Can I finish a decent-sized bangle on a tight deadline? Apparently yes. But it's about all I did between sleeping and working.
I found out that my first Resist Statement bangle (in red) was accepted to Handweavers Guild of America's Small Expressions Exhibit. Which means it will be traveling this June 2026 through July 2027. I have had the Rainbow Resist Bangle in mind, and another juried exhibit that I wanted to enter a Resist Bangle into....due by May 14th. I was dragging my feet creating this one thinking that I wouldn't get into Small Expressions and I'd just submit the red one to the next event... the universe had other plans.
I started this one on May 10th and finished it on the 13th. Four days of only beading in the morning and evening around work...and on my lunch break. I usually just knit on my lunch since I only take a half hour, but in this case, every bead counts!
I considered having Resist repeated on this bangle like I did on the first one. I initially chose to design this rainbow one with the word once so that it wouldn't take as long to bead. The more I have to pay attention to a pattern (I graph these out myself), the longer it takes with more potential for mistakes and backtracking. At first, I chastised myself for being lazy only beading Resist once, but ultimately, I like it better than if Resist was beaded out twice. I think it would have gotten WAY too busy looking really quick.
I got the bangle done, photographed and submitted in time, so we'll see if this one gets to travel too. I like having one of these around. My subtle commentary on how I'm feeling every single day right now. As I make more, I imagine them piling up together as its own little protest in my studio and around the house. What color(s) to do next...
I am always changing and learning about
myself and I process that through my artwork. Lately I have been
struggling with the world at-large which makes it difficult for me to
focus on my larger works, so I do what's most comfortable, bead.
Distilling my words to exactly how I'm feeling or reacting helps with
my daily processing. Angry Angry Angry Feminist [literally] speaks
for itself and where I am at right now.
I was going to submit my Feminist Statement Bangle to a fiber art call-for-entry, but I wanted the submission to be a bit more robust. Like, tell me how you really feel. So I quietly show my hand [arm] and gauge whether someone is worth talking to, with my guard up. I know how I feel, and have always felt, I go on about this in the Blog Post for the first Feminist Statement Bangle so I'll leave my soapbox in the corner for this post.
Life is good in the little bubble of our house with my husband, 3 cats, turtle and our creativity and love. I'm trying to be kind and patient day by day. This is what's going on inside my head when things get a bit off-kilter.
In the past I suppose I'd considered myself on the outskirts of feminism. I never had a good grasp of it. I was raised being told the common misconceptions, like, feminism was trying to dismantle the "traditional" family structure and it was making it so women "had" to work instead of "finding a man to take care of you." These things never sat right with me first place, I didn't like the idea of trying to find a man to take care of me, nor was I impressed with the married-with-2.5-kids gig. I remember saying out loud for the first time on a family camping trip at 14 or 15 that I never wanted to have children. It's not that I didn't like kids, it only seemed like I had better things to do than raise a human that will likely be as angry and depressed as I was. Also, frankly, dating never felt like a long-term commitment. I struggled with maintaining any relationships, even friendships, I wasn't ever sure marriage was going to go well for me.
Fast forward to 28 years later, I have accidentally found myself on a feminist journey. It started with the book In Defense of Witches; The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial by Mona Chollet. I wasn't paying attention to the description in the book suggestions and thought I had stumbled upon another fantasy book and I needed a break from the self help books. What came through my ear buds via audio book was a description of how I have felt and been treated my whole life. When I've said I don't want to have kids (for as long as I can remember) I'm met with the response "you'll change your mind one day" or the assumption from men that I dated that obviously every woman wants [their] babies so I wasn't taken seriously. I too wanted to have the same rights as men and hated being treated like I I should want to be a mother/homemaker.
So here I am, learning about 1970's feminism in my 40s, not the bullshit 1990's "girl power" I grew up with. Now I'm angry that these ideas have been around my whole life and I just didn't know about it or have access to it. This all would have made so much sense to 15-year-old-me and it would have been helpful to hear other women talking and writing about being independent and doing whatever they wanted or needed to do with their lives despite social expectations. I listened to In Defense of Witches a second time. Then Gloria Steinem's book My Life on the Road then the compilation book of 50 Years Of Ms. I subscribed to Ms. magazine and ordered 2 past magazines (Ms. has past prints available) that would have come out when I was in high school to help out teenage-me. I have found that I am definitely a feminist and I'm playing catch up.
Feminism is the blanket I've been wrapping myself in lately, it's mixing in well with my angry-punk mode. I decided the next Statement Bangle once I finished Resistwould be Feminist. I've rejected the color pink off and on throughout my life due to what it represented. Ms. magazine uses a bright pink and lot, I decided it was the best start as far as color choices. I matched it with gunmetal for pop but also to keep the statement bold along with an assertive font.
