neurosis and exhaustion dominate. I had this idea that with the great support I’ve had and some experience under my belt it wouldn’t be like this anymore. I’d have graduated from insecure fledgling to Flying Eagle, confident, secure, capable. Hah. That hasn’t happened. And trying to be Flying Eagle when I don’t feel that way at all, and hating myself because I’m not, is making things 4,000% worse. Ah well, it helps to name it! Apparently I am currently more destined for the role of Neurotic Eagle. Never mind, it’s not as if neurotic artists are a dying breed. It’s a pretty big club. So, I’ve regrouped. I’m going to talk about my fears and get the support I need to keep flying. I’m going to accept that I’m not, or at least, not everyday, Flying Eagle, and that that’s okay. Great art gets made by the Neurotic Eagles of this world too.

I’m reminded of that most wonderful pair of books, The Neurotic’s Notebook and sequal, by Mignon McLaughlin. “The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match.”

Have a good one, everyone x

Soul

May 13, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

Yesterday was an extraordinary day. The pain has eased, not that in my body, but the soul pain that was driving me insane. I can breathe again, the phrase was like heart beating in my mind, over and over. Monday is art college day. We always learn something, no matter how sick or exhausted or in pain, no matter the occasional tutor who drives me up the wall, or the frustration of ‘concept development’ invading every class I have loved. Today I painted with oil washes for the first time, creating a likeness of a small creature I first crafted from newspaper:

I’ve never worked with oils, inks, and charcoal in the same painting before. I like him.

In photography class I talked with my painting tutor about our project topic – identity. I had been exploring pain, disability, illness, public and private selves. We talked openly about being multiple but that we did not want to explore that in a crass way for the project. The reductionism of the assumptions about identity grated, people were making their sense of self down to lists of attributes, to collections of likes and dislikes. I am not these things, I argued. The tutor said self is a synthesis of these things. I said no. If you ask me to photograph my self, I want to photograph my soul.

We switched, away from madness and suffering and despair, away from the futile rage. Tonight Rose and I ate dinner on the beach, watching the planes fly in over the water. My heart cane back, my dark heart, my poet, my one who eats pain and is not driven mad. All the world shifted and there was no despair any longer, no anguish. The night sang, sweet and wild and beautiful. I thought about so many people being driven mad by pain, trying to learn how to eat it. I thought about how the life that distracts me, the pain that prevents me from making art is not a distraction but is the subject of art, something I understand intimately. That things of which I’m ashamed, like my need for wrist poems, are places where art keeps me alive, where art gives me unscarred skin. And here, on this blog, it’s where I tear down my public image, over and over, before it crushes me. Where I search constantly for the truth of my own story, for my humanity.

Tonight the shackles fell away, and I was alive, and free as anyone can be. It won’t last, but then, what does? I don’t need it to. It is enough to drink the night and hear the ocean and breathe the stars and smell the skin of my lover, her hair like jasmine and her mouth like roses. Everything can be broken and wrong and heart full of grief and body of pain and still there is this place in the night, beyond fear, where something within you can fly if you remember how. I hope you know it too.

Body paint & poetry

May 2, 2014May 2, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

For the Regeneration celebration night recently, I decided to paint myself and do a short poetry reading on the theme of Love & Madness. It was a challenging situation to create atmosphere in, I had only a few minutes, no stage, no special lighting, a projection screen behind me that remained lit throughout my piece, and an audience mostly unfamiliar with my work. I chose a small collection of poems about Rose and I that I haven’t shared before. I’ve never painted myself for a public performance before and I was curious. I left on a black bra and skirt, and painted starting at my feet and working my way up. I had very little time and created the whole piece in about 40 minutes, which was a challenge. Sometimes the simpler option is actually harder, just standing up and reading something didn’t move me, didn’t scare me, didn’t excite me. I actually resented the opportunity. So we asked ourselves, if we could do anything with this time, what would it be? And the answer was something dark and wild and free. So we did. And it was good

Free Event Tonight – Join us to Celebrate Regeneration

Apr 15, 2014Apr 15, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

We’re having a celebration tonight and it would be wonderful if you could join us! Regeneration is a short film about community and recovery I was involved in making, and we were really excited to hear that it won an award in a Canadian Film Festival and went on tour over there! Obviously we couldn’t turn up in person so we thought we’d host a little screening and celebration here. It’s free to come along, it won’t take up much of your evening (the screening of the film plus some other little performances or treats by each of the artists involved) and we’re providing nibbles.

