When he said, ‘surprise them” and “spice things up,’ of course I led him to the beard oil. All three of them liked strong scents, but lately he just felt like something was missing in the kissing. So, all those small animals he killed was his way of trying to improve his smell, but, of course, the neighborhood couldn’t tolerate any eventual assault on their pets. I introduced him to all the scents I had in stock. He sampled patchouli, Happiness (a citrus blend), Rose, Lavender and Vanilla, Daddy (a version of Smoke and Leather), Dusk (a spicy musk) and Bergamot Bear (green tea and elderberries). He liked them all. And eventually decided to rub some of all of them in different areas. He said his mates would then get to rediscover him in stages all over his body. I smiled at his thoughtfulness. Finally, like a good friend and his first hairdresser would, i suggested some hair gel which he used to turn his hair into waves of black meringue. When he was finished, I gave him a variety pack of scents in a small bag. ‘They’re gonna love you, ‘ I told him. He grinned, and walked out into the night, his fur radiating a whole summer of desire.
Contrary to popular belief, unicorns are not hung up about your sexual status. I know we’ve been taught that only people who are sexually “pure”…a “virgin” … can get near them. That’s a bunch of hogswaller. Unicorns, like any magical creature, want to feel safe with you. They detect kindness, not virginity. Some old religious dudes who were frightened of the powers of women and sex decided they would make this unicorn a judge of the goodness of people based on their own stringent rules about sex and the body. They quarantined this beauty behind a fence of abstinence to keep the joy of your own body away from you. Look at me in this moment. She doesn’t care about whom I’ve loved, or slept with, or played with, or enjoyed… she just wants fresh mangoes. And she will make Ugly Mouth and Happy Eyes and come right to you just to have them. She will be your best friend because you gave her something she loved, not because you denied yourself something you would love.
Sometimes we just want to connect to someone, reach out and touch them. We are so afraid of being rejected, though, of making someone scared of us. We crawl back into our hiding places and lay low. Tonight I pull out The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, one of my favorite books. It’s about reaching out in your isolation. And I give it a good read out loud—not trying to pressure him, but give him the space and comfort of a voice to know I’m here, and I’m not afraid of him. No one should be afraid to reach out when they are lonely. And slowly, as I read about Mole and Rat and Badger who meet and become friends, that hand that just wanted to say, I am here, I am always here, stays on my arm till I finish a chapter and then slips back down as I turn off the light.
Well what was I going to do? Disappoint a whole nest of Vampires? So I got out my facepaints (I keep a set in the glove compartment of the truck) and set up a little booth. I mean, they’d all been through Halloween for centuries and not one of them had gotten their face painted? You should have seen their excited pale faces lean up to my brush and hear them say, “Oh, I want a Luna moth.”
You are cordially invited to “The Further (Queer) Adventures of Yukon Cornelius,” a solo art show by artist Jerome Stueart, reimagining the boisterous red-bearded prospector from the 1964 Christmas special, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” as a gay man whose whole life is helping monsters, “Hiddens,” adapt to the world of people around them. This exhibit of giant-sized acrylic paintings and smaller watercolor paintings examines queer life and issues through the lens of monsters and heroes. Stueart, a World Fantasy Award nominee in Short Fiction, has written stories to go with some of the paintings which you can read through QR codes on the paintings or hear in a reading Sunday afternoon as part of an artist’s talk. Yukon Cornelius was created by Romeo Muller and is in the public domain. A special wall will celebrate Muller, a gay Jewish writer who penned many well-known, well-beloved movies. Event is FREE and open to the public. Light refreshments served. Mature Content.
Thursday night: Soft opening 7:00-8:30pm Formal Opening: Friday night, Dec. 16 ~ 6pm to 8:30pm Light refreshments! Come join me!
Saturday, Dec. 17 ~ 12-5pm ~ Gallery is open! Sunday, Dec. 18 ~ 11-4pm ~ Gallery is open!
Artist talk at 2pm there, but also broadcast on Facebook Live or through ZOOM.
Where: Dayton Society of Artists, 48 High Street (in St. Anne’s Hill, Dayton) with ample parking available across the street.
Note: Stories associated with the paintings will be up on HERE on this website starting December 10, if you want to read stories ahead of the show!
There’s nothing quite like a morning swim with baby kraken. They follow me even in the bay, swimming out of the protection of the Atlantic and their mothers. They are adventurous and playful and bigger far than me, and while their tentacles wrap around my leg occasionally, they don’t pull me down. This one has already been tormenting local fishermen, drumming on the bottom of their boats, reaching for their nets. They’re too frightened of her to do much but take pictures, so for now she’s relatively safe. Eventually, she’ll learn to love the depths even more than the surface. You can only be fascinated by something that isn’t for you until you find the things that are for you. Loud frantic fishermen out of reach won’t seem as interesting once she hangs out more with the cool sleek creatures of the deep.
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Here begins the “The Further (Queer) Adventures of Yukon Cornelius,” the series of paintings I did reimagining the prospector from the Rankin/Bass 1964 Christmas Special, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” written by Romeo Muller as a gay man whose life is helping “Hiddens” (the world calls them Monsters) adapt to the often fearful Humans around them. It’s a chance for me to write about queer issues through monsters and heroes. There are about 45 of these, I believe. The solo art show happens Dec 16, 6pm EST at the Dayton Society of Artists, 48 High Street, Dayton OH. I’ll try and create a video of the show before we have to take it down so I can have a record of the show as it was up.