I didn't know how much I'd be drawn to wearing it, the answer is, all the time. I'm wearing it as often as I wear my Golden Boundary bangle. The vibe is pretty interchangeable these days.
Feminist Bangle with the 1990's Ms. magazines I ordered.
I think this bangle speaks for itself. My artwork, or me for that matter, haven't had a tendency to be political. I work with words that I need to release, that I'm pondering, journaling, struggling with. Lately my words, emotions, fears and sadness have very much revolved around the current political landscape. (I just moved a lot of ranting to my journal rather than posting it here...).
Sticking to speaking technically, I'm thrilled at how well this font translated into my bangle form. I am even more thrilled at how much the shadow added to the design. I was searching for color ideas relating to "resist" and the drop shadow showed up in a few fists-up resist images so I added it in to my design.
Red seemed like the obvious starting point for this first Resist bangle, I believe there will be more and other colors to come.
I toyed with how much of the red I should fill in the top over the "R" and up to the dot on the "i." Ultimately I just kept beading until I got really bored of stitching red beads and checked with Bryan to see if he thought the little bit of the dot in the i looked OK sticking up. I like it, it's just a little blip up, short enough that it won't catch on things making it much easier to wear.
I didn't expect to start beading and finish this bangle on our short trip to Chicago at the beginning of this month but it was done in like 2 days. That doesn't include the designing and picking out beads but that's still a really quick turnover for me on a bangle this size whos pattern doesn't repeat. A 4 hour train ride and quiet, comfortable hotel can do wonders for my production.
After creating my "nope." (Golden Boundary) bangle last year I realized it's time to start putting my word themes into my beaded jewelry. Then it dawned on me...statement bangles....why it took me 20 years to put that one together...
I've been called resilient repeatedly in the past 7ish years. It finally started to sink in. The more things thrown my way, the better I bounce back stronger both mentally and physically. I'm in a good place these days (thanks to my golden boundary and sobriety). Resilience has become a clear theme for me. So I created a big bold Bauhaus version of this bangle.
I think the font translated well. I find playing with fonts in all of my work to be really fun. When I was thinking of what colors to use I thought maybe greens was a good starting point and when I asked Bryan what color he thought of when he thinks of Resilience, he said green too which solidified the color direction for this first bangle. I already feel like making another one in different colors, probably a rainbow direction.
Bryan and I in Chicago
I Voted for Kodos, Cobra Lounge, Chicago
This bangle was finished just before a test in our resilience. It's been a crazy 3ish weeks. It started with a short trip to Chicago for 3 days for an I Voted for Kodos show, a fun little getaway. We stayed in the West Loop and liked the Sonder hotel set up so much that we also booked it for Riot Fest in September. I managed to come home drained and super sick, so on Thursday after getting what I needed to get done in my department I left work early to sleep. Bryan woke me up around 10:30pm to see if I wanted to eat and while we were eating a yummy marinated grilled chicken that he had made a weather warning and tornado sirens started. Before we really got going to grab cats and get to the basement, a HUGE boom and crash happened. I was so sick and out of it that I didn't realize at first that a tree had come through our dining room window. Like 8 feet from where we were sitting on the couch. Lois shot down into the basement and we had to go find the boys (kitties). My impulse was to start dealing with the tree situation but I made myself go to the basement to wait out whatever damage was going to happen.
Tree in our dining room window
Tree from the outside the next day
When the warnings stopped we kept the cats in the basement and started to figure out what to do next. We had a tree come through the window and a tree next to it come down on our cars. I got on the phone (on hold for forever) with our insurance company while we cleaned up the window, glass and cut back the tree. Our insurance company set us up with ServPro for disaster relief, they were over first thing in the morning looking everything over and getting approval to have the immediate issues taken care of. The tree company made it out in the afternoon and removed the tree from the window and off our cars. Miraculously our cars were mostly unscathed and working. The tree guy took a peek at our back yard and said he hadn't seen anything that bad since 2023. With the privacy fence (and yes, all my doors) crushed and fallen, we've met our next door neighbors (they've only been there 2 years) and are sorting out what to do next.
So many trees and branches down...
I'm thankful everything was triaged quick enough to make sure our cars were good and we made it to the Devin Townsend and Tesseract show in Detroit that we've had tickets for since December. We were tired, but it was VERY worth making it to this concert.
We have a long way to go to get the back yard cleaned up and figure out what insurance will be taking care of and getting our own quotes to put the house and back yard together. Just one more project, which is turning into a bit of a creative project. The problem with two creatives trying to clean up a fallen forest of a large yard is there's a lot of "look at how cool this log ended up with the bark peeled off" and "check out this cool stick!"...there is a cool stick pile and cool log pile started. I'm sure there will be more to come on that.
