Art Plunge

My "On This Day" from 2015 I'm not sure why it's my morning ritual to have coffee while reading my ON THIS DAY posts on Facebook. It's usually good for a chuckle, a reminisce, a head shake and some eye rolls. Sometimes its a good reminder of my struggle-such as this one.  Endometriosis. (Early pieces using "organ-like shapes, veins and blobby growths to convey this mysterious pain I was living with) I'm an artist with endometriosis and it still hasn't been "diagnosed" on paper thru laparoscopy. But this is common for women with endo. You are treated as though you probably have it and if the treatment seems helpful then by process of elimination that is what you have. But...not on paper. I could go into a very long boring story of my pain but really- I wrote all those blogs and notes already. Before anyone even knew what endo was, I was thick in its nightmare. Thinking it was everything from fibroids, cysts, tumors, PCOS...

I don't remember at what point I became mesmerized by the sport and art of skateboarding but this little rounded piece of wood and wheels has always been there.  From watching my sister make one and stencil it out as a tiny kid in the 80s- to buying my own used Alva board with Santa Cruz big balls wheels when I was in highschool...I was hooked. Granted- I could not skate for shit- I did it anyway and accumulated all the wounds and bloody disasters that come with it. It was after a particularly painful crash on a homemade ramp that I decided to hang it up and stick to painting and watching the videos. I could live vicariously through the Blind: Video Days classic and the new-at-the-time 411 video library. These guys were blowing my mind- the wheels got smaller -the tricks got bigger. My favorite thing to watch were skate videos where I could imagine what it must feel like to pull those tricks. I learned so much about hip hop music and new songs I had never heard. Skate videos w...