Back on Wednesday

by Ariela

Terri and I are in the throes of the final day of Arisia and expect to be Ded of Con this evening. We will be back on Wednesday with our January product release.

Ariela is a bit drained.

Will we see you at Arisia?

by Ariela

Arisia Logo

For the first time since the official founding of Geek Calligraphy, Terri and I will both be at the same con! We will both be attending Arisia later this week, January 13-16 at the Westin Boston Waterfront.

Much of our website inventory will be hanging in the Art Show, so if you have had your eye on a piece of art but didn't want to pay shipping, stop in and see if one is to be had! While all the prints on our site come matted, some will come framed at the art show. There is also a bonus, con-only piece.

We can't fit one of everything or all sizes of everything in the show, but we will have a bunch of stock with us that isn't hung. Please tweet at us @GeekCalligraphy or text us at 805-399-2244 if you would like to ask if we have something not on display. Be aware that we will not answer on Friday night or Saturday until 6:30pm, though, due to Sabbath observance. (Arisia's art show gets its money from panel fees rather than commissions, so we are not shorting the con any money. We wouldn't do that.)

Con Schedule

Mark your schedules!

I will be sitting on a number of panels at Arisia this year.

Friday, 8:30 PM:  Practical Considerations for Costumers
Room: Douglas (3W)
Panel # 310
Our panel of veteran costumers talk about everything from pockets, to footwear, to how to wear your badge in character. They'll address costume and prop transport and storage, ways to increase your own personal comfort in costume, and safety tips for costuming in crowds.

Saturday, 10:00 AM: Funding Your Muse
Room: Marina 3 (2E)
Panel # 541
We all dream of making a living doing what we love. How do you make your art profitable without losing your inspiration? Several artists who have managed it talk about choosing a direction that satisfies both needs.

Saturday, 1:00 PM: Judaism's Influence on SFF
Room: Adams (3W)
Panel # 621
Jewish theology and culture permeates science fiction across all mediums. What effect has Judaism had on the development of SF/F and fandom in general?

Saturday, 10:00 PM: Consulting & Contracting:How To Make (For) Money
Room: Marina 3 (2E)
Panel # 533

Sunday, 10:00 AM: Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make Fantasy
Room: Marina 2 (2E)
Panel # 172
From Susan Pevensie's lipstick to fan-hate for Sansa Stark, feminine characters often get shortchanged by fantasy authors and fans alike, losing out in comparison with the Strong Female Protagonist archetype. Why does this happen? Which feminine characters manage to succeed against this stereotype? Is the trend changing, and why?

There are Friday Night Services at Arisia this year that are open to anyone who wishes to attend. They will be held at 5:30pm in Alcott (3W). We will both be in attendance.

And you can always tweet at us (we just won't be looking at Twitter from Friday afternoon to Saturday at 5:30pm).

Can't wait to see you there!

ETA: The official Art Show Opening reception will be at 10pm on Friday night, and we will both be there, wearing green and purple to match our company colors. Come say hi!

Year in Review

by Terri & Ariela

"Well, that was interesting*." ~ Just About Everyone

It's been a year. There were plenty of highs and just about as many lows. We released 14 products, discovered that Ariela is eligible to be nominated for awards (more on that later), did our best to keep Combover Caligula out of the White House (didn't succeed on that one).

Picture shows chibi Terri and chibi Ariela toasting with champagne flutes. Terri is giving the thumbs up.
Not pictured is the next frame, where Ariela is passed out after drinking half a glass of champagne.

Some important numbers from Geek Calligraphy in 2016:

• Got our 1st business license (in Chicago, you need to renew every two years, so this is the first of many)
• Launched 1st ecommerce website
• Launched social media presence on 3 platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr
• Released 14 new products since launch
• Donated items to 2 charities, raising a total of $196
• Hung art in 4 art shows in 3 states
• Ariela started scribing her 1st sacred text (Megillat Ester/Scroll of Esther)

We now have 14 art prints, 8 greeting cards, 5 ketubah designs, 3 miscellaneous Judaica products, and several small add-ons.

