"Fearless Girls: Queen of Potholders (coins) in the Kitchen Tarot."
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Fearless Girls: Queen of Potholders (coins) in the Kitchen Tarot."
©Susan Shie 2017. 60"h x 48"w. inventory #502. Peace Cozy #72.
Began 2-9-17. Finished 4-28-17. Many large detail images follow this artist's statement.
Materials: White kona-like cotton from Test Fabrics, airbrush paint, fabric paint, Aurifil cotton machine thread, Artfabrik variegated hand dyed perle cotton embroidery thread, one Green Temple Buddha Boy bead. Nature-fil bamboo and organic cotton batting. Mostly Lunn Fabrics batiks in backing and border.
Techniques: Whole cloth painting. Black line freehand drawing and color areas painted with Aztek double action airbrush and airbrush paint. Small, black writing and drawing lines made with Silkpaint.com’s Airpen, using black fabric paint. Mostly machine sewn, with one row of hand stitching of perle cotton thread (on the border's outside edge.)
Statement: I knew I was going to make my next piece about the Women’s March on Washington, which I attended with 54 other women from Wooster, Ohio. But when, on International Women’s Day, March 8, I saw the statue of Fearless Girl for the first time, in the morning, I instantly knew that SHE would be the main character in this piece. I drew her all that day and began painting this piece that night, along with a matching apron, the first one I’d painted since making 11 aprons for the Women's March on Washington.
Earlier, on Feb 9, I'd pulled a Tarot card to use, to make this piece part of my Kitchen Tarot deck. It was the Queen of Potholders, which are Coins, in the classic Tarot deck. Queens are powerful women, and Coins represent prosperity and better living, so it seemed to me to be a perfect fit for a painting about the Women’s March and our Resistance to Donald Trump - Powerful women making the world a better place for everyone!
I had expected to make this work about twice as big as it is, but when I decided to enter a show called Threads of Resistance, I had to settle for this 60 x 48” maximum size allowed in their call for entries. The purpose of the show seemed too important to not try for, so … well, the next piece can be bigger!
The first thing I drew, freehand with my airbrush, was Fearless Girl, right in the center of the piece. (From Wikipedia: "Fearless Girl is a bronze sculpture by Kristen Visbal depicting a girl looking at the well-known Charging Bull (or "Wall Street bull") statue. It was installed on March 7, 2017, (during the night, but with a permit) at Bowling Green in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. The statue measures approximately 50 inches (130 cm) tall, and weighs about 250 pounds (110 kg). Fearless Girl was commissioned by investment firm State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) as an advertisement for an index fund which comprises gender-diverse companies that have a higher percentage of women among their senior leadership. The plaque below the statue states, "Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference," with "SHE" being both a descriptive pronoun and the fund's NASDAQ ticker symbol.")
Fearless Girl was interpreted by most of us protesters, not as a way to promote more women on boards of financial companies, but as the Resistance defying The Man, aka Donald Trump.
Then I stood back to figure out what would go around Fearless Girl. I added the big Hillary Clinton face in the top left corner, choosing an image to draw her from, that showed her confidence and concern for defying Trump's agenda. She HAD won the election, and would have won it by a LOT more, had Russia and Trump and many others not exectuted a huge campaign of lies and distortions about Hillary, had they not done who-knows-what to steal the election. I couldn’t show Hillary smiling. I needed for her to be thoughtful, maybe waiting to see what would happen now.
Then I added the American Pie – my Capitol Dome – on the right, with Eleanor Roosevelt, a REALLY strong American woman, standing where the Statue of Freedom stands, on top of the dome. She has a skillet and a tambourine, rather than the real statue's sword and laurel wreath, in her hands. She wears a pussy hat, as does my Fearless Girl.
Across the bottom of the piece, I drew the 11 women who wore my Statue of Liberty aprons at the Women’s March on Washington, and later added the 12th woman, who actually took the photo of the rest of us. She didn’t have an apron to wear, because the store I bought the white aprons at had 11, not 12, so she went without. I put that young woman, Devin, next to her mother Denise, in our lineup of mostly Unitarian women. Those two are on the right end here.
