Wow. It's been a minute, huh?

Wow, Summer just flew right by us didn't it? I for one had an amazing Summer. One amazing thing for me this Summer was Lady Fest Dayton. Way back in 2000, I was living in Olympia, Washington and was able to help plan and organize the very first Lady Fest (which was one of the more stellar life events I've experienced thus far!).

What is a Lady Fest you ask? Taken from the original Lady Fest website:

"Ladyfest is a non-profit, community-based event designed by and for women to showcase, celebrate and encourage the artistic, organizational and political work and talents of women. It will feature performances by bands, spoken word artists, authors, visual artists and more!!! It will include workshops, panels, and dance parties. This is a woman-run event but all are welcome to attend."

You can view the original Lady Fest 2000 information by clicking on the photo below (you can find me in the photo right below Carrie Brownstein and her cat!)


After that first Lady Fest many ladies went back to their hometownes to create Lady Fests for their own communities and still continue to today. Lady Fest Dayton was an idea some ladies had in early 2008 and by September it had turned into a reality. There are hopes for another next year.


You can view Lady Fest Dayton's MySpace page by clicking on the image below.


I was able to take a wall of the space and put my art up. It was held in a building that used to house a bank (yes the space even had an old bank vault, pretty cool!). At first the space was really rough and looked like it hadn't been touched in years? As you can see...

But after much hard work:

Often in dark lighting conditions:

Lady Fest Dayton was ready:

It turned out to be a wonderful, delightful, and an absolutely amazing weekend! So great in fact that Sunday brought upon a wind storm so massive that the greater Dayton area didn't have power for a week after. Oh the great power outage of 2008 how I miss you...

Here are some photos of my own space that I shared with friends Elyse Dawson and Marishah Paddock.

The space in it's original state:

Stenciling takes WAY more time than one first plans for:

Finished state:

The tiny paintings are mine, as is the "Unclean" photo series I did while a student at Antioch College.

The stenciled words are part of a back-and-forth poetry series zine myself and some friends did, that turned out to be an ongoing project in it's own. We're sort of obsessed with these back-and-forth poem sessions. Some pretty great literary masterpieces have come out of 5 or so ladies sitting in a room passing around a notebook.

The prints next to "Unclean" are Marishah's. And the photos, drawing, and poem in gold are Elyse's.

***

Next month I'll be putting more paintings and other various crafty stuff in an event "50 under $50". Fifty local artists all selling art, crafts, baked goods, etc for under $50. All in time for the holiday gift buying season. I'll update more about that later.

I promise I'll not be silent here all Winter...