Ginger Networked feminism
Spring 2016
MISSION LEIGH SUGAR LAUREN BANKA
Ginger maps networks of creative people. In keeping with the logic of a network, all of the contributors to this issue were referred by an editor or contributor from a previous issue. As a feminist publication, we are committed to supporting the work of self-identified women and queer/trans/gender non-conforming individuals and strive to share the experiences and distinctive voices of those who identify as such. Our goal is to produce a zine with a diverse range of forms, content, and viewpoints.
JOEY BEHRENS
KAITLIN McCARTHY
HAYLEE EBERSOLE
AMANDA LÓPEZ-KURTZ
JAN TRUMBAUER
• ISSUE 1 • ISSUE 2 • ISSUE 3 • ISSUE 4
JILLIAN JACOBS
JESSICA LAW
ALEXIS CANTU
JENNIFER WEISS MICHAELA RIFE
GRACIE BIALECKI
JACQUELINE MELECIO
MIMI CHIAHEMEN
MARISSA BLUESTONE LIANA IMAM MARIA R. BAAB
JESS WILLLA WHEATON
SONYA DERMAN
CARLA AVRUCH
WOLFGANG SCHAFFER
KATIE VIDA
DELILAH JONES
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RACHEL WALLACH
HARRIS BAUER
KATIE FORD
IVY HALDEMAN
RACHEL ZARETSKY
CLAUDIA GERBRACHT
ENA ´ SELIMOVIC
HANNAH RAWE
SOFIA PONTÉN
LAURA COOPER
LAURA PORTWOODSTACER MOLLY HAGAN
FREDRIKA THELANDERSSON LEIGH RUPLE
MARKEE SPEYER
JACQUELINE CANTU
CAITLIN WRIGHT
LAUREN ARIAN
ALEX CHOWANIEC
ASHLEIGH DYE
KATHARINE PERKO
DOROTEA MENDOZA
JESSICA PRUSA
ANNIK HOSMANN
JOLENE LUPO
NATALIE GIRSBERGER LA JOHNSON
LAURA McMULLEN MOLLY RAPP
EMILY ROSE LARSON
RACHEL BRODY
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Issue NO 4 contributors Ashleigh Dye .... PAGE 06 Laura Portwood-Stacer .... PAGE 13 Harris Bauer .... PAGE 17 Katie Ford .... PAGE 20 Lauren Banka .... PAGE 24 Rachel Brody .... PAGE 27 Leigh Sugar .... PAGE 34 Ena Selimovic´ .... PAGE 36 Marissa Bluestone .... PAGE 38 Alexis Cantu .... PAGE 45 Jan Trumbauer .... PAGE 47 Emily Larsen .... PAGE 50
Co-founders E D I TOR
Markee Speyer D E SI G N E R
Jacqueline Cantu
On the cover: Expectations, Archival pigment print, 2016
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Ashleigh Dye Personal Space Series
Personal Space exists through a moment of shared vulnerability. Centered in the bedroom, the personal items that make up each space create a window into the life of another. Ranging from strangers met online to close friends, the series offers a peek into a room often limited for slumber or sex. Brittany, summer 2014, digital photography
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A s h l e i g h D y e 7
Top: Liz, winter 2013, digital photography Above: Jordan, summer 2013, digital photography Right: Benji, winter 2014, digital photography
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A s h l e i g h D y e 9
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Heather & Darling, fall 2013, digital photography
Ashleigh Dye is a photographer living and working in Chicago, Illinois. Dye attended the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University for two years, and true to form, learned the hard way that the scholarly pursuit wasn’t quite for her. After dropping out, Dye continued to document the music scene in Athens, Ohio before moving to Chicago three years ago. She has continued to document the world around her, from the music scene in and around the Empty Bottle to the city’s thriving contemporary art scene. ashleighdye.com • @m3ltphace
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Laura Portwood-Stacer Things I Feared and Things That Are Fine
One of the most well-publicized aspects of new parenthood is how little sleep you’ll get. People say things like, “you will literally get no sleep,” which is clearly medically impossible, but it’s so widely claimed that you start to wonder if it could be true. As a pregnant person, I was dreading this situation, because I’ve been a bad sleeper since I finished college. I took sleep aids nearly every night for twelve years, and still I sometimes had trouble falling asleep and staying that way all night. I downshifted to a low dose of a pregnancy-approved sleep aid when we started trying to conceive, and it worked okay for a while, but overall the insomnia persisted and then really flared up at the end of the pregnancy (partly because being unable to get physically comfortable doesn’t really help in the fallingasleep department). Even so, I decided I would stop taking a pill altogether once the baby arrived, because I didn’t want to be impaired when I needed to be awake for her in the middle of the night. I was fearful because I predicted that not only would I have trouble falling asleep as I always had, but then my sleep would also be completely interrupted by the baby. I was anxious about it all. In addition to anticipating the unpleasantness of post-baby insomnia, I also figured I was a prime candidate for postpartum depression. Every pregnancy book and doctor visit includes a discussion of PPD, I think because it must have been underdiscussed and -diagnosed for a long time. The very wellintentioned campaign to reverse the stigma around such things means