Then I added my St Quilta the Comforter (my archetype of compassion) on the left side, above the women in aprons. She is the women’s saint that I made up many years ago, based on my mother. I felt like she went to Washington on that bus with me, so here she is, wearing a pussy hat. Later, I wrote “Resist Tyranny! Speak Out!” on her arms. My mother was a pacifist, but she believed in standing up for what is right!
I added more pies – which I use to symbolize gifts and blessings – around in the background. A Peace Pie, a Compassion Pie, and a Healing Pie, next to my mother, who was a registered nurse, and a really, really good one, too!
With my airbrush, I wrote the first stanza of Bob Dylan’s song “The Times, They are a’Changin” at the top of the piece. When I finished quilting this painting, I decided to add more words, and wrote about Trump’s first 100 days of trying to destroy our country’s values and ethics, as well as the world we live in. I eagerly await his impeachment, along with all of his Cabinet members and staff. They are trying to take away all the things America stands for, and it’s horrible that they’ve gotten away with it this long.
Fearless Girl looks so calmly at that Raging Bull she stands facing on Wall Street! She looks a LOT like young Hillary Clinton AND also my granddaughter, 12 year old Eva Miller, who got truly, deeply involved in Hillary’s run for the Presidency. She and her father, Mike, went to see Hillary in Cleveland, two days before the election, and Eva has been a Resistance girl ever since. I know she would have gone with me to Washington!
The writing in the border is all about what we’ve done in the Resistance, and what Trump has done, that needs to be resisted! At the bottom of the painting, I wrote in large red letters with my airbrush “We are ALL the Fearless Girl!” Keep calling and writing to your representatives in Congress, signing petitions, speaking out! Keep going to protests against Trump! Wear your pussy hat everywhere – which means we need summer-weight ones now, too. Don’t give up! He wants us to, and that’s why he has attacked so many issues at once, so we don’t have enough energy to fight to defend them all. So we need to take turns, backing off when we’re exhausted, and coming back again and again, fighting to hold America together through this nightmare.
Remember to GIVE LOVE!
Besides the many large images below this statement, I also have many images of this piece in progress and finished, in albums on my Turtle Moon Studios FB page.
If you want to take a Lucky Drawing online class with me, please look on my Susan Shie Turtle Moon Studios facebook page. I teach 4-week sessions with 2 week breaks in between them. Most of my students consider my class to be like taking a yoga class: You just keep going with the group. You can find info about my online drawing classes on my website's front page, too.
If you are interested in studying with me in person, please check out my Turtle Art Camps, which I teach here at my home and studios, as well as my online drawing classes, my private art lessons in my home, and the classes that I teach around the US and sometimes in other countries, as all are listed on the main page of my website, Turtle Moon Studios If you want to have me come teach at your place, phone or text me at 330-317-2167. I love to "teach out."
Read all about my Turtle Art Camp - how it works for your weeklong artmaking experience here in Wooster, Ohio, and see the changes I've made to the agenda. I have many large photos on the Turtle Art Camp page, to show what goes on at this biosphere-like art experience. The emphasis in this adult students' art camp is on drawing and painting in large, hardbound sketchbooks now, because I’ve figured out that with these processes, everyone can relax and focus on expressing herself. I want my art camp to help you become more open to letting your art flow out, in whatever medium you want it to be in. I have even had students over the years who are mainly writers, not visual artists.
I started my Turtle Art Camps in 1994 and they're going strong. See my 2017 TAC schedule on the main page ot Turtle Moon Studios, along with a link to my current online Lucky Drawing class description and enrollment info.
Many thanks, Lucky / Susan Shie, in Wooster, Ohio. 5-1-17.
PS. When I was taking notes on Women's Day for this year, I wrote down the 2017 theme, as the UN has chosen a different theme for each year's International Women's Day since 1977. I was looking through all the notes I'd taken, and found the theme: Be Bold for Change. Oh, how I wish I'd read those notes, before I started painting!!! I REALLY want to add that phrase somewhere to this piece!!!! I think I'm going to write it in gigantic letters, on the back of this art quilt. I'd love to put it on the front, but I've already entered my images with the entry forms for Threads of Resistance. So I can't mess with the image. But oh! That UN theme is perfect for our Resistance! I think I have to paint or stitch it on my denim jacket, too!
Turtle Moon Studios: Outsider Art
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