jaeleslie

I didn't do much writing on people at the conference this year. However I did take the body paints along. I painted on Brenda, who runs the onsite art supply store, Paper & Ink, and her daughter Jane. Brenda never gets to go to any events because she is busy keeping the store open until all hours, and last year she missed it when I wrote on lots of people, which I was sorry about. It took a couple of days for her to decide on a word she wanted on her arm: Delight. Her daughter Jane chose Wonder. (As long as I had the gear along I wrote on my own arm "I am always writing writing" as usual, Gertrude Stein doncha know). It turned out that these particular arms were a pretty high-profile location to place my writing, since everybody hangs out between events in the dealers' room looking at art supplies and stuff. And as it turned out someone took a photo of Brenda's arm that was shown in the slideshow at the closing ceremony, that I missed because I was crashed out on a sofa upstairs.

For the participants' exhibit, which is an annual feature of the conference, I took a bunch of stuff, which I assembled the first day into a display on a large piece of pale green paper, attached to the wall with amongst everybody else's stuff with lots of sellotape and thumbtacks. People at the calligraphy conference often write in decorative fashion about the power of literacy and the alphabet, but I wanted to show what I do with my calligraphy as a contribution to my community, besides making things that hang on the wall for sale. Of course I had to include an explanatory gallery note on the distinction between the two different kinds of FANWRITING I was thus boldly presenting to an unfannish audience. Writing By Fans: The calligraphic artwork for Chunga that I had been working on just before I left -- a quote from Dunsany, appearing someday Real Soon in mailboxes near you -- and a copy of the earlier issue Chunga 6 in which I had made titles for Randy's TAFF report; and Writing On Fans, a lot of photos from WisCon of the people I wrote on there. For explanatory purposes, I called this "Bodypaint on friends at WisCon (feminist science-fiction convention at Madison WI in May 2004), as fundraiser for authors' website Broad Universe". That's it in brief: it was a small gallery card.

By the end of the week I found out that the person sitting next to me in class reads SF, with a particular interest in alternative gender roles, and had heard of the Tiptree Award though not of WisCon; and two people in my class were fascinated with my explanation of the gift ethic of traditional fanzines and asked particularly to be on my mailing list. Hmm. Must send them email with LiveJournal link.