5 – 6pm
Today, 15 April
The Box Factory
59 Regent St Adelaide

Here’s a Map

If you’re on Facebook, here’s a link to the event.

If you’d like an invitation to print out, here it is.

“Bare feet on grass was the foundation for this beautiful silent film about recovering from mental illness. Written, filmed, and performed by people with lived experience – Helen Keene, Steve Clark, Suzanne Reece, and Sarah K Reece, with support from filmmaker Victoria Cox. Despite having no previous experience with the medium of film, we have been honoured by Regeneration being selected as the winning film for a drama under 10 minutes by Picture This Film Festival and toured around Canada. Come and celebrate with us, meet the artists, and get an insight into our passions and wider body of work.”

RSVP to mindshare@mhcsa.org.au
Enquiries to (08) 8394 2559

Gothic art shoes

Apr 5, 2014Apr 5, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Painted these up yesterday, looking for something a bit more minimalist than my usual. I love them.

Dark art – milk and opals

Apr 4, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Dot paintings

Apr 2, 2014Apr 2, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

This was a four part project in my painting class at college, each panel we were given specific instructions about tone/hue/method of application and so on. This piece was my favourite, which surprised me because the colours were all so muddy and ugly on my palette, but together they are such a subtle blend. I had to work with round shapes, for this one I used large dry brush round, and tiny paint dots. I like the dots, they spoke to me.

I’m relieved and a little sad to have handed in my final project and finished the class. Next week I’ll start photography which I’m sure will be interesting. Life is blurring by me at the moment, I’m taking off as much time as I can to rest before I get properly sick. I’m a little overwhelmed and dispirited. Nothing is simple with my business. Reminders of Leanne, my dead friend, are everywhere, like the way Amanda’s Facebook profile always shows up on my feed as a possible friend to invite to events even though she died last year. It doesn’t hurt as badly as it first did, but there’s a wrongness to her being dead that’s hard to reconcile myself to. I want her to be here so badly, to visit and laugh and tell me she loves me again. Life is fragile, and I’m sad.

Photos of the Studio and Dread Art!

Mar 20, 2014Mar 20, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Hard work is happening to get our studio ready in time for our first client booked in next week, and I’ve been asked to share photos. 🙂 I just delivered the chairs today, the paint work is almost finished now, we just need to add a final coat to the purple walls – it’s a very dark colour so inclined to look patchy unless we really stack on the coats of paint. I’m alternately really excited and inspired about it all, and overwhelmed with anxiety and dread. Working hard on dealing with that.

One unexpected upside has been that now that I know I have a studio to display my work, I’ve been so excited about art again and making lots of things in my studio! It’s by far the most effective technique I’ve ever tried in dealing with feeling blocked creatively. That’s such a wonderful bonus for all the stress of setting this up. 🙂

Our lovely display for beads – some of us love to decorate our dreads 🙂

Our new chair for clients! I’m in love with it. Can’t you just see yourself relaxing in this while henna or inks are done?

I told you I loved this chair. You can see our gorgeous purple walls here – one more coat to go hopefully!

Dreading chairs! Adjustable heights, as comfortable and friendly on backs and joints as we could find.

Dread Art! I stitched this little bead sleave last night, and I love it.

More dread art! These little wire dread coils are gorgeous! I made this myself, using copper wire, Swarovski crystals, and a beautiful paua shell button from New Zealand.