When Ariela was first signing up for our website platform (we use SquareSpace because of our ketubah form needs), she was debating between two service packages, one which allowed a maximum of 20 products and a more expensive one that allowed for unlimited items. We're rather thrilled that we need the latter.

Before the nomination period for the 2016 Hugo Awards closed (back in March), Terri noticed something very interesting. Well, first off she noticed that the Artist categories delineated by the Hugos were rather antiquated and no longer reflect the SF/F art landscape. But in her examination of the categories she realized that because our art has been shown at convention art shows, Ariela is eligible for the Best Fan Artist** award. Due to yet another instance of #Puppygate, a last minute campaign did not get enough nominating ballots to put Ariela on the list. We are hoping that in 2017, the air will clear some. 

Since Geek Calligraphy art has been hung in convention art shows in 2016, once again Ariela is eligible to be nominated for the Fan Artist Hugo. If you are in a position to nominate, we hope you will consider her work.

It's been a good first year for Geek Calligraphy, PCA (present circumstances aside).

Our efforts to make the world a better place continue.  While we were blindsided by the results of the election in November, we have both gotten back up and are doing our best to keep fighting. Each of us has our preferred social justice avenues in our private lives, but here at Geek Calligraphy we will continue to make art. We hope it will inspire you, help you feel less alone, and help you to keep getting up each day. And we're gearing up to meet 2017 head-on.

*The sort implied in "may you live in interesting times," or "Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die!"

**"But wait," we're hearing the peanut gallery declare, "Ariela and Terri make money from the art. Doesn't that make Ariela a professional artist?" NOPE! The Pro Artist category requires your art to have appeared in a for-sale print publication (magazine/book cover, book illustrations, etc). This means that you could be making a primary living from art, but unless you've been published that year, you're just a fan. Hence the reference to antiquated categories.***

***TERRI'S NOTE TO SELF: We do not have time/bandwidth to submit a proposal to the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting. We do not have time/bandwidth to submit a proposal to the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting. We do not have time/bandwidth to submit a proposal to the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting. We do not have time/bandwidth to submit a proposal to the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting.

Ariela's Love-Hate Relationship with Her Computer

by Ariela

Surface Pro 2, image courtesy of TechSpot.
It's ... okay ... I guess.

In our comedy of chibis last week, I revealed that I grudgingly use a Surface Pro 2. I feel some amount of shame over this. Between my membership in the graphics community and the tech community, I have been strongly inculcated with scorn for Windows. So this is me justifying my choice publicly, and also griping about the situation that led me to it.

Before I left NYC in 2012, I had an iMac desktop and an Ubuntu laptop. I used the Mac for image processing and the laptop for when I was on the go. I had an Intuos II 4"x5", but I did a lot less imaging then, so the tiny work surface wasn't such a hardship. I'd gotten the iMac secondhand as a discard from my uncle's office when they upgraded, so by the time I moved, the cost of packaging it properly to keep the screen from breaking would have been far greater than the value of the computer. Also, when moving to Chicago I started telecommuting and my day job set me up with a workstation at home, and two desktops for one person seemed ridiculous. So I left the iMac with Terri and went to Chicago with my Ubuntu laptop as my only personal computer.

By the time the laptop began to die, I was convinced that running PhotoShop in WINE wasn't going to cut it for me. While I know GIMP has its enthusiastic supporters, it doesn't work for me and I loath using it. I also wanted to get something with a touch screen, since my tiny Wacom tablet was getting cramped, and I prefered the idea of a display I could work on directly.

I was all set to get an iPad and ditch the laptop entirely until I discovered that iPads can't run the full version of PhotoShop. Print resolution for me is 800 dpi and I sometimes work as large as 18"x24". PhotoShop Express maxes out at 72 dpi and 1000 px x 1000 px. So I abandoned that idea and began looking for computers with touchscreens built in. I didn't want to have to get a box and then also an expensive external display.

