pants for making

Art can be practical.

(I needed some pants.)

But beyond that...

Why pants?

What do they mean?

Why do they matter?

DO they matter?

Well, yes, actually. They do matter. Because they represent this thing I've been doing lately. They represent me making what I want for myself, and not waiting for someone else to come along to provide it for me.

Not waiting for someone to hire me before I can start doing the work I want to do. I can do the work now.

Not waiting for a partner to come along before I can build the life that I want. I can build that life now.

Not waiting to find the pants that I want. I'm making the pants that I want.

I'm making the life that I want.

Turns out, I have that power.

Piece by piece, I'm stitching it together.

And it's not just my life. I don't want this project to begin and end with me. We definitely do not have a government right now that I can rely on to create the world I want to live in. So it's up to us.

For me, that means educating myself about systemic racism, internalized racism, and white privilege, and speaking up when I see it in my communities – even when it's uncomfortable (especially when it's uncomfortable).

It means calling my representatives. It means reminding my friends to vote.

We all have things that we want to be different.

Go make some pants.

make art, not walls was a project started on Inauguration Day, 2017.  I couldn't handle being around people that day.  I knew of action events I could have attended, but I found that I needed to be alone.  I spent the day in quiet resistance.  I made 45 hand-drawn stickers that day.  And decided to keep going.  To date I've made around 135 of these individual 2"4" blind contours, all done from photographs of people of color.  

All money raised through the sales of these little pieces is being donated to the ACLU and the Northwest Detention Center Resistance.