Tag: Writing

Still No Kings

Jen
Jen Fries, Standing: Portrait of the General Sherman, watercolor, ink, and collage on canvas, 14 x 18 inches

Yesterday, what passes for the US Congress these days sold our country out for fascism. Not to put too fine a point on it, you know. 

The DC Democrats put up all the fight they could. Some will claim they did nothing at all, but those people are wrong. The fact that the Dems could do so little is not their fault – this time. In the end, what may turn out to be the most disastrous bill in US history passed the Senate strictly along party lines by only one vote, and the House by just four votes, also strictly by party. One vote and four votes. Let no magaist say the word “mandate” ever again, especially where I can hear them.

I won’t go into all the details. Let’s just say the 2025 tax and budget bill will, in broad strokes, promote eugenics by slashing access to health care, housing, and food assistance for the most needy, inflict terror and violence by turbocharging the size and budget of the masked goon squads hunting immigrants and protesters in our streets, throw the US economy into total chaos, and consolidate even more power into the hands of that stupid orange dirtbag they’ve made their god. 

Said stupid orange dirtbag will sign this piece of shit into law today, July 4th, America’s Independence Day, just to add insult to the injury.

It’s easy to feel discouraged and cynical about the irony of celebrating the 4th of July in the midst of fascists actively dismantling democracy before our very eyes, but consider:

Wasn’t the United States of America created out of revolution against tyranny?


Hint: Yes, it was. That’s kind of what we’re about as a political body.

Have we been perfect at it? No, never. Have we lived our professed ethics? Not even close. Have we also acted like tyrants against others and against our own? Yes, we have and do.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the US was indeed created specifically to throw off the chains of tyranny. Our failures only show that we’re not done. The revolution is ongoing.

So on this July 4th, 2025, I invite you all to embrace the ideal of what the USA is supposed to be about, and to take your stand on it.

Last winter, I blogged about new years and fresh starts, and how we actually get multiple chances to start over as the cycles by which we measure time complete and begin their loops. We get a solar new year at the Winter Solstice with the restart of the Sun cycle, a planetary new year in early January with the start of a new Earth orbit, and a lunar new year after that with the restart of the Moon cycle. 

Plus, each of us gets to claim a personal new year on our birthday. I decided that for everyone in the world. You’re welcome.

That’s four chances every year to take stock, measure growth, celebrate accomplishments, refresh goals, and start next chapters.

I’d like to add a fifth annual fresh start – a civic new year on the nation’s founding day. 

Every country can do this on their own national anniversaries, of course. For us Americans, our civic new year would be the 4th of July, obviously – the day when We the People of the United States take off from work, have a bbq, some parades, fireworks, and I propose from this year forward, take some time to assess our progress towards building a more perfect union, towards realizing Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

I would like to add political action to our Independence Day celebrations. I don’t mean conformist pantomimes of red, white and blue cosplay and singing our unsingable anthem. Rather, I want some good, loud marches in addition to the parades, with lots of signs calling out the unfinished work of the Republic. Impromptu town halls where we call our elected officials to account for themselves – again. Strongly worded letters to the editors of legacy media to remind them of the responsibilities that come with being protected by the First Amendment. Social media progress reports by everyone with any interest in anything, showing the status of boycotts and labor actions, the scorecards on the issues in contention, and lists of how our Senators and Representatives have been voting lately.

And I’d like to add the positive ideals of civic life to the holiday as well. Let’s normalize no longer taking our public services for granted in this country. Let’s make the 4th of July a day that celebrates the practical things we gained by our revolution – our courts, public libraries, and schools, our civil servants in all the departments, the Post Office (everyone loves the Post Office), our lands, waters, and parks, and of course, our Constitution.

We don’t need another military holiday in the US, or another day for capitalists to exploit national myths to push sales. We need a holiday that reminds us of how we got this country in the first place, what it’s supposed to be, and why it matters enough for each of us to do something about it. 

We need a We the People Day.

And we have one. We call it Independence Day, and it’s the day when Americans were invented and defined as a people who cannot be oppressed because we will not be oppressed.

So, here we are on Independence Day, our civic new year. Where do we stand, and where should we go next? What resolutions should we make to become better citizens over the next twelve months?

Okay, no sugarcoating. Where we stand is in deep shit. We have completely botched our job as citizens. Sorry, but it’s time for some radical acceptance starting with tough love.

Everyone knows this country suffers from a chronic infection of racism, violence, and social dominance ideation. All we ever do about it is treat the symptoms when they flair up, while never addressing the underlying condition. We ignore it until it builds up enough, and oopsie-whoopsie Civil War. Then a little soothing cream and a Constitutional Amendment, and oh dear, decades of KKK violence. Look, just keep it covered so it doesn’t spread and we can keep going to work, okay? But it does spread until thank the gods, another crisis interrupts it. Yay for world war, eh? Oh, but dammit, now they’re murdering civil rights workers. Ugh. Okay-okay, we’ll take this seriously. Pass a bunch more laws, and actually enforce them this time, and look, it’s working. We all feel much better now, right? Let’s get back to work and forget it ever happened. It’s in the past.

Only it’s not in the past. It’s in the bones and muscle of our society. It’s a condition America was born with, and because we don’t deal with it honestly to neutralize it – make the required behavioral and structural changes for our civic health – it keeps coming back again and again and again. Each outbreak of it is potentially lethal to our body politic. 

We understand this when we’re talking about diabetes or cancer. When will we understand and accept it in the context of the society we depend on just as much as our own bodies?

So the assessment of our progress is that we are in the midst of another acute outbreak of our societal illness. We’re not the only ones. This toxic, destructive, antisocial mindset of fear and aggression is rooted deep in the US, but it’s common among humanity. Many countries are dealing with similar situations right now, and it’s spreading like political covid. Our outbreak is one of the worst, though, so we really need to deal with it.

Where do we go next? Well, we are in crisis, so this year, we need to focus on the crisis. But we can’t fall into our traditional habit of only doing the short-term fixes without thinking about long-term reforms to prevent future flair-ups. We must transition off simple suppression of active symptoms and move towards intervention and preventive management for life – for the sake of our lives.

From today through July 4th, 2026, let us focus on breaking the maga fever.

Let’s sanitize our communities from fascist goon squads and the fear and danger they bring with them. Know your rights and use the rules to your advantage. Call the real cops (no matter what you think of them). Like they always tell us – if you see something, say something.

Unless the goons are the ones trying to talk to you. Then keep your mouth shut. If they want to talk to you, they can show their faces, their IDs, and their warrant, and then they can make an appointment with your lawyer.

And be smart about videos and photos. Only show the people and faces you want to. Nobody needs to be able to track everyone who was protesting peacefully before the brownshirts showed up.

Generally conduct yourself with safety in mind. Cultivate situational awareness. That means take the damn buds out of your ears and put the damn phone in your pocket once in a while. Know your route and exit options everywhere you plan to go. Do not post your safe maps on your social media, for fucks sake, omg. And follow the safety measures recommended by civil rights activists all over the internet. We all see the info every day.

Basic community safety measures like this will go a long way towards deflating the threats the fascists are using to bully us into submission.

Let’s cleanse our political discourse of lies, propaganda, and bullshit. Let’s learn how to tell good from bad when it comes to information and news sources. Rely on primary sources as much as possible and swear off relying on social media gossip mills. 

Apply “see something, say something” to political information, too. When we see the propaganda, bullshit, and lies, call it out, every time. Let nothing slide unchallenged, no matter who says it. We need to hold our own and ourselves to account as well.

Let’s cleanse our public offices of corruption by shining the bright light of public attention on them constantly. For real, public officials need to remember who they work for, and it’s not the ones paying their bribes.

Make 2025-26 be a maelstrom of town halls, crammed constituent office hours, overwhelmed phone lines and emails. Fill media with demands for investigations. Bring the receipts from the states and districts. Hell, organize recall elections. It doesn’t matter if they’re almost impossible to pull off. They get attention. Let’s help our electeds experience the same worries and stresses we voters are, thanks to their political choices. You know, to help them understand where we’re coming from.

Oh, I’m sorry, GOP politicians, are you feeling exhausted? Do you dread going to work and looking at the news every day? Are you worried about losing your job? Welcome to the party, you “bunch of little bitches.” This is the bed you made, so you get to lie in it with the rest of us.

If they don’t like it, they can fix it easily. All they have to do is switch their obedience from Trump to their constituents. Or they can quit and go home. Simple.

And if they refuse to cooperate? Well, that’s what the petty recalcitrance of pure spite is for, because until they do what We the People want, let them never enjoy another swordfish and whiskey dinner in peace.

I think those are three good starting points for the civic new year in a fascism epidemic. We can put the rest of our energy into building our personal strength and resilience.

Let’s start building community-based options for the services the fascists are taking away from government. I’m talking about food and health care access, education for our kids, housing, legal services, community security, communications, financial services, etc.

Yes, we’re all dealing with the horror of watching fascism rise again in the world, but don’t underestimate the stress of how difficult they make ordinary daily errands. How many of us feel scared going out for lunch, for fear our meal will be interrupted by an armed abduction? How many of us lose sleep over our bills, our parents’ nursing homes, our kids’ safety at school, what to do about our neighbors’ pets if they suddenly disappear?

Nobody can live under such constant ambient pressure. Understand, this is a deliberate tactic of oppressors. They exhaust resistance by literal exhaustion.

So we’re not going to do that, okay? They want to take control of all the details of our lives, but we’re going to keep that control, however we manage it. We don’t need to get precious about details, right? We’re going to take care of ourselves and our needs as we see fit. End of.

And we’re going to remember this precept: The most fundamental and effective form of resistance is to keep doing what the oppressors don’t want us to do.

They don’t want us to figure out for ourselves how to get food, housing, medicine, etc. They don’t want us to choose how and where we work and spend. They don’t want us to resolve our disputes peacefully amongst ourselves. They don’t want us to relax and be happy, or feel free to play with our families in parks, or eat at cafes. They don’t want us to make our own music and art. 

They want us to need them for everything.

Resistance is not needing them for one single damn thing.

Therefore, I propose three Citizen Resolutions for US Civic New Year 2025:

  • Practice radical acceptance. Acknowledge the work that needs to be done and make a start. Effort is worth more than blame.
  • Be rude. Screw respecting public officials. Those lazy, crooked assholes need to get to work or get out. Let them know that.
  • Do not obey. Fascists don’t want America to exist. So be Americans, the whole nine yards, every day. Be the Americans who kicked these bastards’ asses not just in WW2 but in our first Civil War, and our Revolution, and the Civil Rights Movement, and all the other movements towards a better world since 1775. Screw them, they don’t get to tell us what to do.

Happy Independence Day.
There are no American kings.

Notes: This essay belongs to the Liberty Gravy category of the Jen Fries Arts: Arting Life newsletter.

The illustrations are selected works from my portfolio, ones carrying specific political messages. All my work is political. You can ask me how, or figure it out yourself.

Omenology: The body of this essay contains 2,388 words. The numerals of the word count total adds up to 21, representing spiritual fulfillment and transformation, and reducing down to 3, representing creative expression. These two numbers align with the tarot cards The World and The Empress. The Empress signifies joy, abundance, and celebration. The World signifies self realization and expansiveness. Together, they unite micro and macro awareness, local and global action, self and society. The 2 and 8s signify balance and success, as well. So, having reached that number, I stopped editing. (“Omenology” is a word I made up today.)

On Being Kryptonite

Jen

Recently, El Cheeto Loco announced he would remove the Chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and replace that person with … himself! 

Since he’s already made his horse a senator, I suppose he has no one more qualified on hand. In any event, he has declared himself Emperor of American Culture, promising to whip us all into he-manly shape with no more of that icky drag stuff that reminds him of, I suppose, that time he went on a date with Rudy Giuliani.

Unsurprisingly, the response from the arts world has been a resounding chorus of “Oh, fuck no!” for about 10,000 serious reasons.

As I’m part of the arts world, I’m joining the chorus. I hope to talk you all down a bit about it but also pep you up a bit. 

Like everything that asshole does, this move starts out scary but comes apart under scrutiny and yields to a plan of action. Let’s parse it out.

The Scary Part:

You are correct. This is a precursor to a program of censorship, perhaps a retread of Joe McCarthy’s Red Scare campaign of terror in the 1950s, with the modern witch-hunters’ obvious, but only first, targets being trans people and the wider LGBTQ+ community. 

I’d be willing to bet, in fact, that McCarthyism 2.0 is the literal plan because El Cheeto’s first evil mentor was Roy Cohn. 

For those lucky enough not to remember, Roy Cohn was a lawyer notorious for, among other unpleasant things, assisting McCarthy as chief counsel in his crusade to accuse and destroy supposed communists in the media and government, until both men were taken down by their own over-reach plus exposés by Edward R. Murrow.

Cohn then went into private practice in New York. There, he was so infamously crooked that he was eventually disbarred, but not before collecting a list of rich, famous clients, including one Donald J. Trump. 

Those two were a match made in hell, by many accounts, and cut quite the swath together through the Studio 54 party scene. It ended in 1986 when Cohn died, sick, alone, and despised. His best bud, Little Donnie Dipshit, refused to visit him and denied their relationship at the very end. (Sound familiar, Rudy?)

Nevertheless, El Cheeto has yearned for his old friend over the years, lamenting every time some attorney tells him something he wants to do is illegal, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” 

(He’s dead, Donnie, and you wouldn’t even go when he called for you on his deathbed, you backstabbing bastard.)

So with one of the architects of McCarthyism as a formative guru, we can be sure Trump is dreaming of a 21st century HUAC, endless show-trial hearings led by Gym Jordan and the Three Weird Sisters of the House Maga Caucus, Boebert, Greene, and Mace, ruinous SLAPP lawsuits, bans, cancelling, and gleeful mobs.

The goal will be to erase any art and literature that doesn’t glorify the maga ideal. We can expect floods of AI-generated versions of “Birth of a Nation,” full of racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes and heavy doses of christian-nationalist propaganda, in which the heroes are the kinds of bulked-up, gun-slinging dudes Trump enjoys looking at, in slo-mo.

We’ll also have the spectacle of media companies, music labels, publishing houses, and key celebrities, piddling themselves to be the new regime’s favorite Leni Riefenstals. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us will run like rats in fear of what the mobs will do to us if we take one wrong step.

I’m pretty sure that’s the plan.

Only it won’t work.

The Coming Apart Part:

This escalation of the culture war will fail for two reasons.

I. The first reason is there’s no there there.

The magaists are like most Americans in that they don’t understand there is no arts system in the USA. We have no credentialing bodies, no established academies, closely linked to government or social elites, that dictate American Arts & Letters. We have people who claim to be that, but they’re bullshitters.

Many people believe the federal government does support the arts, because politicians talk about supporting the arts, but that’s bullshit, too. Our government support consists basically of the National Endowment for the Arts and a few sincere but fragmented programs with painfully tiny budgets that are constantly being cut. If people knew how meager federal arts funding is, even diehard art-haters would think, “Damn, that’s cold.”

This lack of support has a few causes, but it’s mostly due to the US having never given two shits about the arts. Sorry, but facts.

Except for that brief fling with the WPA, the creative sector has never been important enough to warrant a bureaucracy of our own. We have no departments or agencies. Hell, we couldn’t even get into education despite the traditional pairing of the arts and sciences – and STEAM being an objectively better acronym than STEM.

Which means that there is nothing for Mango Mussolini to weaponize.

He can cut institutional funding, and that will hurt PBS, museums, and state programs, but they’ve been surviving political sabotage for decades. And 99+% of individual creatives never see a dime of that money anyway.

He can threaten and bribe media to act as censors for him, but they’re already at war with artists, replacing us with AI and churning out slop-buckets of conformist garbage.

At the federal level, there’s no infrastructure, no organization, not even any money – no way for him to blanket-crush us the way he blanket-cut-off everyone else’s funding and blanket-pardoned his pet insurrectionists.

This was true in McCarthy’s day, too, but back then limited technology allowed media companies to own the means of cultural production. You had to go through Big Media to make movies and television, publish books, record and distribute music, etc. McCarthy could attack speech indirectly, evading the First Amendment, by attacking the companies the arts depended on with bogus national security claims. And they were only too happy to serve up sacrificial victims, such as the Hollywood Ten.

Even so, censorship mainly hit corporate media, while in the greater art world, that period saw a flood of innovative, avant-garde, politically charged, and socially challenging creativity. How? I’ll get back to that.

And let’s remember, the 2020s are not the 1950s. Thanks to modern technology, artists today are more independent than we’ve been in centuries. And as the US’s red-headed stepchildren, we are used to self-funding our projects with no corporate middlemen (because we’re not that profitable). If you want to know what real-life “bootstrapping” looks like, consult an indie creative. It’s not as glamorous as the oligarchs make out.

When Trump comes for the arts, lacking any kind of structure or leverage, he’ll find it’s like emptying the ocean with his hands. He’ll have to terrorize each one of us individually, and nobody even knows how many of us, professional and amateur, there are. I don’t see him doing that for very long, do you?

II. Especially since the second reason his culture war will fail is that there’s no there there on his side, either.

The culture war has always been fake – mere inflammatory slogans, and the more ephemeral and illusory the scapegoats, the better they serve to enrage and divide people.

When you turn the concept into a thing, however, then you have problems.

So Clementine Caligula takes over the Kennedy Center. Whatever. It’s just a theater. It’s not attached to anything. No dominoes will fall, nor ripples spread because of it. This hostile takeover will thud into nothing, just like the thousands more hostile takeovers he’ll have to do if he wants to make a moral crusade of it.

And none of it will actually impact the arts.

The Kennedy Center is just a theater like any other. It is legendary only because of the audience that goes there. Its association with the Presidency makes it a favorite venue for wealthy art patrons – the glitterati whom Trump envies and hates to his rotten core.

By an amusing coincidence, many of them are also among the country’s biggest political donors. Oops.

But that glamorous world he resents is completely separate from the sweaty, ink- and paint-stained, 80+ hours/week world where art is actually made. Artists and Kennedy Center patrons exist in different realities, only crossing paths briefly at a few events per year.

Magaists don’t realize this because they never see either artists or art. All they see are the glitterati, and their own culture war slogans, through the filter of their angry fantasies.

By grabbing the Kennedy Center, Trump made the fantasy real and revealed its emptiness. Like he always does.

Meanwhile, we artists keep on working. Like we always do.

The Plan of Action Part:

But the McCarthyist threat has been made, and the malicious, destructive intent behind it is more real than Trump himself. It must be understood to be counteracted.

The Red Scare, the blacklist, today’s culture war, even the First Amendment fights over Black history, women’s history, and trans representation – none of that is really about the arts. The books, artworks, shows and films being defunded and banned don’t actually matter to fascists. We are not the fascists’ true targets. We are just a means to an end.

They really mean it when they go after the news media, because journalists confront them head-on, exposing their secrets. They understand that kind of threat to their power. That’s a hard danger to them.

They don’t see artists that way. To them, we’re just a bunch of farty flibberty-gibbits who can’t take a punch. But lots of people like us, so they go after us to get to those other people – the public, We the People. 

They destroy the arts because art is personal and emotional, and they want to hurt and scare the people and tell them they can’t have anything private, anything just their own. The fascists have to be the center of their attention.

It’s like the abuser who punishes a child by putting down their pet.

They see artists as weak, disposable, something someone else loves, and no more threat to them than so many puppies.

They think that way because they are stupid. They can only understand the hard danger of direct confrontation. They don’t understand the soft danger of the arts. 

Journalism is about information. The arts are about hearts and minds. Journalism tells you what happened. The arts tell you how to feel about it. Journalism speaks in plain words and clear images. The arts speak a subtle, even subliminal, language of symbolism and emotion. Art can deliver its messages without anyone being aware what it’s doing, let alone able to pinpoint its methods.

This brings us back to the outpouring of challenging art in the 1950s despite McCarthy’s pogroms.

I guarantee that any maga-fascist who happens to read this essay will laugh at me right about now. This is such self-soothing copium bullshit, right? Art is crap.

That’s what the McCarthyists thought. We are nothing to them. They can’t detect our signals or break our codes. They don’t get our banter. They don’t see anything in us that is target-worthy in our own right. Unless they want to drown a puppy to make children cry, they pay us no attention.

And that’s how the 1950s was full of American art, literature, drama, and music that protested injustice, called out corruption, challenged social and moral norms, critiqued the church, the government, the draft, specific news events, etc., and included the voices of people of color, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, and more.

Artists even went after McCarthyism itself. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, came out in 1953, the height of the Scare just before its collapse.

So what does this mean? What should we do right now?

Make Art.

That’s what we should do. 

I realize it sounds glib to play up all this drama and end with telling people to carry on as they’ve been doing, but hear me out. 

I believe the most direct, foundational form of protest is to keep doing the things the oppressors don’t want us to do. This is related to Timothy Snyder’s advice, “do not obey in advance,” i.e. don’t cede our agency, our liberty, our principles to appease the autocrat.

I amend that advice to simply this: Don’t Obey. Full stop. Forget “in advance.” Don’t obey ever.

Fascists want artists to shut up because, if we shut up, others will, too. They think that, if they silence artists, they will have taken something personal, something intimate and meaningful to the people – our cultural identity – and the people will become demoralized and will submit.

But they can’t silence us by force. Instead, they try to scare or depress us into silencing ourselves to appease them, and then they’ll take the credit for having done it to us, and everyone will fear them, and they’ll win. That’s what the blacklists, book bans, censorship, and mobs are for – to get us to stop making art.

So how should we respond to that?

By making art, that’s how.

But Jen, I sense you shouting, how???? I want to fight fascism, but I’m tired and confused and stressed and poor. How am I supposed to do this?

I hear you. Your concerns are legitimate, but this is doable. Plenty of experts on this stuff (and how fucked up is it that there are experts on this stuff?) offer tips on sustainable resistance. Here are a few that are working for me, so far. Your mileage may vary, but give them a try:

1. Breathe.

Deep, cleansing breaths, calm and grounded. Attacks on the arts are psychological warfare, intended to scare and upset people, but it only works if we let it into our heads. When you feel the tension rising inside, take a break. Get off the internet. Go outdoors. Go to your work or practice space, and do your creative exercises. Natural light and art are literally, neurologically, the best tonic for calming the nerves and mind. Apply liberally as needed. 

2. Protect yourself.

Beef up your cyber security. Get your own website, backed up offline, so your work is not dependent on any corporate platform. If you’re a creative employee, start an independent side hustle, and have a lawyer look over your employment/contract terms re ownership and exclusivity. Save your money. Choose whom you allow into your personal circle, even as you reach out to the world. No more universal love and light, kumbaya, all are welcome bullshit. Take anyone’s money, but vet your friends.

3. Connect.

It will fall to all of us to look out for each other and to support and protect the vulnerable. Collaborate with your fellow artists. Network within your communities. Pour energy into local arts cooperatives and mutual aid groups (after vetting them, of course). Network across interest groups, too, for practical support with living costs, political action, legal services, schooling, even sharing healthy food and consumer goods.

Footnote: Avoid excessive ideological purity. When vetting the people you bring in and the groups you collaborate with, keep your ethical standards high, but judge people more on their values and actions than their labels. We will need carefully chosen friends in police departments, for example.

4. Keep it sustainable.

This is an “in it for the duration” situation, so don’t try to do it all on your own, and don’t put unreasonable pressure on yourself. Assess your skills, interests, passions, resources, obligations, personality. Ask yourself realistically what kinds of actions, artistic, economic, political, etc., fit with what you can do going forward. Make a manageable list, and do those things, knowing there are millions of other people making similar assessments and lists. Carry your weight, and trust others to carry theirs.

And if some don’t, kick ‘em and carry on with those who do. Part of sustainability has to be not wasting energy on the uncooperative.

5. Be Kryptonite.

Existence is Resistance. Being an artist is resistance. Choosing who you will or won’t work for is resistance. Choosing where you will or won’t spend your money is resistance. Growing a garden, sewing your clothes, sharing with neighbors, teaching children, cleaning rivers – all that stuff is the resistance, because it undoes or undermines what the fascists are trying to impose on us. So live your life on your own terms, not just in reaction against what they do. Don’t force yourself into fighting fascism as a separate, additional thing you must do. Being a free human being is the fight against fascism. So when you’re figuring out how to be in the fight, consider all the things you do every day and try to do them in a way, with an energy, that makes them toxic to fascism. Thus, just by your existence, you are poisoning the well of that evil ideology. Then everything else you add to your to-do list is gravy. Liberty gravy.

No sugarcoating. The world is in trouble. There is a disease in our body politic, and it will take more than just ousting the current crop of villains to cure it.

We in the arts, being the cultural influencers, have a vital role to play. We may be disorganized and freaked-out, but this is our moment to do what we do. Win hearts and minds. Soothe shattered nerves. Awaken atrophied senses. Guide the narratives, and shine light in the darkness.

So breathe, hydrate, touch grass. And keep making art.

-Jen

Illustrated with details from my collage. XIX. The Sun, symbolically relevant on many levels.

Mystery Mail Art launched today

Jen

Happy Artists Sunday, all.

What’s that, you ask? 

Artists Sunday, always the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, is one of the world’s largest art events, dedicated to supporting and celebrating artists in our communities, and encouraging people to buy art as gifts during the holidays.

This year, for Artists Sunday, I’m opening a new project – a Mystery Mail Art subscription.

Now, you may look at the time stamp on this post and think, um, Jen, considering your time zone and all, aren’t you a little late for Artists Sunday?

To which I would say, don’t criticize my personal failings. This is just the opening day of a permanent rolling project that you can get in on at any time.

Check it out.

Mystery Mail Art

The concept is basically an art-of-the-month club – a chance for you to collect small original artworks.

I have a passion for these little things – handheld art, portable art, working art, daily life art. For every larger canvas or sculpture I finish, I’ve also made piles of journaling cards, mini paintings, micro-zines, pocket objects, and so forth. These fun, useful objects often don’t get a lot of exposure.

Well, not anymore! As of today, the Jen Fries Mystery Mail Art subscription belongs to the most experimental, whimsical, category-busting art I make.

How It Works

Subscribers receive one or more small, original artwork(s) each month, for twelve months, via US mail. 

I choose what each subscriber gets, because I don’t know in advance what I’ll be making. Hence, “mystery.” It could be cards, paintings, drawings, collages, micro-fiction or poetry, or anything else that comes out of my experiments.

$20/month covers the artwork plus shipping and handling. Your first artwork will be shipped as soon as possible after you sign up, with subsequent works mailed on a fixed date thereafter. Your subscription expires 12 months after beginning. Subscribers can cancel anytime, of course.

Quantities are limited. I’ll sign up only thirty (30) subscribers at a time. I know my limitations.

I’m using Patreon to manage this and future subscription projects for now. Their system is easy and reliable. Follow this link for the full details: Jen Fries Arts on Patreon.

If you’re unsure, I’ll gladly send you one Mystery Mail Art piece for a one-time payment of $20. Email me, drop a comment on this post, or send the $20 via Paypal using the button below. Make sure to tell me it’s for one (1) mystery mail and provide your mailing address. You can opt to subscribe later whenever you like.

The kind of art you might receive:

JFries monoprint practice, 1/13/2019
The Doll's House

Figuring it out, little by little

Jen
JFries leaves banner 12.31.19

Hello, all. It’s been a while, as usual.

I have been off wandering in the weeds again, trying to figure out how to organize all the new tools and features I’ve been picking up in building my little corner of the online world. I have progress to report.

Behold!

It’s an org chart.

A Jen-style org chart – over-thought, drawn free-hand, complete with smudges and the ghosts of erasures, a big ol’ patch where I messed up in ink, and pencil notes indicating more to come. Terrible photo, I admit, due to having no scanner at the moment and the weather here being so stormy, I can’t get good light even with lamps. Oh, well, it’s a working draft, still in progress. The original is hanging over my desk now.

The point is that it’s all finally starting to make sense. Take a tour with me:

The Studio: This is where I work the magic, all by myself. This is my workspace, home base, refuge, and one-person think tank. Everything flows from here.

The Website: The official online hub for all things Jen Fries Arts. Whatever happens in the Studio ends up here eventually, and everything else revolves around this site. If you’re looking for anything to do with my work, this is the place. Over the next few days, I’ll be adding some tabs, updating some buttons, and sprucing the joint up.

Community: Free, public, via Patreon. The new social media arm of Jen Fries Arts. This the place to find frequent updates on WIPs and the Arting Life, engage in discussions, participate in challenges and prompts, and purchase digital downloads, starting this month. And we can do it all without the intrusive, passive-aggressive shenanigans of the social media platforms.

Patrons: Paid, exclusive, via Patreon. Friends of the Studio who opt to support me with a $5 monthly pledge receive exclusive content and benefits as well as my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation. Patrons will enjoy free downloads, discounts on purchases, backstage looks into my creative processes, discussion threads on art and writing, invitations to events, and more as we go along.

Newsletter: Free, private, via Email. The newsletter is being transformed into a monthly digest of Studio News and Community content for those who prefer to keep things mellow, far from the social media hurly-burly.

Buy: All the legit venues where my work is sold will be listed and linked on this site. Artrepreneur for original artworks. Patreon for digital images and files (coming soon). My email for commissions, licensing, or offline sales. And more to come, including art prints, books, and other stuff currently simmering in my head or in development.

Offline: I’m a real person living in the real world where I do real things. Watch this site for exhibitions, pop-ups, and in-person events. Check out my public, professional network. Someday, there may even be some courses and workshops.

Check out Patreon features here. Sign up for the Newsletter here. Visit my Artrepreneur shop here.

And this not all I’ve been doing.

October will see new artworks and poems.

An Alchemy of Dragons is very much alive. Chapter 4 is getting reposted in two parts for more screen-friendly reading length, with additional illustrations. Chapter 5 is written and waiting for its illustrations. Our second protagonist has arrived at last. Chapter 6 is scheduled for this month as well.

And I’ll be exploring the season with some witchy, autumnal moods. Be on the lookout for moons, dreams, and magical stuff.

Happy Autumn!

– Jen

I want to hear from you

Jen

I have posted my very first online poll. It’s on my shiny, new, barely scuffed Patreon, and I would like very much if you would check it out. If I’ve done it right, you should be able to vote for free, without setting up a new account or becoming a patron. You can see it here: Jen’s Patreon – Public Poll.

It’s kind of a focus-group thing. An Alchemy of Dragons is my biggest current project and the one I’ll be talking about the most on Patreon – and increasingly here, too, fair warning. So to help me get organized, I’m tapping all you fans of writing, fantasy, and world-building to let me know which parts of the process you’re most curious or enthusiastic about. The options are:

  • World Building
  • Character Design
  • Magic System
  • Art and Illustration

Choose as many as you like.

Becoming a patron, aka a Friend of the Studio, is entirely optional.

Some content will be reserved for patrons only, such as video projects, podcasts, tutorials, etc. Those kinds of projects are high on my future plans list, but they cost quite a lot to make in both money and time, so I really can’t do them on spec, as it were. They will need to be paid for. And there will be other thank-you perks for people who like my work enough to want to support my studio with a monthly pledge.

But I’m about selling finished work – art, books, poems, etc. That’s how I would ideally like to earn my living. So this site will always be a place where people can keep up with me and enjoy what I do and have the option to make a purchase.

But if you would like to become a Friend of the Studio by supporting me, you can sign up for a monthly subscription via Patreon, or make a one-time donation via Paypal, using the buttons in the website footer.

For now, though, please check out what should be a free poll, especially if you are a fan of An Alchemy of Dragons.

Interview: Bringing Order to Chaos

Jen

News! I was recently interviewed for The Somerville Times by poet, publisher, and arts editor, Doug Holder. We touched on my personal history, my creative process in art and writing, and my sources of inspiration.

It’s perhaps a little more of a glimpse behind the curtain than I often give out, and I’m excited to share it with you all. It’s drawing me out of my burrow, as it were, just a bit.

I’d like to thank Doug for his kind interest in my work and for asking wonderful questions that made it easy for a recluse like me to talk about myself.

You can read the full interview now at Doug’s website, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

It is also planned to appear in The Somerville Times newspaper soon.

The Art of Words

Jen

A new section is added to the website!

Please click on the shiny new Writing & Books tab.

At long last, the Letters half of the classic Arts & Letters combo has arrived. Wait until you see – omg, I’m so happy about it.

Writing & Books is the index page to my written works. You can read the stuff, comment on the stuff, follow the stuff. Eventually, you will be able to order print editions via that page. At some point, I will likely add artist books and zines as well. Basically, anything bookish goes under Writing & Books.

So what is it, exactly, that I do write?

Well, similar to my visual arts, I like to switch and blend genres. You may choose among fantasies, mysteries, romances, or thrillers, but they are all linked by certain common themes. Just as nature, memory, and dreams run through all my artworks, so I think you’ll find most of my writing deals with emotions, relationships, and wild, sometimes dangerous landscapes, both external and internal.

Right now, you can dive into four of my 50-word micro-stories: “To the New World,” “The Runaways,” “A Lot of Frogs to Kiss,” and “Faith.”

Some of you may remember my 50-word story challenges, based on a surrealist word game, in which a complete story had to be told in precisely fifty words, no more, no less. I liked to raise the ante by randomly pre-selecting five of the words, which every participant had to use in their stories. It’s actually quite a lot of fun.

You can also read the very first poem I feel brave enough to show to anyone, “Night, April.”

Inspired by the American-style haiku of such intimidating giants as Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg, I decided to experiment with this form because why the hell not? To me, this is such a perfect and basic form of expression – to capture the essence of a moment, to make a picture in words of ephemeral experience – I really think everyone should try their hand at something haiku-esque, just to get the feel of it – the feel of one’s feelings. Go and take a look, and let me know what you think of my effort.

Finally, there’s the big project. Oh, boy, this is the one that’ll have you saying “Wow, Jen, you really went off the edge this time.”

Yeah, you’re damn right. I’m going straight off the edge – of the map – where there be dragons. A whole alchemy of them, in fact.

An Alchemy of Dragons

One peace-loving ranger with a past.
One audacious bard with an agenda.
And one deadly conspiracy – with dragons.

You’re not hallucinating. It is, indeed, a fantasy novel. What’s more, it’s a serialized web novel, which means it will be a hell of a lot longer than a haiku or some fifty words. It will be posted on this site by chapters, as they are written. It will probably be illustrated, too.

Now granted, fantasy is not everyone’s cup of tea, but we don’t drink tea here at the Jen Fries Arts studio – we spill it. (Actually, we do drink tea, every day, but you get what I mean.)

Yes, An Alchemy of Dragons will feature both swords and sorcery. It will have creatures and fancy outfits and very high stakes, but this is not going to be that Dungeons and Dragons or Lord of the Rings type stuff.

This is a Jen Fries project.

So check out the stories and poetry, reacquaint yourselves with the artwork, and you’ll get a sense of what you’ll be in for. I think you might enjoy it, and I hope you’ll give it a try. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter, if you haven’t already, to get email notifications when chapters are posted.