With Apple making nothing with a full computer operating system and a touch screen, I began looking at PCs. Reviews quickly made it clear that the most sensitive touch screen was on the Surface Pro line. The Surface Pro 2 had come out a few months before and I decided on that. I named it Yang Guifei, a joke which no one has yet gotten, but pleased me.

It came with Windows 8.1 64-bit, and ... it did what I needed it to do. Which was what I had aimed for, but other than that it had a lot of annoying quirks. It also didn't recognize different levels of pressure from the stylus in PhotoShop, which infuriated me at first, but then I found a driver online that fixed that, and after that, the only problems were those that inveitably resulted from an OS that was trying to be both a laptop and a tablet simultaneously and managing to be neither particularly well. Windows 10 eliminated some of that jankiness (the onscreen keyboard no longer pops up every time I put my mouse in a text field despite having keyboard cover attached), but brought with it all the problems that everyone knows and hates about Windows 10. It still reboots unpredictably for no reason I can find, so I have been inspired to save obsessively, which isn't a bad habit, but I shouldn't have to protect myself from guerilla rebooting. And as with any Windows machine, its primary purpose seems to be to run Windows updates.

My Surface Pro 2 is 3 years old now and is beginning to show its age, so I am starting to watch tech news again to see what I might want to get next time. Apple just unveiled its newest laptops, and still hasn't added a touch screen, which has me and a lot of other graphics people I know scratching our heads. (I remain uninterested in buying a computer and an external touch screen, so AirDisplay and Duet's promise of being able to use an iPad as a touchscreen monitor for another device is not enticing to me at all.) Then, as if we don't already have enough proof that 2016 is the year Normal decided to take a leap out a window, Microsoft came out with the Surface Studio, which has impressed the heck out of most people I have spoken with.

I'm hoping to eke at least another year out of this computer before I have to shell out more money. I'm hoping Apple will release a MacBook Pro Pro with a touchscreen before then, but chances are good that I will wind up with a Surface Pro 5.

A Short Guide to the Artistic Process

by Ariela

It's been a fairly productive year here at Geek Calligraphy. In addition to the launch of our website, we put out 13 new products this year (number 14 to come out in December). We have noticed that our projects all tend to fall into the same pattern. So, we present to you, The Artistic Process of Geek Calligraphy, A Comedy.

Dramatis Personae:
Chibi Ariela - The Artist, identifiable by her black driver's cap with a copper badge.
Chibi Terri - The Manager, identifiable by her purple everything and green eyes.

Stage 1: The Idea

Most of the time, a project starts out like this:

Image shows Ariela and Terri at their respective computers.* Ariela is saying "I have an idea!" and Terri responds "Great, let's put it on the calendar."

*Terri is a Mac user. For her sins, Ariela has a Surface Pro 2 by attrition.

Sometimes, though, Terri is the instigator:

Image shows Terri and Ariela on the phone. Terri says "Have you ever considered doing something with $_idea?" and Ariela responds, "That's really good. I must go do it Right Now!"

Stage 2: The Honeymoon Phase

Most projects start out with starry-eyed idealism, as I am convinced that this project where everything will be perfect.

Image shows Ariela sketching at her drafting table saying to herself "This is going to be the best thing ever. Having so much fun!" Appallingly, she is humming to herself.

Unfortunately, this stage doesn't last.

Stage 3: Reality Intrudes

Image shows Ariela at her drafting table, brow furrowed, saying, "Hmm maybe not quite as easy as I thought."

As with all plans, they don't tend to ever come off exactly as they are on paper. Or, in this case, they don't make it to paper exactly as they were in my mind.

Stage 3 can last a short time or a long time, but it is invariably followed by...

Stage 4: Despair

Image shows Ariela headdesking at the drafting table, eyes squeezed shut, wailing, "I ruined it forever, it sucks, I suck, why did I ever think I could do this, I need to go throw my drafting table out the window..." Terri, in a speech bubble emanating from Ariela's cell phone, says, "Babe, you're done for the night. Have a cup of tea and stay away from the art for a few days." Terri is knitting a rainbow shawl and has her headset in like a sensible person.

Every project has a stage where you get lost in the weeds for a while. When you hit this point, continuing to work through it is frequently a losing proposition. The best thing to do, if you are not on a looming deadline and have the luxury, is step away and do something completely different until something clears out in your brain and you can resume work without whatever brain lactic acid buildup was putting you in a funk. Many artists have to do this for themselves, but if you are lucky you have supportive colleagues or a Trusty Artist Wrangler (TM) like Terri to take the pen or brush from your clutching fingers, take you gently by the shoulders, and propel you away from the art for a while so you can recharge and return.

Stage 5: Determination

Image shows Ariela, looking unenthused, working at her drafting table saying "I guess I haven't ruined it entirely."

After some time away, it's usually possible to come back and resume work, even if it's not quite so enthusiastic as at first.

Stage 6: Fed Up

Image shows exasperated Ariela working at her drafting table saying, "I just want this to be done. I am sick of it."

By the time I am close to finishing a project, usually I am heartily sick of it. Since most of my art maxes out at 18"x24" and four months' active work, I can't even begin to fathom how writers work on a manuscript for so much longer. Writers, I tip my hat to you.

Stage 7: Finish Up

Image shows a resigned Ariela, holding a paper at arm's length, saying, "*Sigh* I guess this is as good as I can get. Or as good as I can stand to make it. Whatever." She has her headset in. Terri also has her headset in and is saying, "Babe, it's fine. No one will see those nitpicks unless you keep pointing them out. She has made progress on her rainbow shawl.

I had a wonderful mentor in my high school English teacher who told me, "Art isn't finished, it gets abandoned." This was wonderful advice, as it gave me, an obsessive perfectionist, permission to stop. I'm never quite good enough to bring something from my head into the world exactly as I see it. I've gotten much better over the years, but it never happens. At some point I say, "Well, I can't stand to look at this anymore, so it will have to be good enough."

Alternate Creative Process

Sometimes the creative process doesn't follow the above pattern. When it does, it goes like this:

Image shows Ariela and Terri at their computers again, much like in Step 1. Ariela says, "I have a great-" and an exasperated Terri cuts her off saying, "No."

Ariela: I just-
Terri: No.
Ariela: But-
Terri: NO.
Terri now has her arms crossed and a vein throbbing in her forehead.

Image shows very peeved looking Terri saying, "You currently have 3 projects in various stages of production. And you had 2 new ideas already this week. Last I checked, you still had a day job, an apprenticeship, a spouse, and a biological need to sleep and go to the bathroom. When were you planning to do this?:"

Image shows Ariela looking sheepish and somewhat downcast saying "Right." Terri responds "Make a note of it and we'll talk about it when your docket clears a bit."

Alas, not every idea can be executed immediately. This would be the reason why Terri sometimes says that her job description is "Artist wrangler and professional killjoy."

Historical note

The above comedy is a dramatization of real persons and events. Liberties have been taken with dialog, order of events, and even the outfits of the people involved (Terri does sometimes wear things that are not purple).

On a more serious note, I am not actually all id when producing art and Terri is not all superego. There's a lot of give and take in the process. Sometimes I take both parts in the process, because, you know, that's what being an adult and a professional artist is about. But I like to outsource as much of the calendaring and reality-checking to Terri whenever possible. It makes it easier for me to maintain a sense of wonder about the art and keeps me from burning out too frequently. It also frees up my time to spend more on the artistic side of the business.

While I could do this without Terri, I am very, very grateful not to have to. For artists who do not have their own Terri, a network of supportive colleagues is crucial, to help you out when you're stuck in the despair of Stage 4 and to remind you that it really is important to say no to some ideas and opportunities.

Finally, while I speak in generalities about The Artistic Process, nothing here will be true for everyone. Your process may be radically different, doesn't make it any less art. I am not Speaker for the Artists.

And if you are an artist who never experiences the despair of Stage 4, please contact me ASAP to tell me what your secret is.

Get Out and Vote

by Ariela

"Vote" written across the Constitution in silver ink

Let's face it. I am not thinking about art today, I am too busy chewing my fingernails off. 

If you are an American citizen and have not yet done your civic duty, please go and vote!

You can probably figure out our political positions based on what we say on this blog, but whether you agree with us or not, we want you to vote and support your right to do so.

So make a plan to vote. (FYI, you cannot vote by text.) Remember that there are local elections and ballot questions up as well as the presidential race. Check out a sample ballot online and do some research on candidates and questions. Learn what to do if your right to vote is challenged. And we will see you on the flip side of the election.

How to Support Artists (Beyond Buying Stuff)

by Ariela

Original art by Allie Brosh - hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
Meme generated by Imageflip.com

Welcome back to week three of Artists' Rights Month at Geek Calligraphy. In week one I pointed out a lot of problems created by the Starving Artist trope, and now I want to provide some solutions.

Buy Stuff

This one should come as no surprise, but one of the best ways to support an artist is to buy their work. Helps us keep the lights on, the rent paid, selves (and families/pets) fed, etc. We like all these things.

Buy our stuff and don't attempt to tell us that we should be charging less. We put time and skilled labor into our work, and we set our prices accordingly. Things that go into how we set our prices include, but are not limited to: the difficulty producing the item in question, how many of them we make and whether the process can be made easier if we make more, cost of materials, cost of living while we produce the item in question. We don't set prices arbitrarily high.

For some kinds of artists, commissions are extra super awesome! If you think you won't be able to afford it, contact the artist and ask. Be up front about your budget and say that you know they may not be able to produce something in your price range, but you wanted to check. Make it clear that you like their work and respect their skill and their time. If they say no, accept gracefully.

But we know that you cannot buy everything all the time. So here are some other ways to help.

Take a Moment to Tell Us You Like It

Creating art can be an exhausting process. Knowing that someone likes it, even if they can't buy it at the moment, can be an enormous pick-me-up. It lets us know that someone sees our stuff and likes it enough to take a moment to send us a kind word.

Repost with Attribution

If you see something awesome posted somewhere you should totally re-blog/retweet/Share on Facebook/whatever, but it will help the originator more if you can do it with attribution. This can be hard, because sometimes you see things posted without attribution in the first place. take a moment and hunt the originator down to give them credit. Links back are also helpful, as they boost search rankings.

Don't Use Images (Audio, Text, Etc.) Without Permission

See something awesome and want to use it for your blog/podcast/website? Contact the creator and ask their permission. If they say they want you to pay for it, do so, or don't use it. If they say they don't want you using it even if you offer to pay, respect their wishes. Photographers in particular are frequent victims of this one as Google has made it super easy to search for any image, right click, and stick it somewhere else. I know it's easy, but don't do it. Be a mensch (a good person) and contact the creator before using their work.

Tell Your Friends

Re-posting our stuff is great, but please, by all means, signal boost with a comment about how much you like it. Gush to your friends. Maybe one of them is looking for exactly what we're doing right now. This is particularly helpful if you can reach a different audience than the one that the artist might already have in their personal network.

Change the Narrative

If you hear someone reinforcing the Starving Artist trope, don't let it go unremarked.  Point out that it is both inaccurate and unhelpful. If you hear someone complaining about how much an artist is charging, not in an "I wish I could afford it" way but in a "How dare they!" way, push back; bonus points if you can do this at work. If you are a creator yourself, portray artists in a variety of circumstances.

Honestly, I feel a bit funny about mentioning this one, as it is so much further down on my list of "Problematic Stuff People Say That Should Be Called Out" than say racism, sexism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, etc. But if you have a moment and some spare emotional energy and see the opportunity, go for it.

Mentor Other Creators

If you are a creator yourself, mentor newbies into your field. I am not saying that you should train them for free, but helping them to get a feel for the ropes can help everyone. If they set their prices too low, it can cut the bottom out of the market for everyone. Remind them that their work is worth paying for!

The "Starving Artist" Trope Needs to DIAF: A Labor Day Post

Image reads "I am an artist. This does not mean I will work for free. I have bills just like you. Thank you for understanding.
Image found on thephotographer4you.com

by Ariela

"The Starving Artist trope needs to DIAF."

I have been having the same, or similar conversations, in various forms, a lot of late on social media. So I decided to write about it at more length than I can in 140 characters, even in consecutive tweet. The topic is only somewhat related to Labor Day, not being about an Artists' Guild or other organized labor movement. But it is about recognizing the labor of artists and valuing it properly, so I thought this would be an appropriate time to post about it.

You probably know the trope of the Starving Artist; it's quite common in American culture. It's the one that says that artists almost never make enough money to make ends meet and that aspiring artists have no sense of practicality and make no plans to support themselves while they blithely pursue their art. This trope needs to Get Gone.

The Starving Artist trope was popularized during the Romantic era in Europe and America, which peaked around 1800-1850. In America, it had a large overlap with the Bohemian movement. Both of these groups valorized the idea of devotion to art - be it writing, visual arts, music, etc. - to the exclusion of all else, particularly material concerns. In these environments, the Starving Artist was an aspirational model, not a negative image.

The 1980s and 90s saw a bunch of movies, TV shows, songs, and other artistic projects showing the young artistic hopeful arriving, usually in NYC or LA, with just a suitcase and a few dollars in their pocket, also presenting this image in a positive light. Jonathan Larson's musical Rent, based strongly on Puccini's Romantic-era opera La Bohème, was probably the pinnacle of this trend, though I'm sure some people would put in a word for "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey.

The evil counterpart of the Starving Artist is the Sellout, the person who has decided to abandon their artistic dream in favor of creating Extruded Art-like Product in exchange for money.

The stereotypes of the Starving Artist and the Sellout combine to create a double-bind of expectations for artists. Artists are starving, so if you want to be an artist, the immediate assumption is that you are an impractical flake with your head in the clouds and no economic sense. If you are already working as an artist and have the audacity to require payment for your work, you must be a greedy Sellout and your art can't possibly be good enough to be worth your quoted rate. Artists are "right-brained" people, so they don't pursue their careers logically and you can't possibly have a realistic plan or expectation of how hard you are going to have to work. And if you have a day job and pursue art on the side, why are you demanding to be paid for your hobby?

This is galling enough on its own, but even moreso when compared with the treatment of another group of creative dreamers in America: "entrepreneurs." Wikipedia defines Starving Artist as "an artist who sacrifices material well-being in order to focus on their artwork. They typically live on minimum expenses, either for a lack of business or because all their disposable income goes toward art projects. " But this description could also be applied to an entrepreneur in the throes of starting up a business. Startups have a high rate of failure, but we don't have a derogatory "Starving Entrepreneur" trope; in fact, people who do that tend to be lauded by the American capitalist machine. And I don't buy that this is due to the newness of entrepreneurship compared to art - the Romantic period that saw the birth of the Bohemian ideal was in large part a response to the Industrial Revolution, so the tension between these two groups goes back plenty long.

Someone who lives on ramen while working on the next big app,  or mortgages their house to finance their restaurant, or works at a day job and then codes all night, etc., is considered "goal oriented," or at least they are if they succeed. We don't tend to hear about failures because they don't match the cultural narrative surrounding entrepreneurs and The American Dream. Artists who live meagerly are derided for "not having a real job," or living in an "unsustainable way;" those of us who work a day job are frequently condescendingly applauded for recognizing that our art will never be a going concern. Our failures are incorporated back into the cultural canon and our successes are forgotten because they don't fit the preconception of the Starving Artist. It's confirmation bias at its most basic.