that, now, when you are pregnant, people are tripping over themselves to ask if you have any symptoms of depression and point you toward resources for help. I reported my history of depression on all my forms, which made everyone extra vigilant about it, too. While I didn’t feel particularly depressed while pregnant, all the hype made me think, “Okay, yep, this is definitely going to be an issue for me after I have the baby.” When we were in the hospital following my daughter’s birth, there was a poster in my room listing symptoms and saying things like, “if you think about harming yourself or your baby, get help right away.” Yikes. When we were getting ready to be discharged, one of the nurses said, “Oh, you need to see a social worker before you leave, right?” My partner and I looked at each other, mystified, and said “No?” thinking they must have us confused with some other parents. The nurse left and came back, explaining, “It’s because you have a history of depression.” Geez. I think I told them I was already seeing a
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therapist and we didn’t really need to talk to a social worker, and they were like, “Oh, okay,” and that was it. But anyway, what I’m saying is, everyone basically assumes that if you have a history of depression you will freak out after having a baby. The one exception to this general paranoia was during my follow-up visit with the midwife who delivered my daughter. She came around to my hospital room the day we were to leave, to go over all the discharge stuff and make sure I was ready to go. When the topic of postpartum depression came up, she acknowledged that I might be at risk for it. But, she said, it could go the other way. I could be so in touch with my moods by this point in my life, and so skilled at regulating them, that I might actually be particularly “immune” to PPD. And guess what, she was right. I’m not saying I haven’t felt down or tearful since the baby was born four months ago. But honestly, it feels like the normal amount of down and tearful for me. I’ll feel bad for a few minutes (usually because I start worrying about things that haven’t happened but could at some point), but then I try to get back to the present moment, or talk the feeling over with my partner to get perspective on it, and I feel better. That’s not any different than it was before I had the baby or was pregnant, so it doesn’t feel scary or unmanageable to me. Yes, there was a lot of breastfeeding-related crying at first, but that felt like a legitimate emotional response to a real problem that included intense physical pain, as opposed to the kind of crying that comes from negative ideation and depressed mood. I’m not saying that I feel happy all the time—who does?—just that, because I don’t feel any worse than before, or as bad as everyone (including me) expected me to, I feel fine. Back to the sleeping thing: it feels like a similar dynamic emerged there. Basically I was so used to sleep being a “problem” in my life that sleep deprivation didn’t really seem like such a big deal when it happened post-baby. Yes, for the first two months, I was getting less sleep, maybe five or six hours per night on average, usually broken into two short blocks. But, because that’s what’s supposed to happen when you have a baby, it was fine. It was fine! Sleep had shifted from something I was bad at to something my baby wasn’t letting me be good at. And that made it fine. The positive side effect of baby-related sleep deprivation was that my insomnia was basically cured (at least so far). Prebaby, bedtime was always a nervous moment because I never
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knew if it was going to be a night on which my thoughts would keep me from falling asleep. These days, that isn’t a problem. As an insomniac, I’ve often been nostalgic for my college days, when I could nap any time I let myself. It turns out it’s simply chronic sleep deprivation that does that. So now, weirdly enough, I kind of enjoy being so tired that falling asleep comes more naturally to me. Obviously it would be better to just be well-rested and have no trouble falling asleep, but if I have to pick just one, the latter is feeling pretty good for my soul right now. Even with my daughter sleeping through the night for the past two months, I haven’t taken a pill since the day I went into labor. I have a four-month-old and for the first time in twelve years, I’m pretty happy with my sleep. Go figure. So it turns out that the two things about myself I most feared would get in the way of me enjoying life as a mother—my insomnia and my depression—have in fact made it easier to appreciate the Baby Lifestyle. Having been over-prepared for dealing with these things for a lot of years, I’ve ended up superequipped to handle the way they manifest themselves utterly normally in the early days of motherhood. Are other aspects of being a mom totally difficult and overwhelming? Yes. But these things, the ones I was so scared of? They’re fine.
Laura Portwood-Stacer is a feminist writer and editor who isn’t quite ready to put “Mom” in any of her bios yet. She tweets as @lportwoodstacer and you can find her at lauraportwoodstacer.com and manuscriptworks.com.
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Harris Bauer On Waiting
This romance for waiting came in the midst of a fantasy for infatuation—I wasn’t infatuated, by anything beyond language. My mother only waits on lines, while my father waits in them. and I wasn’t particularly waiting for anything, just preoccupied by the action of it. I wanted to make the word’s sound match its image. Wanted it beautiful, as it is when projected on a screen. How do the French make it look so different—glamorous, the way you’d imagine it sealed up in letters. I worked on waiting for the bus like I wait for you to call. Thinking again: it can all be tragic, it can all be lonely. it can all be Hopeful.
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The way I say it is ‘I wait there’ as though I am in the business of it. Entrenched in the action: of waiting. The word waitress, all of a sudden, much prettier. Now I am not waiting for you to arrive but rather, I am waiting on you, to eat. And it makes it better to feel that at times, I too can be waited on— Not only during the moments when You are waiting for me to finish. We don’t wait for each other now, the way we used to. My fantasy of you waiting entirely eclipsed by a fantastic image of whatever you are doing instead of watching the phone. But still, I am pleased by my reliance to the backdrop of another person—like I am sitting at the beach, only to see the ocean through the open crook in your arm. I watch through your body. These are the moments, I’ve become keen on casting them in an amber glow morning sun through resin; The moments of your back The moments of your back in my bed. I let myself go there, to that place where one arrives when satisfaction, maybe contentment, begins to seep into a picture A picture of your back in my bed of the beach through your arm of your hand tracking the mouse across the blue lake of a desktop infinity. The word for these things is not serenity, although often I wish it could be.
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◆◆◆ This morning I wait for you to wake up, but keep my eyes shut. When I decide to open— you’re already awake, watching me. The color of this morning is yellow, the color of your room: green. The color of my hair brown and my tongue…not quite pink enough. Your iPad glows alive in the color of sky, and it is then that I realize your room is the one without any windows.
Harris Bauer is a writer from Los Angeles, currently living in New York. She works with Wendy’s Subway, a non-circulating library and workspace in Brooklyn and has been putting together screenings and exhibitions for the last two years with her collaborator Rachel Zaretsky. She recently graduated from the Visual and Critical Studies program at the School of Visual Arts, is now in a huge amount of debt, and is terrible at Facebook. Illustrations by Conner Calhoun.
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Katie Ford Preparedness Blankets
I am interested in the utility of objects—things that populate our everyday and define the spaces we live in. These items speak to me as tools of interaction, placemaking, and movement. With the ongoing series of Preparedness Blankets, I am feeling my way through these intersections by creating quilts out of commercially-available moving blankets. I circle around ideas of place and relationships, finding ways to put down roots yet be ready for movement. This seems to be the line I walk with my peers, wandering from city to city, far from our hometowns and each other. I wanted to distill this nexus of nesting and transience into a single object, since it is difficult to know what the next step will be. As this series continues to evolve, I hope to use them for picnics, for warmth, send them to faraway friends, exchange documentation, and infuse art objects into everyday use. They are open-ended, aesthetic, and utilitarian.
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Preparedness Blanket (Westward), 2015-2016, Fabric, USA-made moving blanket, Installation view
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Preparedness Blanket (Grounding), 2015, Fabric, Home Depot moving blanket, Installation view
Katie Ford is a mixed media artist currently based in Pittsburgh, PA.
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K a t i e F o r d 23
Lauren Banka @howsitgoingbot
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Weird Twitter and Weird Tumblr are a strange twin to the Fluxus movement, and its predecessor Dada. With and without tech as a medium, they are (re)producing event scores, readymades, and interventions. Twitterbots, of course. Also horror sexts and food that looks like Iggy Azalea. Also browser plug-ins that auto-replace the word “millenials” with “snakepeople,” or “political correctness” with “basic human decency.” I designed the bot to reflect my feelings, but I’m still touched when it generates something that resonates. Outside of art circles, Fluxus is a relatively obscure movement, and Dada is only slightly better known. Most of the Weird Internet, as far as I can tell, are teens, programmers and/ or comedians—the similarities seem to be spontaneous. What is it about the teens, the sixties, the twenty-teens, that gives rise to intermedia, tech-engaged absurdism? Impending doom. War. Economic violence. Protest culture—a felt obligation to speak plus cynicism about the impact of speech. Maybe absurdism is political. Maybe we only want it to be. Wanting is political, too.
Lauren Banka is an artist and writer whose favorite Fluxus pieces are House of Dust and Cut Piece. She released a collection of poetry, You Don’t Scare Me, in 2013, and now she only writes essays and speculative fiction. She tweets at @laurenbanka and her feelings tweet at @howsitgoingbot.
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Rachel Brody Inklings
I am all in on tattoos, but in an admittedly sheepish kind of way: I don’t have a single one. As a self-professed commitaphobe, anything that permanent—or that personal—feels off-limits. This mini photo essay aims to capture that. It’s Voyeurism Lite. It aims to pry, but ever so gently. I photographed these three women in the spaces they inhabit regularly—home, bedroom, workplace—to emphasize my own odd-man-out-ness. The interviews are edited and condensed.
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Lindsey I have two tattoos—a Bible verse on my left arm that says “and He will make your paths straight” and a geometric diamond on my neck. Getting the first one was not the greatest experience. I kept making the artist reapply the stencil so that it was 100-percent straight, and he wasn’t too patient. Eventually, he said, “You are the least happy person getting their first tattoo I have ever seen.” I’m a serious person naturally, so I was very business-like about the experience. I got the second one at Pain & Wonder in Athens, Georgia, and it was great. The Bible verse on my arm means a lot to me. My grandmother has a Bible verse that she prays for each of her grandchildren based on our personalities. The full version is “Trust in
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the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” I think when I got it, I was feeling a little homesick and also realizing that I was likely not going to live in Georgia near my family after graduation. It reminds me of my roots, my family and the comfort and love of home. I recently got married and wore a sleeveless dress—my favorite pictures are the ones with my arm tattoo featured prominently. The diamond I got during a difficult time in my life, when it seemed like everything was kind of going wrong—in my romantic life, with family, my friendships and my career. The science of diamonds and how they undergo so much stress and come out more beautiful on the other side spoke to me a lot. The tattoos make me feel powerful, like I have a lot of ownership over my body.