A second handmade dread coil I’ve created, this one is a bit finer for my little dreads. 🙂

I bought this beautiful tree on the drive back from my friend’s funeral. It’s going to hang on the studio wall and be a little reminder of her.

The studio room, coming along.

Close up of a couple of beads – I’m sourcing all of these extremely carefully. Did you know that eBay has a warning about ‘Tibetan Silver’ beads? I didn’t! The term is unregulated so it means any silver coloured alloy. Some have been tested and found to contain lead, or arsenic! Wow. So, only sterling silver/quality natural ingredient beads will be sold from this studio. These are hand carved wooden skull beads.

The body art chair and a lovely ergonomic stool, for the artist.

We’re very excited about this beautiful huge mirror and can’t wait to hang it!

We now have a big supply of synthetic hair for natural coloured extensions

And some really cool colours too.

Charcoal & apples

Mar 14, 2014Mar 14, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Products of drawing and painting classes so far. I’m falling behind with everything else that’s going on, and going to miss this week’s class as my friend’s funeral is interstate that day. I have been enjoying them, getting as much out of them as I can. The assignments here were to create landscapes using only marks, no lines, no drawing shapes, just alluding to natural patterns. I enjoyed that. The painting we were asked to paint monochrome and then a single colour (with tonal variation) of whatever or object of obsession is that we’ve chosen for the term. Mine is an apple.

I was a little heartbroken by this class, I’d been having such a wonderful time exploring colour but was told to stop that and focus on concept development. I don’t want to do concept development, I want to learn about paint! We already had a concept development class, which I hated, and now it’s being snuck into all the other foundational classes, which is much less like Tafe and much more like uni. If I wanted uni I’d be there. My art college is so special to me because it doesn’t have so much of that conceptual rubbish but teaches skills with which I can make any art I wish. Or it did. Everything changes, and is such a pain doing so few subjects at a time because it happens all around you.

But I’m going, and making things and using the time to listen inside me to those things that make art easy and the ones that make art hard, learning all the time how to be open to it and how to hear it and make it happen.

Mourning in clay

Mar 10, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I sculpted this pendant today, in memory of my friend. She told me once that she’d had a vision of me holding a baby of my own. I tried to sculpt that vision, the gift of hope and dreams of a good tomorrow.

It’s still raw, I’m going to paint it yet. It’s made with polymer clay, a freshwater pearl, a piece of polished shell, and three swarovski crystals in the colour of black diamonds.

I’m heartbroken, and still too angry to hear people talking about peace. I took today off and stayed home. It’s a luxury to have time to grieve, I so rarely have had the chance in my life. I feel angry and empty and hurting and deeply depressed. I’ve watched episodes of Scrubs and the first Garden of Sinners episode which was strange and sad and fitting.

I’ve found out that her funeral is next week, interstate. I’m so relieved to not have missed it. That’s happened before and it left this terrible feeling. I’m making plans to drive over. Poor Rose is packing her house alone for the move. I’ve eaten and cried and showered and written and made art. It’s all I have at the moment. She’ll never read this. She’ll never read another word of this. Everything is wrong.

In movies, death is an ending of a story arc, a finale. Here, things are unfinished, there was no warning. We don’t even know how she died yet. It’s the most terrifying feeling, this awareness that we make sense of deaths like this only in the aftermath. That we edit and write into someone’s life some kind of ending. We view all the last years differently now we know they are the last. But you can’t see it coming. It could be me, or you, or anyone we love. And as much as I want to hope she made the choices she would have made of she had known, I don’t know. None of us can truly live as if we’re going to die tomorrow, we have to have one eye on the years, to be aware we might have to live with consequences for a whole lifetime. Trapped in that place, it seems to me, we’re so vulnerable to living out lives chosen for us by other people, lives that do not fit, that we do not want, that do not make us feel alive.

My friend struggled so much to find a life of passion and meaning. I think of us out to dinner, laughing so loud the whole restaurant would turn to look, our black humour perfectly matched. We should have had more time to laugh like that again. There’s so much I still wanted to say.