This boondoggle of unrealistic and conflicting expectations is inextricably tied to and exacerbated by the way that our society values art. Or rather, the way that it doesn't value art. Art is seen as unnecessary, something not worth spending large amounts of money to obtain, or only worth spending top dollar for if one is so rich that one simply has nothing better to do with that money. I'm including more than just graphic arts in that estimation. Music, novels, theater, dance, and other media are similarly denigrated. One might think that wider access to the arts, through recording, scanning, printing, streaming, and other reproduction technology, might give people across class lines a greater appreciation for them and increase the number of people who understand their worth; alas it is not so. If anything, I suspect that it has further devalued them by creating false expectations about the cost. When art could only be afforded by the wealthy, of course it was expensive to produce; but when anyone can buy a poster, it's an huge sticker shock to encounter custom art prices. People who aren't in the habit of commissioning work don't think about the fact that the cost of production, including the artist's time, is amortized over the entire print run/album run/clothing line/etc. Sticker shock is normal, and I don't resent the clients who hear my breakdown of costs and expected labor time and say, "Ok, wow, that's out of our price range, but thanks for your time!" I also don't mind the ones who ask what the options are to cut the costs. It's the ones who get angry when I tell them my prices who are the problem. (Terri deals with most of this as part of general administravia, so I get off easy in this department.)

I am far from the only one who experiences this problem. Plenty of people attempt to get artists to do work on the grounds that it will be a good portfolio piece, or that the project will bring them publicity. The twitter account @ForExposure_txt documents some of the egregious examples of this trend. Another common trend is the non-profit that asks artists to donate their work "because it's for a good cause!" but would never dream of asking their plumber to do likewise. People who accept the quoted prices of consulting firms without a blink try to bargain artists down. The perceived valuelessness of the time and work of artists is, I suspect, one of the factors that causes Patreon to be so much more contentious than other crowdfunding platforms, like Kickstarter and GoFundMe. A society that derides us for not being able to support ourselves through our art and then turns around and demands that we work for free or insultingly low rates is hypocritical and sick. Our lovely capitalist machine demands that far too many people in a variety of jobs work below the poverty line, but what I am addressing here is the particular moral outrage expressed at artists who have the gall to say that they deserve to get paid, not just be snivellingly grateful for whatever pennies get tossed our way by noble and beneficent people with "Real Jobs."

Artists know our vocation takes an enormous amount of hard work, dedication, and perseverance. We're not in denial about this. For some of us this means we work a day job while pursuing art at night and on the weekends, sometimes for a few years, sometimes for all our working lives. For some of us it means paring away our expenses until we can live within our earnings as artists. For many it is a combination of both. We do this so that we can produce the art we love, which we hope you will love, too.

Artists make things that are beautiful, profound, disturbing, thought-provoking, challenging, and sometimes things that exist just to make you happy. We deserve respect for this work. And we deserve to get paid.

And the Starving Artist trope, which tells a story that we deserve none of this, needs to die in a fire.

---

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Highlighting Two Pieces of Awesome Work from Other Artists

by Ariela

Artists don't operate in a vacuum. Like any profession, we have networks and we bounce ideas off colleagues. We also create art in dialogue with our society, responding to our experiences and to what is going on in the world at large. Yes, sometimes we make things just "for the pretty," because it pleases our sense of aesthetics, but even then, our aesthetic senses are informed by our social conditioning. And the very best art is not only visually striking, it is emotionally and sometimes even morally impactful.

Here I want to raise up the work of two artists in the Jewish community who are using their art to hold Judaism to a higher standard of ethics.

First, from Jen Taylor Friedman (who is also my safrut (scribing) teacher):

The Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan

Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan points to the Jews who are still excluded, not intentionally but effectively, from our communities. Barbies of many different ethnicities, wearing tallit and tefillin, are having a Torah reading.

All the Barbies are wearing long denim skirts and three-quarter length sleeves. That's how I do Tefillin Barbies. They're also all wearing tallitot. One of the Barbies isn't wearing tefillin, and she's wearing a jaw-length sheitl. Perhaps she put her tefillin on before she left home, or perhaps she just doesn't do tefillin at this point in her life.