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Steph I have three tattoos total, all on my back. The first tattoo is a quote from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.” The second is a postmark with my hometown, which I got in my hometown. The third—and by far the largest—is an interpretation of Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s “Festoon of Fruit and Flowers.” It’s a full color, crazy-detailed piece that takes up about two-thirds of my back. I got it done by the amazing Susan Doyle, out of Jinx Proof in Washington, D.C. The festoon was a lesson in patience. It was done in six sessions of about three to four hours apiece, and it took about a year to finish it. Each session hurt, some more than others (ladies, don’t get tattooed on your period!), and it definitely was a commitment to see the piece through. When I started getting tattooed, I was still working in a formal office setting, so having visible tattoos, while not forbidden, was definitely taboo. Now I work in the restaurant industry, so having visible tattoos is almost the norm. I never feel like I need to hide my tattoos, but some days I don’t feel like displaying them. I got them for myself as representations of very personal aspects of myself, so some days I want to show them off, and some days I don’t. I got this tattoo to represent my love of the natural world and my work in food. Interestingly, almost every plant represented is edible, including the flowers. I work as a cook, and I am an avid gardener, but I’ve always had a love of Dutch Baroque still life. From an artistic perspective, I’ve always been drawn to the Dutch use of color and directional lighting. Also, these types of paintings are full of symbolism. While there is a lot of specific meaning for each fruit or flower, generally, floral still lifes were painted to remind the viewer of the fleeting nature of life and the impermanence of worldly riches. If you look closely, you’ll notice that while the festoon shows great bounty, much of it is imperfect, like the overripe pomegranate or the split fig. I like to remember that the most beautiful things in my life come from nature, and that their beauty lies in their impermanence. I love all of my tattoos and what they represent, but the festoon is the one that most represents me at this time in my life. It’ll probably be a while before I get my next one, but I already have an idea in my head. I want my next one(s) to be a tribute to my parents, so I’m playing around with some symbols that represent my mom and my dad. The funny thing is, they hate tattoos, so I probably can’t let them know.
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Amy I helped an artist friend of mine build his tattoo shop in Fells Point, out in Baltimore, and he promised me a free tattoo in exchange for my help. A month later I came in, and he added five stars to my arm, in addition to the first I’d gotten at age 22. It was pretty special. It was the first tattoo he had done in his new shop, and he was in a really bad car accident the week before and wasn’t sure if he could use his tattoo gun anymore. Guess he proved it to himself. At the same shop I helped build, another artist was going through a tough divorce. I babysat his kids so he could work and save money on daycare. He offered a tattoo of my choice. I chose Saturn on my inner forearm. (Saturn is the planet of father energy and parenthood.) It is one of my favorite tattoos. A few years later I moved to Pennsylvania. I was bartending at a restaurant that happened to be next to a tattoo shop. One night, an artist asked me to be his guinea pig for some new fluorescent ink. He tattooed three stars around the Saturn planet. Now here comes the traumatic part. I was still living in Pennsylvania, and I was now a hairstylist. My daughter had just been born, and I was working a lot. One of my clients begged me to let her daughter give me a tattoo. Mistake. The poor thing was giving out “rattoos” for eight hours straight to 20 different people. By the time she got to me, I had a sick feeling in my stomach. So I tell her, “Hey girl, just something simple, have fun, but let’s keep it easy.” Well, that backfired. The nice freehand stars I had on my right arm? Gone and destroyed. It looked HORRIBLE. It hurt so bad and took forever. When I got home, teary-eyed, I showed my boyfriend the Crayola nightmare. He said, flatly, “It looks like shit.” I got so mad that we ended up getting in a fight, and I slept on the couch that night. The very next day I woke up with angry energy. I was determined to fix this botched project. I would not let one bad tattoo ruin my life, let alone all the beautiful images that had already been started. So I drove. And I drove. Listening to Jehu, wiping away tears and chain-smoking. Messed up part was that it was a Sunday in rural Pennsyltucky, and nothing is open! Not even a damn 7-11. I went to every reputable tattoo shop I knew. All were closed. I was getting really frustrated. Until I saw it. A place called Fusion Tattoo. A tiny shack off a gravel road. I walked in and saw a cute girl with long hair and glasses, drawing on her sketchbook. She looked up and smiled and said hi. I was still panicked and red-faced, so all I did was exhale and pointed to the massacre on my arm. She walked over, put her arm around me and gave me a beer. I told her the story, and she was just so understanding and compassionate. There was light at the end of the tunnel. Rachel Brody is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. Follow her @rachelcbrody.
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Leigh Sugar Selected Poems
The Joke A girl walks into a body shop and says to the mechanic, I’d like to apply for the job and the mechanic says to the camera, I thought she was coming in to ask for car service!
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Lorraine The Collective rehearses on Monday nights. Now is Lorraine’s turn. She shows her piece five times and it takes me at least three to understand her violent shaking is choreographed. The performance is so tender I want to cry or at least sing, I watch her like I am in love, she moves like the air before a tornado, thick, whirling, dancing her whole body in her face, the storm—her eyes narrow and spread, her cheeks soften and twist. She claps her hands twice in the work, and each time the noise penetrates the air, and it is almost violent, she is genuinely stunned, shaken to the deepest seed of her belly even though she herself created the sequence. Speaking of Lorraine, Lylli explains: In the past year she broke up with her boyfriend, and, after several months in a depressed stupor, emerged an entirely different dancer. I ponder whether I too should break up with my boyfriend. Lylli also tells me how Lorraine carries cups of tea with her hands wrapped around their bowls, unfailingly walks into walls, and that’s why none of her mugs have handles.
Leigh Sugar is a writer, dance artist, and yoga teacher. She has facilitated writing workshops in prison and taught yoga to adults and youth in schools, universities, group homes, and correctional facilities. She previously co-edited the Michigan Anthology of Prisoner Creative Writing, and is now curating and editing an anthology of writing by artists who have taught arts workshops in prisons. Project information at www.correctionswriting.wordpress.com.
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Ena Selimovic´ Waiting Room
I take my father to the doctor. We arrive as a nurse is calling his name. Prostate, so I stay back in the waiting room, bid him good luck with a single one-directional wave of the hand, sit, sigh, cross my legs, open a book. I sit near the door, taking note of a man on the opposite side of the room who is the type to have a conversation with every single person he ever comes across ever. Still, I am— unfortunately, I quickly decide—close enough to hear him. His plans following the doctor’s: “Building a bar the way my wife wants—well, she wants a woman’s cave.” Snooping over at someone’s phone wallpaper: “You have a killer there. We have a mini Shih Tzu, let me tell ya!” There follows a detailed history starting from the dog’s conception. The elderly woman he speaks to is politely but clearly horrified. Just in case he miraculously makes his way to where I am: I take out my phone, replace the desktop image of Ringo, my eight-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, with a generic sunflower landscape. Surely he would be disarmed by it, have nothing to say. (As quickly as this thought arises is how quickly I realize I am wrong.) An elderly man walks slowly up to the counter. “The innards of this pen came out,” he says, tapping the glass. He spends some ten minutes fiddling with it. When the counter window finally opens, he repeats to the secretary with a laugh, “The innards of this pen came out. But I fixed it.” He walks back to his seat. My mother calls. Forgetting I had just changed the desktop image to the sunflower landscape, I think through a moment’s confusion that I have somebody else’s phone. As I finish my phone conversation with my mother, I can feel the person next to me staring at me. I slowly turn my head. A smile of a hunchbacked woman with glasses matching mine (the hunchback will match one day, too, I already know). “What language was that? Where are you from?” “Bosnia.” “Boston?” “Bosnia.” “My grandson was born in Boston. It sure gets cold up there.” “Yeah . . . Yes, it does.” A man in his seventies at the counter now. The secretary asks, “Do you authorize anyone to receive your medical information?” The man replies, “Yeah, you,” pointing to his middle-aged son standing next to him and continues nonchalantly chewing his gum. After him a woman, who has apparently been to the counter before, is called up. The secretary says, “Let me take your 36