Ink Painting – Reza Barati

Feb 22, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

Australia has been moving back into harsh ‘detention centre’ policies for many years now. We have used these options many times in our short history. They are horrific, destructive places where people are completely disempowered and suffer a great deal. I once did a research project on our creation of an internment camp on Torrens Island, in which Australians of German origin suddenly found that their new home feared and hated them. There was no trial or right of appeal. Conditions started off reasonably but became brutal over time and under cruel leadership. I read letters the men sent, week after week, to local authorities pleading for better conditions and right of trial. It was painful to witness our brutality, and how readily we forget the shameful chapters of our past while holding other cultures accountable for theirs.

I’m heartbroken by the way we change the rules when things become ‘political’. People who are otherwise for kindness, for generosity, people who decry bullying and abuse, who try to lead decent lives, people who are angry when children are hurt by adults, somehow step back and start talking about the bigger picture, about deterrents and legality. Individual pain becomes irrelevant. Individual responsibility is diffused. The simplicity of the Golden Rule is left behind.

Reza Barati died recently in one of the Australian off-shore camps, at Manus Island. He was a person. He had a life ahead of him, people to love, a world of wisdom and mistakes and joy that has been taken from him.

I didn’t vote for this. I don’t want this. This is not being done in my name. I’m sorry.

Ink Painting – From the stars

Feb 21, 2014Feb 21, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

I sat up late last night in my studio, painting with inks again.

I’m sad and tired and can’t seem to shake it. World weary and weighed down. I thought painting might help. All my images were of grief. It did and it didn’t. It didn’t and it did. I re-read Greylands by Isobel Carmody. I’ve looked for furniture for my studio at local second hand stores. I’ve discovered that the name we were going to use for it is already being used. I’ve looked up new names, none of which quite fit.

My basil plant is huge and fragrant and full of bees. My sage is dying, despite all love. Life is strange and sad and my heart is full of broken glass.

I’ve painted this dead woman and her howling dog, she’s hanging from the moon and stars, tangled in the dreams she was weaving.

Great arty news, awards and so on

Feb 19, 2014Feb 19, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I finally got back the marks for my Digital Media class last year – I think is the best result I’ve had for anything in my Visual Arts degree so far –

This is for the stop motion animation project I did in a small group. See more details about the project here. Apparently the animation is now being used as an example for future classes. Wow, nice!

Considering that my first involvement with the medium of film: Regeneration won an award in Canada recently, I’m wondering if this means I should give film/animation/digital media more serious consideration in my degree or arts practice?

It’s also making me think that I work well in teams, and to deadlines, despite what I’ve always believed. Maybe I need to seek out some collaborative art opportunities? 🙂

In other exciting news, I collected the keys to my new studio today! It’s been build and is ready and waiting for me to paint it. I’ve bought the undercoat and today Rose and I selected a top coat colour that will harmonise well with the black/white/blue theme already present. I just have to make time to get in there and paint it now! I’m excited and anxious and overwhelmed by admin and homework and many other things – but it is happening, and I can’t wait to show you the results!

Falling into colour

Feb 17, 2014Feb 17, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

We’re exploring colour theory in Painting class at college and I’m loving it. Given permission – or rather, mandated to investigate different combinations of colours and ways of understanding the colour wheel, I’m in my element. I find that colours that I have an aversion to can be combined to create the most delicate and beautiful hues. I’ve bought a book about colour mixing and I’m starting, for the first time, to really understand the way colours work together. In a small way, at any rate. Here’s some samples of my experiments, I so enjoyed making these

This was blending different cool primaries together:

This one was about making glazes to paint over an existing work:

I was so taken by this wash of purples:

Basic glazes: warm colour glazes over warm colour block painting. I liked the red over the yellow particularly.

It doesn’t show up all that well in the photo, but this string of blends are each quite different:

Some close-ups. I kind of fell into this work. Stopped noticing how ill I was feeling or the passing of time. Just the stroke of my paint brush and the colours blending. There’s something very peaceful about making art this way.

