Sunday, November 06, 2005

 

thai food in texas


elisa durrette, annette lawrence, me, and sharon bridgforth
Originally uploaded by Alison Bechdel.
On Thursday and Friday I was back in Texas for a seminar at the University of North Texas called "Developing Multicultural Leaders: Women who are Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and their Allies." For some reason, the words “leadership” and “multicultural” make my mind go blank, but I had a good time and met lots of nice people. Thursday evening I did a slide show about my cartoons, and the poet/performance artist Sharon Bridgforth read from her work. She was rather awe-inspiring. I had read some of her stuff before, but in performance it took on a whole other dimension. There was an interesting conversation with the audience afterward, about how Sharon and I both work with words, but in Sharon’s case there’s the additional medium of sound, and in my case, of visuals. This was facilitated by UNT art professor Annette Lawrence.

I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder about fine art, which is too complicated to go into here, but I think meeting Annette may have finally disabused me of this attitude. She talked about her art in an unpretentious, matter-of-fact, yet passionate way that was riveting. She does monumental installations--with string!

After the presentation, I went out for Thai food with Sharon, Annette, and their writer/business consultant/young-genius friend Elisa Durrette. God, that was fun. A person could get attached to this crazy outside-the-basement lifestyle.

Comments:
Not really related to this post, but you'll be glad to know that Invasion is available in Amsterdam, in what is apparantly the biggest queer bookstore on the continent. I checked for you. Alas, in the interest of travelling light, I shall have to wait until I'm home in Canada to buy it.
 
Reading your Blog is an education in itself! This week I met a young film maker who is working on a biopic on Haile Selassie. In the midst of promoting her project, she criticized me slightly as a typical Black American--uneducated in the history of African peoples. And she was right! I am also ignorant about Black American History, not to mention the current voices of protest and change--through art and music. So when you wrote that multicultural and leadership made you blank out, I almost screamed with laughter. Thanks for being one of the Blogs I can rely on to keep me in tune...
My basement, at times, has proved to be my own mindset.
 
Sharon Bridgeforth is really fantastic. I saw her read once in LA and bought her book even though I never read poetry. You and her together = dynamic dyke duo!

(In the performance & artist sense, I meant, not the couple sense, not to step on your sweetie's toes)

Ah well. Foot in mouth.
Emily
in LA
 
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