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beautiful picture for your file.” The lady replies, “Is that all you need?” with a pleased smile, poses (stands in place as still as she possibly can), and hobbles back with the walker to her seat. Now a woman who must be in her eighties. (Nineties? A solid “ancient” in any case.) She asks, “Am I in the wrong window?” A person who turns out to be her daughter enters the waiting room and joins her at the counter. She says, “Are you in the right spot?” Her ancient mother replies, but the daughter doesn’t take her answer (which is a glance that says “Do I look like a fucking idiot?” but gently) for she knocks on the counter window anyway and repeats her question to the attendant. The secretary assures her she is in the right place and that she would be called any minute. Meanwhile, half the room drifts in and out of sleep. Among us, there’s a new presence. Then I realize: One need only fart in a waiting room to know how quickly people can abandon you in life. Or, at least, give you some space. A flat crater forms around one man. He is looking at the ceiling and twiddling his thumbs. I try it, and I am so ashamed that I promise myself if I ever write about this, I will say it was fiction. Ma raised a lady, after all. Something goes wrong: there is no crater effect where I am sitting. A miscommunication. I am not one of them, this tells me. What my body emits does not reach them. Not foul enough? Or perhaps the fart was never released? Perhaps I am the senseless one? Senseless of my own absurdity, too, perhaps, in this waiting room, in which the ages of its members added together equaled an approximate one hundred thousand times the years I have lived. So: what do I know about farting, anyway? How could I possibly match these inevitable experts? My own absurdity crystallizes as I wax philosophically self-reflexive about farting. But what of these decaying bodies reaches me, really? I see Perpetual Conversationalist, Pen Innards, Bostonian Grandson, Hobbling Beauty, Wrong Window, Chili Man. And me, what mold of a caricature am I decaying into? “There goes me! Guess I have to see Doc now.” The talker slowly rises toward the nurse. “Then I’m off to build that woman’s cave for my wife. Hope we don’t lose our mini Shih Tzu in it, haw-haw-haw!” I wait.
Ena Selimovic´ was born in former Yugoslavia, grew up in Turkey, and calls the United States her primary home (and hopes it calls her a primary— being now a naturalized citizen—homie). She completed her B.A. in English at UMSL in 2012, her M.Phil. in Comparative Literature at Trinity College Dublin in 2013, and is now pursuing her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Washington University (for a lifetime of fun). She tries to have a life outside of big, cement buildings filled with books and takes every opportunity to surround herself with accordions, bodies of water, and laughter. She feels the need to make a clarification: “Waiting Room” is (mostly) fictional.
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Marissa Bluestone Drawings
When I was asked to contribute to Ginger, I immediately decided to draw my friend Ginger. Lots of people have made art about Ginger. The piece I am most familiar with is in Michelle Tea’s novel Valencia: Iris the main character is based on her, in which she is described as a southern butch with dripping blue eyes. We talked a little about this while I drew her, we talked a lot about our parents, and spent some time trying to figure who we knew who had the worst parents, and we did not put ourselves on the top of the list. I was at Ginger’s house in Massachusetts ’cause I had just moved my studio into storage near her, as I was just evicted from my studio and storage is cheaper there. Ginger helped with the move, ’cause she is a friend but also there was free walnut flooring in our studio building that she wanted to grab, she estimates it is worth around $1200, ample pay for the help. I am contributing other drawings of other people I know, they have stories too, but their names are not Ginger, so I will not use this space to write about them. The line that renders them feels like a meandering route on the way to getting to know someone. Perhaps this mimics the growth of the ginger root for which this zine is named.
Ginger, pen on paper, 14” x 17”, 2016
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Al, pen on paper, 17” x14”, 2016
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Robin, pen on paper, 15� x 11�, 2015
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Sara, pen on paper, 12”x17”, 2015
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Spring 2016
Divine, pen on paper, 14” x 17”, 2015
Marissa Bluestone (b. Englewood, New Jersey) lives and works in Queens. Her work has been included in various group and two-person shows in New York City at venues such as Hunter College’s 205 Hudson Gallery, MoMA PS1, and Present Company. She was awarded a residency at Vermont Studio Center in 2014 and was a finalist for the Basil Alkazzi Award for excellence in Painting through NYFA. She presently works as a teaching artist at The Whitney, MoMA, Bellevue Hospital, Terrance Cardinal Cooke Nursing Home, and the Healing Arts Initiative. She holds a BA from Bard College and completed an MFA at Hunter College in 2014.