In other news, it’s spring time. And yes, a lot of shit is happening in the world, but the trees and bulbs are flowering and the birds are courting, and that’s what I’ve decided to focus on. Look for an upcoming blog post about spring time artwork, soon. Also please visit the Shop for seasonal works available now.

On the Writerly Side

Jen

I’ve posted a lot about my artwork, but not much about my writing. It’s time I addressed that – not least because I have no visual art ready to photograph this week.

So, let me tell you all about my books.

50 Words:

I’ve mentioned this year-long challenge in other posts. I’m writing one fifty-word story each week over 2019. They have to be fully realized narratives told in exactly fifty words, no more, no less. Inspired by a game played by the first-generation surrealists, these micro-stories are kind of like prose haiku. You have to learn the arts of implication and editing. You have to milk every nuance of meaning out of every word, even the articles. So far in January, I have written a version of Rapunzel as star-crossed romance, a heist thriller, a high fantasy with a dragon, and a family drama. It’s fun! You should try it. I’ll explain my method below, and you can try your hand at writing your own.

The goal is to print the stories in the form of book-cards, which you’ll have to imagine for now as I haven’t finished designing them.

My method for churning out fifty whole words may seem complicated, but it suits my brain. I’m too commitment-phobic to pick a track to follow, so I let the universe pick one for me by randomized draws.

First, I pull five random words, all of which must be used in the text. Next, I pick from a selection of story prompts spat out by a random generator. My favorite generator site is Seventh Sanctum. The prompts give me up to three story elements, of which I must use at least one. Finally, I break out the Tarot deck and pull three cards, the meanings of which must inform the story.

Thus, for the story I wrote today, I worked with the following:

  • The words were “body,” “here,” “know,” “factories,” and “sister.
  • The story elements were “a pharmacist is involved” and “a character becomes pregnant.”
  • The Tarot cards were the Nine of Cups (reversed), the Queen of Pentacles (reversed), and the Queen of Cups, suggesting imperfect joy and a contrast between a terrible woman and a good woman.

From these building blocks, I wrote a story about a young woman, poor, hardworking, rejected by her mother but loved by her new husband, who has learned that she is to become a mother herself.

I drafted the story on unlined paper with a dip pen and brown ink. It’s a beautiful, slow, calming way to write, making pages that are dreamy to look at, even with my horrible handwriting. The ritual of it is almost like a tea ceremony – the preparation of the ink and nib, blotters and water ready to hand, the smooth flow of color and the scratch of the nib across the paper, the regular pauses every so many words to dip and reload the pen in the inkwell. It keeps one focused. Rather zen, you know.

Eventually, the story is formed enough to type it into the computer and edit it down to the final word count. Tomorrow, I’ll reread, edit further, and come up with a title.

The Other Project, Noir on Many Levels:

Another work in progress is a novel, of course. It’s an adult dark fantasy, a supernatural detective story with witches and dead people and crimes across centuries.

The process is pretty much the same but with more moving parts – character profiles, research, settings, plot maps and diagrams, chapter outlines. I’m woefully but not irretrievably behind schedule on it. I hope to have sample chapters available in the not too distant future.

Strangely for a narrative artist, I had no pictures to illustrate my writing process. The sidebar images are scans of this post’s original manuscript, handwritten with the dip pen, just like I said. And here is the beginning of today’s fifty-word story.

If you try using my formula to write your own fifty-word story, I’d love to hear about it and even read whatever you end up with in the comments.

Monoprint, Micro-fiction, and the Mystic life

Jen
JFries Bufflehead ducks, lower Mystic, 1/2019
JFries Bufflehead ducks, lower Mystic, 1/2019

2019 promises a lot of challenges, and I feel pretty good about that. This month’s Full Super Wolf Blood Moon, with total eclipse, falls on my birthday, which also happens to fall on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year. It’s hard not to feel a certain emotional boost.

So I am embracing the theme with a series of art, writing, and lifestyle challenges. 

First comes “50/Week,” in which I must produce one 50-word story each week. In this update of a micro-fiction game from a previous blog, I’m upping the ante by making an illustration for each story. These past two weeks, I have written a version of Rapunzel, focusing on star-crossed lovers, and a suspenseful heist thriller. Watch for these to become available soon.

I’ve also decided to learn a new skill – monoprint. My first attempts are oil pastel transfers – a fun and satisfying creative exercise.

Finally, I’ve started a new year of wildlife spotting on the Mystic River estuary. Last year, I fell in love with the birds, fish and other creatures of the Mystic and began primitive efforts to record their comings and goings. This year, I am laying the groundwork for an ambitious online project. Keep track here.

JFries monoprints 2 & 3, 1/2019
JFries monoprints 2 & 3, 1/2019
JFries monoprint 1, 1/2019
JFries monoprint 1, 1/2019
JFries Mallards, lower Mystic, 1/2019
JFries Mallards, lower Mystic, 1/2019
JFries Red-Breasted Merganser male, zoom, lower Mystic, 1/2019
JFries Red-Breasted Merganser male, zoom, lower Mystic, 1/2019