Oops My Hand Slipped

The Look of Love

original collage portrait available for $35

9 x 9.25in

Ink, marker, water color, loteria pages, floral wrapping paper, and product packaging on found cardboard, coated with matte varnish for increased durability

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If you are 18+ and make, purchase, or enjoy artwork with nudity (especially depictions of "non-normative" bodies) or sexual activity, I encourage you to join this list.

SESTA/FOSTA and the restrictions of payment processors are the primary reasons that places like Tumblr, Instagram, Patreon, Squarespace, Gumroad and Etsy (with varying ways to get around the rules) will not sell products or even host images of nudity or sexual acts.

Since I started selling my own artwork online, almost 20 years ago, the number of sites where artists can post and sell anything that merely has a NIPPLE visible has been drastically reduced. If you're aware of the disparity in censorship on sites/apps like tumblr, insta, and tiktok -- all of which have documented trends of censoring images of visibly queer, fat, and/or disabled bodies, regardless of sexual content -- then you can understand how these additional limitations further restrict the arena for creative works by marginalized communities. And the ways you can directly, ethically support adult content creators/porn stars/sex workers.

Patreon, Squarespace, Gumroad. What do all these online spaces have in common? A monopolizing payment processor. My hand slipped and I contacted the ACLU, the FSC, and the MA Bar Association for legal assistance. If you’ve been fucked over by draconian nsfw bans please join my Mastercard Injury Mailing List.

Google Docs

Mastercard Injury Mailing List

Have you been negatively impacted by Gumroad’s recent ban on nsfw content? Or another website’s draconian policies which threaten your livel

Sooo... I was gonna do some Valentine’s art to sell, but of course I didn’t get it done in time for anyone to actually order it in time for Valentine’s day.

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Check it out! My comix on queer coding in horror is available as a PDF! It has a digital exclusive: A recommendation list with brief reviews of 20+ horror movies!

LINK

Queer Code – hard copy $5!

So… this was originally gonna be a few pages explaining “queer coding” but the further I got in it, the more I had to say, so I chopped up the first few panels I made, rearranged them and added like 6 more pages.

When I heard they were making a tv version of “Preacher,” I decided to give the comics a read. I’d read some of Garth Ennis’ other stuff back in high school and I always heard him put up there with Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.

By the end of the first arc in “Preacher,” I basically had to will-power my way through the rest of the comic because I wanted to know how it ended. Despite having read the whole damn thing only a few months ago, I can barely remember any of it, except for how utterly aggravated the whole thing made me. The most POSITIVE depiction of a queer character in the whole series is of a self-loathing gay cop who can only have sex with other men when they’re beating and humiliating him. THAT’S THE MOST POSITIVE DEPICTION OF A QUEER CHARACTER.

And then I recently read some contemporary manga

“Soil” – One canon queer character. A gay man who is a serial child molester.

“One Punch-Man” – One canon queer character. A gay man who is basically a walking prison rape joke.

“I Am a Hero” – One canon queer character. A transgender man who is repeatedly misgendered and insulted and ultimately dies. But he’s not a rapist or a murderer, so yay representation?

I’ll admit, this comic is coming from a place of anger and disappointment. That the Big Names in Serious Graphic Novels (some of which I really enjoy and really influenced me) still have so much homophobic/transphobic content. That a lot of contemporary comics haven’t progressed much further. I don’t expect every queer character to be a hero, but when you have a mere handful of queer characters and the majority of them die or are villains, it’s a problem. I’d rather see a body horror metaphor for queerness than see another shitty canon queer trope.

Shout out to my fellow queer comic book makers. Even if you’re just xeroxing comics in the campus computer lab and giving them to friends, you are doing good work.

And if Garth Ennis wants to argue that “Preacher” isn’t homophobic, I am ready to throw down in the alley behind my apartment. And by “throw down,” I mean “debate.”

My Etsy: LINK / My Society6: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK

So I’ve scanned the pages of my risographed fashion study zine (you can buy that here)

My Etsy: LINK / My Ko-Fi: LINK

how do you feel about your bart/chris/bobby comic being low-key iconic in some circles? I just read it again and it really brings me totears

I'm glad you find the comic so meaningful.

On one hand, it's gratifying as an artist, to know that my work has resonated with so many people. Based on some of the messages I've gotten from people, the comic has been part of how they processed their own childhood experiences or part of what inspires them to start their own therapy. That's amazing! It's not like I set out with that being the goal of the comic or anything!

On the other hand, it's given me a small experience of "death of the author." I didn't conceive of the comic as a sweeping critique of the "nuclear family animated comedy" or depictions of violence, trauma, or abusive relationships in media. I have LOTS of complex and contradictory opinions on "difficult" subjects in art. I created the comic while taking a class on family and couples therapy, and was inspired by the class to explore how real family/relationship dynamics might occur if I approached these cartoons as real families. I think a lot of people get this backwards -- they see the comic as using a lens of psychology/counseling to critique popular media. My actual experience of thinking up the comic was using popular media to explore what I was learning about psychology/counseling.

That said, I recognize that once something is out in the world, I can't completely control how it's interpreted or used. The positive messages I've received greatly outweigh my ambivalence about how some people view/interpret the comic.

Almost donnnneeee...

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Figure studies from IWTV, Louis and Lestat, done with Molotow and Posca paint pens.

Hamsa

Handwoven on my "trash loom" with cotton and acrylic fiber.

The Hamsa is a symbol of protection, popular in the Middle East and North Africa, in Jewish, Muslim, and Christian groups.

Fom the dowel to the bottom of the fringe it is 14 inches long, the tapestry itself is roughly 9 inches long and 7 inches wide. The dowel is 12 inches.

You can buy it here LINK for $15+ shipping

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Dreamed that I was on a road trip with some friends. The car was very full, so I had to sit crouched on the shoulder of the passenger seat. The person seated in the passenger seat looked like Benedict Cumberbatch and I think we were dating. We drove through a small southern town, and I could tell where the queer kids hung out. A bar and a hair salon and a gas station, with 80's goth queer kids hanging out in front, smoking and drinking. On one hand, I was envious that these queers knew just where to go to meet people like themselves, but on the other hand I recognized how few of them were in that small town and how isolated they must feel. We drove along a high way at night. The person shifted from looking like Benedict Cumberbatch, to looking like W., to looking like A., and then finally looking like a combination of all three of them. I told him that I wasn't good at dancing. When a song came on the radio, he pulled over on the side of the highway and left the car door open so that the music could be heard outside. On the side of the road at night, he rested his hands on the small of my back and we danced slowly. The roadtrip (and the dream) ended with us sitting in a forest clearing, dressed in togas, watching a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream."