Unicorns are real.

Am I now a "horse gal"?

Hey folks, how are you keeping?

What have I got to show and tell you?

Well, after my slightly vulnerable admission that things have been a bit quieter lately in tattooing, I'm pleased to say my clients have stepped up, and things are starting to get busier. Thank you! (keep booking though!)

Here's a party sealion to celebrate this news.

Emma wanted this to commemorate the day she watched a sealion community ‘partying’ in a rockpool in Monterey, California, while her own family looked on from the pier. Yes, that is a nice crisp Californian White wine the sealion is sipping. Lovely.

Equally joyful was this unbelievable encounter while very hungover on a Sunday stroll. I thought I was still drunk, but turns out that the field near me hosts miniature pony unicorn parties for kids (and their parents, all wearing unicorn horns on their heads)

I’m not sure how I feel about these guys getting painted by a bunch of dressed-up children, but I saw the ponies during and after, and as you can tell they are non-plussed or even happy? Unicorns are real and I've seen ‘em. Special shout-out to the homing pigeons flying in the background.

On the subject of horses, and rainbows actually, you might be wondering where my wildlife camera updates are, well the field I use has recently been taken back over by these guys. They're real cute. Name suggestions welcome. I'm hopeful I can still put my wildlife cam out and capture some foxes etc ( if they co-exist happily? ) Or at least perhaps some goofy close-ups of these guys. Anyways it's nice to see them out there.

It’s moments like this - with the rainbow, the factory chimney, and these two giving eachother a sweet neck-nibble - that I feel very extra lucky to live here.

I had been meaning to also photograph my wooden pieces which I've been working on - here's some not great photos of them.

The idea is to stand them out in the field and record the wildlife interacting with them (gonna put some bird feed on them and see who shows up) Like all art projects I make, it's a bit silly and whimsical, but think it could be cool… both as objects/ interactive bird feeders/ art pieces, but also to create some interactive photos between real animals and my made-up ones. What do you think? I really enjoyed making them. I’ve invested in a jigsaw, so now I want to cut all the wood up.

What else is new? Well I've tattooed some of that recent flower flash, and really enjoyed it too. Nice to do something bold and simple!

I decided to make some mock-ups so people can see some placement and size ideas. I then went down a rabbit hole trying to find decent photos of people who look like real, actual people (decent non-cheese stock photos are hard to come by! One day I'll find some volunteers) SO I ended up finding this incredible collection of photos of gay and lesbian writers in the 1980’s, by Robert Giard. ( TW warning: Discussions of AIDS related death)

Blanche Wiesen Cook and Clare Cross by Robert Giard

In the height of the AIDS crisis Giard set about documenting both emerging and iconic figures in the gay and lesbian literary world. The project, Particular Voices, would go on to be published and exhibited by the New York Public Library. As I said on the instagram post, I am in love with these, and, while I realise these folks wouldn't have necessarily chosen to be fake tattooed by me, I feel like I recognised some of my friends and clients in them and it had the feeling I wanted to get across? I’ve researched a little about each writer and found some interesting info, as well as creating a way to demonstrate tattoo placements.  What started as an exercise in finding some visuals, ended in an interesting, thought-provoking, deep-dive into LGBTQI+ literary history for me.

Hopefully it's not disrespectful to have used these photos this way - in my research I was saddened but not surprised to see that several lost thier lives to the AIDS crisis. It felt poignant finding the photos of the now much older, still living writers - typing in their names and finding up-to-date portraits, while other searches ended with an obituary.

Veneita Porter and John Preston. Preston was a writer of fiction and non-fiction, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement. He would sadly pass away, due to complications from being HIV positive.

Veneita Porter appears to now be an actor, and is just as striking as ever. She recently starred in a modern take on Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters.”

Assotto Saint was a Haitian-born American poet, publisher and performance artist, who was a key figure in LGBT and African-American art and literary culture of the 1980s and early 1990s.^[1] He was a mentor to other emerging LGBT African American cultural figures of the era. He was one of the first African American activists to publicly disclose his HIV status. He died on June 29, 1994.

Bia lowe wrote ‘Wild Ride: Earthquakes, Sneezes and Other Thrills’ A collection of personal essays on topics as diverse as the nature of allergies, and a meditation on bats. She still writes today. I think we’d be friends.

Norman Wong is an American writer and activist. He is best known for his 1995 short story collection Cultural Revolution, which was one of the first book-length works of LGBT literature ever published by an Asian American writer.^[1]

Poet Olga Broumas was born in Ermoupoli, Greece. Her work has been described as “Sapphic,” and attempts to create a lesbian language attentive to the experiences of women. She still writes now.

Larry Duplechan (born December 30, 1956, in Los Angeles, California) is an American novelist. He is best known for his novels Blackbird, adapted in 2014 by Patrik-Ian Polk as a film starring Mo'Nique and Isaiah Washington,^[1]

Andrew Holleran is the pseudonym of Eric Garber, an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer, born on the island of Aruba. Following the success of his first novel Dancer from the Dance in 1978, he became a prominent author of post-Stonewall gay literature. He is still a writer and also does public speaking.

Anyway, do take a look at the full original collection (without my doodles on them!)

As a ‘thank you’ to Giard and his inspiritaional writers, I made a donation to Queer Art via the The Robert Giard Foundation . His foundation supports continued scholarship about LGBTQ+ literature in America, as well as LGBTQ+ movements and activism. You can donate here too.

I feel like this post has been a rollercoaster from light to dark, rainbows to, well, here we are. I’m not sure where else to go, other than to share this photo of the first in-bloom daffodils I saw this year. It’s a really un-exciting, un-extraordinary photo, but they popped up in the exact same spot I remember first seeing daffs last year, when there was snow on the ground, and I had newly fallen in love. So this photo brings me joy, because I remember that feeling a year ago, and I feel it now, and I love Spring.

I hope you’re doing well out there x