jaeleslie

It's been a couple of weeks since WisCon, and I have already written elsewhere about the "tattoo" booth I had on the Friday afternoon, which was actually body painting. By a calligrapher. Yours truly. The highlight of that experience was that I got to write on Ursula LeGuin. But it was also fascinating to tackle that many three-dimensional layouts, when I usually have a flat rectangle to work on.

In three hours I wrote on twenty people, mostly their arms. Rather too fast, and it really wiped me out. It was enough practice so that I learned quite a bit more about how to do it, and I think it will turn into a regular thing. Lots of people have a hard time thinking of what they would like to have written on their bodies, so part of my kit has been the pamphlet of "Statements" that holyoutlaw published. I thought I'd put the list here of all the things people wanted me to write on their bodies.

Dendarii Free Mercenaries was my first customer. I worked it out as a single line of gothic letters. She came back later for a couple of buttons to be lettered in similar style saying "Book Slut".
TIGER was all caps in orange, and then prevailed upon me to paint tiger-stripes over it in black. Word chosen by her little daughter.
INTROVERT was also part of this family grouping, also all caps, around the back of his neck, which looked very cool when he turned his head and the letters twisted.
LANE was for the little daughter, also all caps, and I found how much harder it is to do a short word where the imperfections of any particular letter stand out more.
PRECIOUS was a kitty-name on another tiny little stick-like arm, all caps that hardly fit.
There is hope in honest error made me remember I should have brought my camera. Some of these came out quite well.
become the goddess who dares I wrote in three gothicized italic lines, wrapped around a forearm, and turned out quite spectacular, tho I wanted to follow the blue lines showing through the skin and realized this is not the kind of aesthetic response that my customer was perhaps used to (must work on professional persona).
DOING IS BEING was also caps, as was
ICARUS LIVES since I worked out I didn't have to compress relatively short numbers of letters but could spread them out.
RIP Spike was a combination of caps and very spiky gothic letters, with flourishes on the S.
Fire Logician was of course the author of Fire Logic, and likewise took a fancy flourished cap, and orange color, where most of these were black or blue.
The river runs shallow when you fall in love with the sea was three winding lines, with the color mixed from blue and black.
A truth in art is one whose contradictory is also true was three or maybe four lines, I forget, the other longest work I did.
hipmama was in a round bookhand that took up a lot of room, so I didn't try that again except on my own leg.
poor impulse control was three lines on this guy's forehead, which was devilishly hard to write on, consequently with mediocre results, and didn't give me any place to rest the heel of my hand to steady it except his nose.
Undo / Redo across the knuckles of two hands was even harder, as the most un-flat of any surface I tackled, but we couldn't use his fingers because the only way I was dealing with the roughness of surface hair was by using a relatively large brush.
I MUST CREATE was two lines of caps.
But stones are deep in admiration was what Ursula wanted written on her arm, until I asked how much skin she wanted to devote to it. Then she thought it over, and came back to have me write RIGHT HAND on her left wrist, with an arrow, in brown. What a troublemaker. I mean it in a good way of course. I have enough trouble remembering which hand is attached to which word without confusing the issue.

ecriture feminine was what I wrote on brisingamen's arm a couple of days later, so she could have critical theory Written On The Body. We both got a big charge out of this. Reification! yes!
I am always WRITING writing is how I test out my brush and paints on my own left arm, from Gertrude Stein of course, and
do not let your giraffes catch fire is what I write upside-down in a big bookhand on my right leg. I can't reach far enough to make footnotes, or I would cite some surrealist.

A Body of Text.

This is a test, only a test. Someone over on the handmadebooks community asked if I had any website or whatever. Short answer, no. So I went and disentangled from privacy filters some image scans that I had uploaded to the Yahoo album site:

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/jaeleslie/lst?.dir=/pages&.view=t

The first half of these are a broadside and page openings from a 4"x5" stitched book I made last year; the second half are a calligraphic series mostly on handmade paper that I made last month (which were in the WisCon art show). Next up, must get more organized about how to present these things.