Making marks

Feb 12, 2014Feb 12, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I was really sick at at college on Monday. Shaky, exhausted, nauseated, and really struggling to focus. I didn’t get much sleep the night before, and my plans to park by the tram stop and get in that way didn’t work out because all the parks by the tram stop were very time limited and didn’t give me enough time to get in and back again. In Drawing class we were investigating different ways of making marks with willow and compressed charcoal. I really struggled to stay focused and keep getting teary and needing to slip away to cry. I hate not being well enough to enjoy college. My tutor at the end of the lesson asked me if I was bored and I’m glad he did because I was glad to clarify that I was just sick!

I kept trying to figure out what was making us so sick, (apart from the usual) and if it was a parts based thing and we could switch. Sometimes I felt better for a bit when music was playing but I couldn’t seem to stabilise and make anything work. I think I need to find out replace my MP3 player and eight that helps keep me anchored if that was the issue. In the end I just let it roll over me and did my best to get through the day. Sometimes taking the pressure off is the best you’re going to get.

It’s an interesting process to see how many limiting ideas I have about art, and how little I let myself experiment when I’m anxious about the cost of the materials. How every piece must be good enough to justify the time and money spent on creating it. It’s not surprising that I find myself blocked and shut down with these mindsets. I’m hopeful about clearing my head more so I can be more creative and explore my favourite materials.

These were some of the marks I made with this process that spoke to me:

Rose was wonderful she made me this great lunch, dropped me off and picked me up after college. I was fragile and distressed so she took me home and read Harry Potter to me until I slept.

Photos of Glitter tattoo Body Jewellery

Feb 11, 2014Feb 11, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Other things I get up to when I’m not here blogging… 😉

Sarah K Reece

One of my favourite parties of the summer was this fantastic girls Glitter tattoo party. It was a birthday for girls in that pre-teen to early teen bracket who are ‘too old’ for face paint and not yet old enough to have it in a spirit of youthful irony!

I was hired for an hour and 7 girls attended. Each chose a stencil tattoo to have applied with their favourite colours, then came back to have it decorated into a body jewellery design, and lastly received a sparkly ‘ring’ as well. When I left, they were all having a great time dancing. It’s a pretty special way of having a great party without a lot of fuss and preparation!

Glitter body jewellery is superb for active events such as dancing and festivals. It stays on despite heat, movement, and sweating so belly dance concerts, swimming carnivals, and nightclubs are all perfect opportunities…

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Drawing & painting classes

Feb 8, 2014Feb 8, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I started at college again this week. This tackle box is my drawing tutors collection of supplies. Is it not a thing of beauty? 🙂 I find myself a little anxious about formal training, reluctant to lose my own style. But it was exciting, the smells, the easels, the simplicity of being told to put something in pallet and doing so – sometimes this simplicity escapes me. I made two drawings and one pair of paintings in the cool and warm primary colours. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve handled charcoal. I don’t think I’ve ever attempted to sketch a pot plant before.

Here’s a sample of some of the other students work. Love seeing all the different styles.

I’m happy to be back. It was a supreme effort of will not to immediately book into another two classes and double my workload. Which, in it’s own way, is a good sign. So, at least one day a week is now college day. I’ve had a pretty good week, very busy, lots of seeing people and talking about plans for the year. There’s a lot of things in the works and I’m still working out my priorities. It’s sounding promising that I may have enough support now to kick the DI back into gear and get a face to face support group off the ground again. I’m finding ways to go forwards and figure a path through all of this. I’m finding some support, which is very, very needed. And a lot of inspiration. Feeling hopeful.

A second experience of Psychosis

Jan 23, 2014Jan 23, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Well, I’ve come through a second brush with psychosis surprisingly well. The process this time was very different to my first episode. This time, I locked myself in my house alone, and made art. Dark art, yes, strange art, certainly. Intense art. I painted myself and took selfies on my phone. The results resonated with me. They’ve stayed, the way a cut on the wrist stays, so that the morning after the black night, you cannot simply walk away and pretend it didn’t happen.