Some of the Barbies are Black, some of them are Brown. Some of them are tan, some of them are pale. Maybe some of them are Sephardic and some are Maghrebi and one is an adult convert and one was adopted and converted as a child. One of them has blue hair. One of them has red hair, and one of them has red highlights. Nobody in this minyan ever says "But where are you *really* from?" or "But surely you weren't born Jewish." Some of them are what Mattel calls "curvy." Some of them are short.

One of the Barbies has a white cane and dark glasses. You can't see her Braille siddur in the picture. She doesn't need it right now anyway because they're about to do hagbah. Another of the Barbies is sitting down because she has mobility issues and chronic pain. Another one has depression, and another one has hearing issues, but you can't tell which ones.

Two of the Barbies are married to each other. One of the Barbies is trans.

One of the Barbies couldn't afford a set of tefillin for herself, and the community helped out. Some of these Barbies didn't go to college, or were the first in their families to go to college. One of them works in construction.

All the Barbies are deeply conscious that they're all awfully young. The artist has not the skill to repaint Barbie faces to make them look older, nor to make their hair grey.

In principle, Kens are welcome in this minyan, but today they're outside fixing breakfast, which is why you can't see them.

Ten years ago, Jen made waves with the first Tefillin Barbie. For context, tefillin were historically worn by men only, barring notable exceptions. It is only within the past 50 years that women have begun wearing tefillin in any sort large numbers, and it is still rare, even in gender-egalitarian Jewish communities; putting tefillin on Barbie was quite the statement. She has gone through several different models since, including Computer Engineer Tefillin Barbie. Now that Mattel has put out Barbies with a greater range of phenotypes, Jen is once again pushing boundaries and making statements with Tefillin Barbie.

The image itself is striking, but what really makes it is the caption, which is just as much part of the piece as the photo. It combines accessibility with an explicit statement about the Jewish community and the need to live up to the ideals set forth in our own literature, from the Torah through the Codes.

Jen is also notable for being the first woman on record to have scribed an entire Torah scroll. She is always very meticulous to point out that others may have come before whose stories were not recorded thanks to the environments in which they worked. She is nearly single-handedly training an entire generation of gender-egalitarian scribes in the laws and skills of writing sacred texts, though she modestly downplays her own role in this work.

You can see more of Jen's work at HaSoferet.com.

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Second, from Aaron Hodge Greenberg:

Black Lives Matter Wrapped in a Tallit

(Papercut art shows a black background with a classic white tallit with black stripes and the text BLACK LIVES MATTER on it. Below the text reads:
שכל המאבד נפש אחת מישראל. מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו איבד עולם מלא. וכל המקיים נפש אחת מישראל מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו קיים עולם מלא.

Translation: Anyone who destroys a life is considered to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life has saved an entire world.)

This piece is beautiful, poignant, simple, and elegant. It's all there in black and white.

You can see more of Aaron's work at ArtistAviv.com

Lately it has been hard to talk about Black Lives Matter in a Jewish context without addressing the Movement for Black Lives statement re: the State of Israel. People are very incensed about it on all sides. I am not going to address the specifics of it here. But what I will say is that, even if the Movement for Black Lives statement makes you uncomfortable to the point that you don't want to associate with the movement, that is no reason to not to show by your actions that Black lives matter to you. As a matter of fact, I would say that it is all the more reason to do so. For example, Jen's Intersectional Barbie Dream Minyan does not use the phrase "Black lives matter," but everything about it is a statement of care about the quality of the lives of people of color (and other marginalized identities) in the Jewish community. (Note, this is not to imply any support or lack thereof on Jen's part for the Movement for Black Lives; I've never actually asked her opinion on it and have no idea what it is.)

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Compared to my personal life, I don't talk all that much about social justice explicitly in my professional hat here at Geek Calligraphy. In many cases it wouldn't be appropriate, and this is a space to talk about art and geekery. But art and social justice are not entirely separate. Art is, at its best, about improving the world. Sometimes it is simply about providing something pretty that makes people happy. Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable and challenges the status quo. It is always a method of communication and always a matter of choices, conscious or unconscious. I salute Jen and Aaron for their skill as artists and their values as Jews and as human beings.