It took me three years of having people pay me to paint their portraits to be able to confidently call myself an artist.
I had been searching for a new title, an identifier to use in place of my name that would contextualize my identity. I really wanted it to be “mom.” It was no-nonsense and didn’t require me to perform or achieve. I only needed to exist alongside a baby.
Everyone understands “mom.” “Mom” is enough to explain who and what you prioritize and doesn’t beg questions. Your authority is believed. I know there are plenty of other complicated societal ills that also come along with that title, but I wanted the ease in which I perceived other mothers’ confident sense of place. The whole, why am I here, thing.
I was in the process of shedding “journalist” for the same reasons I couldn’t say “artist.” I didn’t feel like I could claim it if I wasn’t reporting. It felt pretentious and doubtful coming out of my mouth anyway. I didn’t believe it. Why would anyone else?
There’s so much I could, and will say eventually, on the futility of identity. Being seen and known makes me feel good, but it’s not important. I’ve since learned my value comes from simply being here, along for the ride. I don’t actually have to do anything.
Now I’m just doing what feels good. Thank you Mary Oliver.
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
And what feels good is following the little paths my thoughts carve out through the noise, making art that spills from my soul, contextualizing the pain of women and queer folks, and telling stories along the way.
I am an artist. It’s not a title that defines me. But it sure does feel good coming out of my mouth.
Who gets to be god?
Last week I got to be an artist among other artists showing work centering reproductive agency. It was the second time I had put my work on display, and the first time I got to watch other people consume my work. I felt naked and alive and terrified and present. It felt like skinny dipping. And I love skinny dipping.
I am hesitant to explain away my piece, as there is plenty of information to contextualize its “meaning.” But making and showing this piece has me on fire to build off of it and I want to include others in the work. So here she is, bones and all.
Catholic imagery has always influenced my work. In searching for my own understanding of the world, I didn’t want to get rid of the gilded and gruesome influences emblematic of Catholicism. Both solemn and maximal, beautiful and tragic,—the two truths thing that has become one of my guiding principles.
I’ve worn various depictions of the Virgin Mary around my neck for as long as I can remember. Most recently, my miraculous medal, created in 1830 after miss girl appeared to St. Catherine and encouraged her to follow her gut, her truth. St. Catherine was canonized for riding hard for the OG queen mother and caring for the elderly—that and the fact that her body didn’t decompose when she was exhumed 57 years after her death. Honestly, kind of metal.
Mary and the saints, with their ascribed virtues and talents to trade and partake from like Pokemon cards, were there for me to look to in the stars when talking to a vengeful, bossy, old man didn’t do the trick. Their portraits and statues allowed the presence of women in the church, visibly honoring someone I could see myself in. I remember being young, 11 or 12, and upset and confused that the pious, well-mannered, smart girls in my Sunday school classes were counted out of the priesthood in favor of the trouble-making, fool-hardy boys. It didn’t make logical sense to me. But it made me angry more than anything. It wasn’t fair.
If you haven’t already found yourself deep diving Catholic reliquary Wikipedia, I highly recommend. Especially for all you girls raised and baptized on niche Tumblr pages. TLDR: Catholics have been pillaging the graves of popes, saints, and other unassuming folk posthumously deemed holy, and enshrining their blood, clothes, bones, and other “parts of them” (relics) in portable reliquaries (fancy, gilded, artful containers.) Again. Metal.
So I made my own reliquary. In putting on and taking off makeup, smoothing lotions and patting in toners, brushing eyebrows and painting eyelids, we have continued one of the longest-standing rituals of adornment. Name one activity more sacred, more holy, than getting ready with girlfriends for a school dance or a night out. The delicate touches, the holy affirmations, the celebration of self and community, the vulnerability. There simply is none. We are connected to the earliest humans just by participating. God is in the winged eyeliner, perfected by the helping hand of a busted manicure. God is in the sanctuary of a bar bathroom, the sink a font of holy water for rinsing tears and taming flyaways.
I wrote in my artist description: My piece deifies the detritus of a woman, mother, person making decisions about their own body in the same way the Catholic Church creates holy reliquaries from the blood, clothes, or body parts of saints; showing the godliness we all possess when our story, our autonomy, is treated as holy, sacred, and true.
But who determines who is holy and blameless and true? If I am not yet a mother, can I be trusted to make the decisions of one? What must you do to prove your validity, your place, your virtue, your purity? In the South, in Alabama, you must simply be a straight, white, cis man.
I believe my story: my life, my thoughts, my beliefs, my holy truth is true simply because it is mine, not because of any title or identifier. But what happens when women, when Black women’s decisions, beliefs, authority, truth are treated with the same infallibility of saints? Of God? Of an Alabama Supreme Court justice?
I do get to play god. Because she is me. I am baptized by bar bathroom sinks. I drink from the chalice or Coors Light and sweet tea. I read from the holy book of my middle school diaries. And I worship the god in you.
I don’t have all the details hammered out, but I would like to invite others to participate in my reliquary making. If this piece resonates with you and you’d be interested in sending me your own relics, please email me.