As soon as we shut ourselves away and negotiated the freedom to create whatever art we wished (provided we didn’t publish anything online), the psychosis eased, and an intense state replaced it. The hallucinations, the fraying, the collapse of my sense of reality all lifted like so much smoke. I fell into darkness that did not hurt, like falling into a river in my soul. For a time I was free of everything that is used to define me, free of roles, relationships, expectations, free of need, or name. In this space, art was easy. No limitations blocked me. I could see through the things that stop me from creating. My hands were alive and my mind was burning clear. Art came as easily as speaking. I did not speak. I spoke in art, in paint, in my eyes in photos, my hands.

This time there was no terror, hiding from the sky in my bed for days. No fear of the dark. No nightmares. This time once the psychosis lifted it stayed away instead of drifting through my life gently for days or weeks.

I won’t pretend it isn’t crushing to have a second experience. There’s always that hope that the first will be the only one, and for many people that is true. Yet, I am also not giving up. Maybe this is now something I will have to manage regularly. Maybe I will have only two. No one can possibly know. I’m not panicking. I’m learning. I’m listening, unpicking the knotted threads. There’s a relationship here between art and madness that I don’t understand, nuances I can’t yet hear or speak. There’s also beauty, something that deeply moves me. This is not just loss, or brokenness, not just a mind overwhelmed by stress. Maybe there is danger here, and loss, and woundedness. Such is life. There’s also fierceness, joy, freedom. There in the shadow, I breathe the night. And then I let it go.

My day in photos :)

Jan 19, 2014Jan 19, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I got very little sleep between my fan shorting the safety switch, and my dog going mad about the thunderstorm. In a fragile state in the morning I wound up sharing my shower with a large huntsman spider who would not be shoed out. Half way though it got too wet to remain clinging to the wall, slid to the floor, and picked its way over to the door stop, which it climbed up upon like a bouy at sea, and clung to in a damp, huddled kind of way.

Then I went to work. It was a very quiet day. I watched the birds eating nachos.

I painted some people.

I opened the house up to start it cooling off. Tonks sat on the kitchen window sill and claimed the cat mug as hers.

I wrote my very first policy/procedure checklist for the DI Open Group on fb (about how to handle spam). It’s short and easy to follow and makes sense. I also updated the info page on the website to answer questions I find myself having to address a lot in the group. I was so excited at making sense of this, and having two new admins on board for the group, that I spent the evening bouncing with excitement despite all the sleep deprivation!

Friends came round for pizza and cards night. Due to slight heavy handedness with the cheese, the pizza’s were drowned. And delicious. I managed to stop myself making them all read my new policy and procedure and information page. Just.

In celebration of surviving the heatwave, and recognition of a week of being very sensible, responsible, having good fluid intake, and so on, Rose and I stayed up late playing Donkey Kong Country on the Wii. Yay! 🙂

Dark bodypainting self portraits

Jan 10, 2014Jan 10, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

It’s been a rough few days. Yesterday, I barely spoke all day. I remember when I was living in a caravan park, this used to happen. Days in a row would go by in which I was silent, except for my journal, except for the weeping. There’s a relief in it, sometimes. I hide from the world, lock the doors, keep the curtains drawn. My paints sang to me and the day turned into a collage of sleeping, body painting, and photographing myself. When all else makes no sense, make art. I have my souvenirs from the underworld. Yes, it’s strange, but it’s cheaper than hospital. I’m still cleaning paint off the bathroom floor. It’s better than cleaning up blood. These are a small sample of the photos I took.

So many questions. Why the psychosis? How is it linked to art? Why does creativity, not just any art, but the dark kind, help? How much of this do I need? Can I pre-empt the fraying? How do I fit this into my life plans – a job, sharing a house, becoming a mother, when it’s strange, anti-social, dark? I want to get my camera fixed, the good one, and buy a tripod. I’m supposed to be going back to college soon. I can’t fit it all in. My inks are singing to me. Is this how I heal? Ink not blood, and Wrist poems, and Making art. I don’t know. This is not about pain. There’s something else down the bottom of this well, this rabbit hole. Something I don’t understand. The voice of the night wind perhaps. Something – some one – needing a voice and a place at the table, even if the cup is chipped and the soup is watered down. A sense of freedom from the world, a place where my identity is solely that of ‘artist’.

Wrist Poems

Jan 10, 2014Jul 18, 2015 / Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Wrist Poems are an art form I have been exploring since my youth. During school years I would write poems or draw images onto the skin of my wrists, arms, and breasts as a way of communicating, connecting with myself, owning my own skin, and protesting a highly censored and restricted environment. I have since come to love body painting, tattoos, henna, and other forms of skin based artwork. Wrist poems continue to be part of my art practice and my own self care.

I have struggles with self hate and self harm. I use wrist poems as an alternative to bloodletting. There are no images of real self harm or blood anywhere on this blog. These are part of my Ink not blood response to the impulse for pain and self destruction. The titles of each are links to more images or information about that Wrist Poem.

Blue Rose:

This is not my Hand:

Alone at 4am:

Looking for self compassion:

Body Painting Glove Project:

Graduated, and won an award!

Jan 2, 2014Dec 30, 2013 / Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

A couple of bits of really good news have come in over the Christmas season and I have finally got a moment to share them. Firstly, I have finally graduated from the Cert 4 in Mental Health Peer Work! I have a certificate and everything. That was a very long 6 months, and an even longer wait to be able to graduate due to gastro making me miss out on three classes – which I had to wait until the course was offered again to be able to make up. So that’s that. It’s a bit appalling sad on the one hand that my highest qualification to date is a damn cert when various of my friends and colleagues have degrees or much higher, but I earned it, it’s mine, and it can’t be taken away from me. So there.

In other news, I found out that a short film I helped to write, film, and edit, called Regeneration was entered into the Picture This Film Festival in Canada. I loved making this film, it was my first time in a great little bootcamp and I learned a lot! I blogged about the process here. To my surprise, our film won an award! Regeneration was chosen as the winning film for a drama under 10 minutes, and will toured around Canada! I am thrilled! You can read more about the award and how that all works here on Mindshare.

Our 4 minute film is below, or if the link isn’t working for you, you can watch it over on vimeo here.

I would love to make more films like this. So many projects and passions, so little time!

Rockabilly BODY and a new Art Studio

Dec 31, 2013Jan 1, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

A friend of mine, Mel, has been setting up her own business called Rockabilly BODY around the same time that I’ve been working on my Temporary Body Art business. Where my business is mobile, hers is bricks and mortar. A team of people have been working incredibly hard to get her beautiful studio open this year. It’s been great to have someone else who is wrestling with the same things, working insane hours, experimenting with different forms of advertising, being surprised by the unpredictability of what service takes off and what doesn’t generate much interest. I admire her passion and dedication and hope like hell it all pays off for her. One of the down sides of a physical premises is the much larger risk factor. I’ve invested in my business minimally – a few thousand I’ve paid upfront instead of big investments with loans and leases and a hell of a lot more stress. On the upside however, her studio is simply gorgeous and I love being there! Checkout a couple of photos:

That slogan on the wall behind the manicure station reads

You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy nail polish, and that’s kind of the same thing.

Her whole studio is scattered with beautiful or funny quotes, she’s worked hard to make her studio alternative to the usual crappy nasty hype so common in the beauty industry. The place is designed to be friendly to guys, girls, trans, and queer, a safe place to pamper yourself with whatever beauty stuff floats your boat without being pushed into some standard of beauty you don’t like. Mel does a lot of work researching all her products and making sure everything is of a very high standard, which I like.

I’m kinda taken with it, as you can tell. 🙂 Plus, I won a gift voucher from an SAFM contest! Whoot! But yeah, I love getting my nails painted with that long lasting stuff in cool colours like BLACK. Rare to find that! If you’re around Royal Park area, I’d suggest dropping in. I particularly recommend the waxing for wildly sensitive skin, and the pedicures. But that could just be me. 🙂

The really awesome news from my own purely self involved perspective, is that I’m in the process of having a small studio of my own built in the premises! I’m SO excited about this! The plan is to set myself up there on a weekly basis to be able to offer exciting body art such as henna, temporary hand painted tattoos, and body painting for photo shoots! Finally people will be able to book me in directly for their own art instead of having to book a whole party with friends and get me out to their place! We’re also planning some exciting collaborations around parties and events as there’s a beautiful big space in Mel’s studio that’s perfect to host indoor parties, particularly if you like someone else cleaning up after you.

It’s a bit of a risk, I’ve not heard of any other body artists trying to set up a physical premises like this, but the crossover between Mel’s clients and my own is quite significant, our work is very complimentary, and it sounds like far too interesting an idea to turn down. There are further plans in the works around hair, painted shoes, jewellery, art prints, and exhibition projects but I don’t feel like letting all the cats out of the bag just yet. Right now, a small room the size of my master bedroom at home is being constructed. I’ve paid and delivered gyprock sheets and other necessities and I’m working on furniture, colour schemes, paint, and fabrics. Of all my many exciting plans for 2014, this is one that just makes me squee with excitement! I will have a physical location and mailing address for my work! I will have a public studio to display art! I will be able to set aside time each week to create art (yay!), and do admin (ugh), and try different ideas out on the public to see what people like. It may be brilliant, it may completely flop. I’ve no idea, and there’s only one way to find out.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing”

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar

Quotes by Helen Keller

Ink not blood city

Dec 8, 2013Jan 10, 2014 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Tonight I’m deeply sad. Treading water, far from land, memories that chill me slowly numb. Wrists that want to weep. The comfort of self destruction, mind turning over all the most delicious ways to die. Riding it down as night falls in my heart, as winter falls, as the sirens call to me with their tongues like knives and I find myself wishing for blades, wishing for someone who would beat me until I could cry and melt the frozen place in my heart. Some part of my mind separate from the engulfing despair, enough control to get the car safely home, no kissing trees with bumpers, enough to shuffle us into bed with inks and books as substitutes for blood and torture and loneliness.

I have memories of love and brokenness, some nights the ghosts rise from graves and their chill comes over me and I’m haunted by that which once comforted me. Smaller losses evoke larger ones, the petty indifference of day calls to the memories of an indifference so large and collective it tore spirit from flesh, it first sang blood into my life.

My inks speak to me and for me and of me and of pain. Sleep aches in my bones like desire, in rest will I be sanctified? [‘I went to reach a pannikin off the shelf, in it was a dead man’s brains’] I’m standing in a field of snow, enchanted by glitter until I realise it’s glass dust from a lifetime of broken dreams. The secret seems to be to love anyway, to be willing to bleed, to dream just one time more. It’s ground into my skin, in the light I have a halo, in the mirror I’m an angel with a scarred face and ruined breasts, ink running from my mouth.

Love, I say to her, darling, (they don’t give a f**k about you, like I do) this is my spirit which was broken for you, put your fingers into my palms and believe.

Temporary Ink Tattoos

Dec 4, 2013Dec 4, 2013 / Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Sarah K Reece

These are a beautiful form of temporary body art that I’ve been working on getting ready to be offered to the public as another option for parties or custom design work. The inks themselves are skin safe, a pigment suspended in alcohol that does not stain but sits on top of the skin. I apply these by hand with brushes. They last from 2 to 7 days usually, they’re waterproof so people can still shower or swim. What they don’t like is being exfoliated or rubbed a lot, or alcohol or oils. They come off very easily using things like alcohol hand sanitizer, or alcohol medi swabs, which is an advantage over some of the other forms of temporary art I offer such as glitter tattoos or henna if you do need to remove them for work or something else. 🙂

The aftercare instructions are therefore pretty simple – try…

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