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Spring 2016
Alexis Cantu Patterns
Alexis sings, plays guitar and drums in the Chicago band Nancy Droopy along with her ride or die, Ryan. They have clocked hours of practice, but have yet to play live. This track was recorded on her dad’s antique Supro Sahara guitar, which he received for his 12th birthday in 1962. Alexis credits her dad for encouraging and supporting her interest in music from day one. She loves to play, write and record music as a healthy way of unwinding and working through her Cancer-baby emotions.
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Spring 2016
Jan Trumbauer Selected Poems
measure room, she said
i will not
moth in the pane
rustled
the back pedal
stone palm line
creak the ink
along the crick frets and peels
i used to run
slick
noon thicks
i used to look
sharpens light
then loosed
a month coils
circle around the lane beginning with name still
rush
a long
the clock a marking stone
the slip
the line loops the moth
peeling sills
whiten the book, knotting
your hand
wheels whiten
water mark
coats
and slip
the panes
slant the palm lines
clothed,
oiled
crick
water the name oiled book
i still run
along the slip
i will look slant again
she said
wheels
spines
pedals
circles, peels
palm coats the loose
spine will not
clock inks its frets
: : :
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Spring 2016
Waters I. My grandmother leaves a message. Mahal, she says, where are you? You come home. —Jan? You come home. I’m going home, I write. I’m on a beach, watching stones, drinking something dark. There’s a little dog rooting in the salt. His bark slits the waves, a shock of hot and whittled sound, like juice or wick, and it strikes me that I like to look back: The sky is green. She showers with her jewels on. She’s curled up on the porch, hair wet, metabolizing gold as she dials. Ring. It’s damp. I should be going. This dog is nudging me, sluice, sluice— II. I’m cramped in my seat. I wake to a wet cheek and a seatbelt cold as a nose. She hasn’t washed in ages. There’s a delta where she lies— it forks where the limbs go. Dry bed, old sheets glazed as mud remembering water. She’s slowing down. So: I’m sitting here, going. The sky is green, and we’re racing through rain, but it’s just not my bag to marvel at the drops laced on glass, now. I can’t be responsible for incidental grace. I’m going home.
Jan Trumbauer is a performer who writes and creates images. She enjoys playing at the intersection between movement and theatricality.
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Emily Larsen Reluctant Response
I am acutely aware of power differentials between subject, artist and viewer. By actively participating as the subject and creator, I am best able to control how I am seen. Through direct eye contact I can demand a place of power with the viewer. Too often women are depicted as passive entities. Objects to be excited by, fantasized about, played with, adored, desired, but hardly ever considered. What can a woman do to be seen outside of their object status? Each overly fantasized symbolic woman screams quietly behind a delicately depicted pair of lips. Although constantly depicted in art as subject, women are much less frequently celebrated in their roles as artists. It feels that there is no end to the scrutiny and restrictions focused on women as creators, whether it is bringing new life or new art into the world. We are constantly analyzed against subjective ideals of perfection that have grown increasingly unrealistic. I reject perfection. Perfection is a dangerous lie used to choke our imaginations and keep us feeling as though we are lacking. I reject the idea that women and men are so different as creations that they require separate handling instructions. If there is one place where women should be heralded and permitted to be seen in full complexity, it is in art. All the images are based off of self portraits I took in a photobooth, forced to stare directly into the reflection of my own eyes. It felt like a challenge. A challenge to engage in the dialogue. A challenge I now pass to the viewer. Reluctant Response is accusatory, demanding and unapologetic. It’s my silent scream behind tight lips.
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Spring 2016
Vintage Beauty, Archival pigment print, 2015
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Spring 2016
On Hold, Archival pigment print, 2015
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Untitled, Archival Pigment print, 2014
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Spring 2016
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Just Another Madonna, Archival pigment print, 2015
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Spring 2016
A Drift, Archival pigment print, 2016
Emily earned her B.F.A. in Photography at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. Before fully dedicating her time to the arts she earned her B.A. in Psychology at Flagler College, FL. Emily’s enduring interest lies in the space between the human experience and reality. The intangible fuzzy cloud that allows us to continue forward as we rotate between functional ignorance and the horror of realization.
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