You’ll notice that the text under the pictures gets longer and longer as we go. I’m a short story writer… so these excerpts just started forming into stories.
I’ve just been to my second virtual convention. I went to SFWA’s Nebula Convention and now World Fantasy Convention. I enjoyed both. The first is an industry convention, focused on writers as professionals–so the focus is on contracts, agents, as well as craft; the second more a fan-run, but fan and author centered convention more about what is being published, talking about great stories you’ve read, and working with themes of that particular convention.
I used to go to about three conventions a year— World Fantasy, Can-Con, SFWA/Nebulas, and maybe AWP, sometimes. I’ve been to one WorldCon, a couple of smaller local conventions–Confluence, and Philcon. I did this to see friends, but mostly I did them as a professional writer–someone wanting to get better at writing, meet other writers, get to know publications, publishers, editors and agents that I might like to work with. Friends are a benefit of going to the cons. They are often a lot of fun too. But fun is expensive too.
Sometimes it came from my own pocket. Sometimes I had department money (when I was a lecturer or sometimes as an adjunct teacher). Sometimes I was helped out by Yukon funding–through CITF (the Cultural Industries Training Fund, which allowed artists to go outside the Yukon [Territory in Canada] to receive training). Each of these conferences was expensive in its own way. Travel, hotel, food were all the same—near $1000 these days, but higher when I lived in the Yukon (travel to get out and back to the Yukon was $500–and that was only to 6 major cities at the time, so + more to get farther), and varied registration costs, some lower, which helped some of the smaller cons be more affordable.
I always had a great time, though! I always made new friends and had experiences and memories I will keep with me forever.
But there are virtues to Virtual Cons, and I want to talk about that.
Virtual cons are completely online, and have the same programming and panels–and many of the same features–as a F2F conference. They usually have spaces for panels, for readings, and bar/patio lingering. And John Scalzi has deejayed two dance parties for SFWA already. These cons are usually held on Zoom (or Crowdcast–which uses Zoom). They last as long as F2F conventions. So–much is very similar, content wise. How do they stack up to F2F conventions?
The Virtue of Virtual Conventions
— Cost efficient (conventions are often $1000 with flights, hotels, meals, and registration) reduced to $150 or lower just to attend from your bedroom at home.
— ADA accessible –those with mobility issues or accessibility needs can go to these conventions because they don’t have to face travel, hotels and convention spaces that are often not accommodating to their needs
Hairy Fairies in the gardens! The Gardens of the Mythbegotten, my current name for this little bit of joy and peace in the midst of 2020 chaos, is the Patreon place where I create small watercolor paintings of fairies playing and misbehaving and having a great time. Occasionally satyrs, Minotaurs, centaurs join them…. and it’s light hearted. I sell the paintings, and I also have really cool incentives to stay in the gardens for awhile.
Leaf-Surfing!
Here are some of the things you can get:
All the photos of my paintings as they are completed. You’ll see them first before I post them on Facebook or Squarespace or Redbubble so that if you want to buy one, you can. You get first choice.
Process photos—how I make them and what my thoughts were going into the painting.
Little meditations on art (famous art, but also my friends’ art because they deserve some cool essays AND you get to find out about art you might not know about that is deserving a look!
Weekly Tarot for Creators—a spread of cards for your week as a creator, with enough to inspire your work, OR to give you a head’s up about the week AS a creator. What energies are there for you as a creator?
At some levels you get a card mailed to you every month, a print, of one of the paintings.
Time-lapse videos of a painting
Stickers!
Stories about the Gardens with new illustrations
T-shirts, mugs, buttons!
Commissioned pieces!
These gardens are queer friendly, racially diverse, age diverse, and body diverse, and sex positive. While there are no depictions of sex happening—the often nude bodies and playfulness of characters suggest it happens.
For $1 a month, you can have my pictures emailed to you, and the other tiers are affordable for so much garden goodies! Check out the Patreon and see what’s happening in the Garden!
Summer 2020 has been difficult. With layoffs, festivals canceled, limited teaching, I’ve found it harder to make money, but I have been keeping busy. I’ve been learning new skills in watercolor painting, taken classes in figure drawing and fiction, painted acrylic paintings, started a work out program, ended a workout program, quit art school, started a new program at a different school, taught kids how to write online, watched a lot of great online discussions from authors, started doing small watercolor paintings, opened a patreon—and built about five websites! LOL.
I also took my interest in tarot cards to another level, training with classes from a well known, experienced Tarot Card Reader, The Tarot Lady, Theresa Reed.
And now I’ve started doing readings so that I can become better.
The official site is BIG BEAR TAROT and you can check it out at that link.
I will always find the cards fascinating. I love the symbols and the way the symbols create a narrative out of your situation. As a fiction writer and artist–the images and the narrative and symbols appeal to me. I find it fascinating that I can randomly draw three cards from a deck of 78 and be able to talk about the things that are really on my/your mind. I do draw them for myself too… and they help me have a conversation about things I need to think about. I think it is uncanny. I cannot explain it. But I trust it.
I do email readings right now, or I will give you a video if you prefer.
I’m especially hoping to reach out to the queer community, bears, etc. I’ve noticed a lot of my bear friends having it rough emotionally and psychologically. If I can help by being intuitive for them, I want to do that.
I have put my available original artwork on Squarespace. All my watercolors of fairies in the garden, Gardens of the Mythbegotten, and all the Yukon Cornelius paintings as well as my more controversial paintings of police action in Columbus.
Bear Witness 