Secret Weirdo

By Lauren Barnett

Well, for a twenty-page minicomic that is filled with embarrassing stories about childhood, cat police, imaginary adventures, and an opening page offering “free hugs,” artist Lauren Barnett definitely set herself up for a difficult task. One of her biggest pet peeves as a female artist is having her comics be called cute. “I think ‘cute’ is a terrible way to describe someone’s work,” she exclaims in one of the first frames.

Besides the political cry for gender equality in the artistic community in the first few pages, Secret Weirdo is an eclectic collection of stories (or rather confessions) about the artist’s endeavors as a secret weirdo. Barnett’s comical, autobiographical telling of her obsessive entrepreneurial ventures as a child, unusual birthday present request, sick day science experiment with a frozen egg, kleptomania, and more are interrupted by imaginative pages with the Cat Police and imaginary Adventures of Master Driver and Navigirl—alter egos perhaps?

What most attracts me to her style is the lack of pretentiousness in her art. The cover is a gorgeous abstract watercolor that is both lovely and haunting; the inside frames are made up of simple, flat, black and white line drawings, messy bubbles, and scribbled text that give it what one reviewer noted as a "draw now, ask questions later" style, almost as if she is making it up as she goes along.

While her comics might seem cute superficially, there is clearly a darker, deeper level to her appropriated cute imagery; her “adorable” childhood stories are intersected with short, anxiety-filled frames about adulthood: debt, apartment searches, the dangers of diet soda. These glimpses into her personal, intimate realm are quickly interrupted by embarrassed sarcasm, or more Secret Weirdo stories from childhood, because the reality is far too daunting to dwell on. It leaves the reader wishing for more of this darkness, but still leaving us with the knowledge that there is something else behind the 'cuteness'.

In short, even though the stories are oddly specific and personal, the ambition, sarcasm, curiosity, anxiety, and nostalgia of a child and young woman resonated with me strongly, and I recommend this minicomic to other adults and teens that can handle the occasional F-bomb and sarcasm. Also, although the styles and content are completely different, I enjoyed Secret Weirdo for the same autobiographical, humorous, deeply personal snippets of Erika Moen’s DAR! Comic, so if you like Barnett’s work, read some of this, too!

Review by Abigail Chance

The Love Ceiling

By Jean Davies Okimoto
Endicott & Hugh Books

As I started to write the review for this book, I realized that this is one of two books I have recently read about artists, more specifically painters—The Danish Girl being the other book that centered on artists/painters. I found the story of The Love Ceiling intriguing because the protagonist is a sixty-four-year-old wife, mother, and daughter of a famous artist father and long suffering Japanese-American mother who has recently passed away from cancer. Like many women of the so-called sandwich generation, Anne Kuroda Duppstadt has finally given herself permission to pursue her passion—that of becoming a painter—when she finds herself once again tending to the needs of her family: her thirty-two-year-old daughter moves home after discovering that her partner, Richard, has been cheating on her with a colleague at the hospital where he’s a resident, and Anne’s husband is not handling his impending retirement well and struggles with bouts of depression. This leads her to reach the conclusion at a certain point in the novel that “there is a glass ceiling for women... and it’s made out of the people we love.” Amidst all of this, Anne finally finds the courage to stand up to her domineering father, a man who demands center stage at all times and told her many years ago that she didn’t have what it takes to be a real artist.

I’m not sure why this is the case, but I rarely have the opportunity to read a book that features a sixty-four-year-old protagonist. Being a forty-something single woman, I wasn’t sure I would relate to this character, but I found myself immediately drawn into her feistiness, sense of humor, and honesty that is revealed as the reader progresses through the novel. I also enjoyed the author’s description of the natural beauty of the surroundings through the eyes of an artist (Anne is a gifted landscape artist). Painting with words came to my mind as I was reading this book.

I also had to admit to myself that I made the mistake of assuming that the internal life of a sixty-four-year-old wouldn’t be as interesting a read as that of a younger person, but that was definitely not the case. I found myself inspired by Anne’s character as well as that of an older female artist she meets at an artists’ workshop that she enrolls in to reclaim her dream of being an artist. In that sense, reading this book was also an educational experience for me because it challenged my assumptions about what it is to be an older woman in our society—that no matter how old you are, you can still be a vibrant, active participant in life.

My only criticism of the book is that one scene involving dialogue between Anne’s daughter and a friend in a coffee shop stood out as somewhat superfluous and unnecessary to the story line. Other than that, I found The Love Ceiling to be an excellent read. The book made me realize that sometimes it may take a lifetime to confront the demons of our past, but if life is a journey, it’s not how long it takes you to reach these epiphanies, but what you learn along with way.

Review by Gita Tewari

Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound

By Tara Rodgers
Duke University Press

I was about fifteen years old when PinkNoises.com started up. I was very involved in riot grrrl music, so perhaps it's no surprise that I liked a website specifically dedicated to women in electronic music. The DIY section was my particular favorite because it was the first time I had seen a music tutorial specifically written for amateur female artists. This section was full of information and resources, while being simple and direct. Creativity and experimentation were emphasized. Not only was I capable of creating my own music, but was also encouraged to.

The writer of this content—as well as the rest of the Pink Noises website—was Tara Rodgers. After years of performing and researching, she came out with a book by the same name. Much like her website, the book encourages the creativity and capabilities of women in electronic music. Tara interviewed twenty-four different female artists; a diverse collection of electronic musicians, sound artists, composers, DJs, remixers, and performance artists. The end result is a book heavily, wonderfully saturated with facts, ideas, and experiences.

On the flip side, I wish this book came with a CD featuring one song from each artist interviewed. However, there are lists of female artists and websites at the end of the book. Also, I felt my eyes glazing over some of the interviews. Though I admired women
who were rich with technical knowledge and musical theory, I need to revisit their ideas when I have more musical experience. There is a helpful glossary of terms in the back of the book for those of us still learning.

Other interviews struck chords in me that had never been validated before. For instance, noticing that I shared a similar, basic upbringing of music as they did; we loved music growing up, took a few years of an instrument in school, joined a band, quit the band. Many of these women experienced sexism and unreliability of other performers while in rock bands. I kept seeing interviewees mention that electronic music is a great way to be creative without having to suffer misogyny or flakiness of others.

Creativity without bad attitudes? Sounds like a dream come true! Well, it is for the most part. Unfortunately, we still have the sexism of the electronic music industry to deal with. For example, most people probably envision a man wearing headphones and a hooded sweatshirt when they hear the phrase "electronic musician." This is a shame; Pink Noises clearly demonstrates women of all stripes as electronic musicians, many of whom have been creating for decades.

While some of the interviewed musicians reported positive community and good resources, others felt the blow of not having their work taken seriously or being excluded from electronic music magazines, events, and other outlets. It's no wonder that many female electronic musicians take up androgynous names or wear masks while performing. Both of these factors help demonstrate the artist's personal identity to their audience. However, I feel as though some female artists may also be conjuring Joan of Arc in order to be taken seriously.

In the book's introduction, Rodgers touches base on the history of electronic music. She notes that electronic music's beginnings stem from war. She writes that "amplification and recording technologies emerged directly from wartime expenditures or were funded for their potential military applications." The earliest electronic music piece, "The Art of Noises" (1913), is a "bold celebration" of "machines, modern industry, and war." Even the terminology of electronic music refers to war; "executes" a programming "command," DJs "battle," computer "crash."

Considering an industry with early war associations and plagued with sexism today, it's no wonder that there are so few women involved. Pink Noises succeeds in immortalizing a talented, diverse collection of female artists, as well as encouraging women to get involved in creating for themselves.

Review by Jacquie Piasta

The Woodmans

Directed by C. Scott Willis
C. Scott Films



The prize-winning documentary The Woodmans chronicles the histories of a family of artists through conversations, monologues, journals, and both fine art photographs and family snapshots. The film’s narrative, from its start with the marriage of George and Betty Woodman to its finish with their lives today, is marked by their daughter, photographer Francesca Woodman, whose reputation has skyrocketed in the decades after her suicide in 1981 at twenty-three years of age.

After the Tribeca Film Festival screening, director C. Scott Willis, unfamiliar with the art world before the project, told how he met the Woodmans socially. They told him they were the parents of the famous photographer, and Willis made the embarrassing error of asking if their daughter would mind talking to his daughter, who was studying photography. Out of that situation and the Woodmans’ account of what had happened, Willis was inspired to make The Woodmans.

“Why did Francesca jump off a building?” while never voiced, and positioned as one question among many, is addressed in the pained, incomplete way suicide is usually discussed. There is no “interviewer” or even unifying message or theme, just unobtrusive aesthetic shaping of the movement forward of lives.

Francesca’s precocity—many of her photographs were made in her teens—is attributed in the film to her immersion in art as she was growing up. However, the film underplays the centrality of sexuality to her and most women’s lives (Francesca experienced a romantic break-up before her death) and ignores the sexual politics of the declining women’s movement, which coincided with Francesca’s adolescence.

Since both George and Betty have been artists all their lives, there is necessarily much about their making of art. The parental Woodmans speak loftily of exhibiting to a wider public, but there’s material here for an indictment of the art world: the winner-take-all reward system, the commodification of artistic product (Francesca’s photographs financed tuition for a collector’s children), and the competition among artist friends and, yes, family. Yet, the background of well-appointed studios and a house with a pool in Italy could fuel enough lifestyle lust to gentrify numerous bohemias.

Francesca, who with little success tried commercial fashion photography and worked as a photographic assistant, does “talk” about money through a chorus of friends and her fashion photographs. Indeed, her parents bicker about whether being rejected for a National Endowment of the Arts grant contributed to her suicide. (George does mention that his father “helped the couple financially” but disapproved of his son’s marriage to a Jewish woman.) In a film about questions, some fall away in the family drama.

Yes, artists will find much to like in this film—sumptuous art, the quotidian discipline and physicality of art-making, a compelling score by David Lang—but the film also has much for feminists to ponder about the choice to parent.

The mother, Betty, emerges as the hero, directly addressing the responsibilities of mothering as they intersect with the self. She wanted to “experience” childbirth and mothering, but was terror struck when presented with her infant son, Charlie, Francesca’s older brother, who became a videographer; Betty says baldly, “Maybe I’ve been an absolutely horrible mother.”

She made her pots, used in the household but not to be broken, behind the family house while mothering young children. (Avoiding interruptions presents a challenge for any parent, or anyone, working at home.) Visiting art museums, the Woodmans habitually set the children loose with pads for copying art, while they looked at art uninterrupted. When Betty talks about her daughter, she seems more mother than artist. In contrast, George admits that his daughter’s intensity was what made her interesting to him. Originally an abstract painter, he is now working in photography. Near the end, Betty becomes the triumphant artist, when a commission is installed in the American embassy in Beijing.

The Woodmans started with a faux pas and records a generous baring of lives and scars. Finding answers is left for the audience—like life, or art.

Review by Frances Chapman