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Autumn Arrival
- Lea
- Oct 11, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 12, 2023
I went to the Bitch Craft witch convention, aka Milwaukee Makers & Mystics Portal. It was so much fun! I love talking to everyone and meeting so many cool people!
It was held at the Wisconsin Center (now the “Baird Diskothek”). I have lived in Milwaukee for 14 years and have been inside the Wisconsin Center twice. It is a fucking huge convention center. It was mostly empty, I entered from the west, it was spooky and desolate. Downtown is such an adorable mixture of nasty abandoned corners and highly decorated tourist buildings. I took a video because the liminal ambiance was just too strong. I love lifting up the skirt of an event and seeing all the raccoons atop each other. It is so liberating as a recovering event planner to just enjoy an event.
When I finally got past the depression of emptiness, I found the event. I paid, I walked in, and I was totally mystified. It smelled like fall, and there were witch hats, and goth girls everywhere!
I am so fascinated by craft fairs, artisans hocking their cobbled wares to those with coin.
The camaraderie oh my Goddess: JUST GLORIOUS. Maybe better than the Bristol Ren Faire... only in that at the Ren fair is very much my kids showing off their elf ears instead of trying to make friends.
I wanted to quickly discuss the inevitable social awkwardness that I successfully avoided for like two hours. I was being normal and cute and charming. And then all the spoons were gone. Unfortunately, that is when I met up with the people I wanted to speak to.
It was a fine interaction. I met my friend and then I met the new folks that also run a witch event. I was burnt out and should've walked away but I got caught. You know those like energy ebbs?
Everyone was tired around me, so I was no longer human. That is when someone refers to a very popular movie, that is popular to watch as a joke or to watch for real entertainment. Unfortunately, I've never been on that side of the social spectrum: neither watching for fun or for real. I felt like that movie is a part of a social group that I didn't belong to. I felt the urge to make fun of this movie in a not-friendly way– but I froze socially so I was JUST weirdo and rude boi.
Honestly, she probably does not remember it at all, but I feel like whatever I did say was mouth vomit. I think I was rude. This always happens to me when I am at 0 spoons. 0 bandwidth. I start getting tired and then I start getting hard on myself. So I'm in my head telling myself that I can do more socializing, I can do more talking, I can push through, I can do it for more people I can go more, blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah. And because I'm exhausted, I don't remember to use my tool kit to block out that shitty energy. Now, you put me in a safe social situation, where everybody is tired, and I end up saying something stupid. Ugh!
I originally went to support my cool friend Medusa Sevas Tra, she is a Viking warrior shieldmaiden, and she was selling her fine hand-crafted works. And DANG she is amazing!
As I was leaving I couldn't help but want a free photo! I met this LOEVLY photographer but it was a Cinderella moment because I LOVeD her energy but I was rushing out because my gown was turning to rags-- didn't get her name or business name 😱😭 I just had to patiently wait for her to find me 😱 PSST PSST Allison!! 🫳
I networked and mingled! I used all the tips, tricks, and skills to harvest friends from the vendor crowd. I believe I gave out 9 business cards, next time I should be sure of my count. I gathered about 9 friends in return!
Seriously, it was a lovely crowd. I could probably be sponsored by them because I could talk all day about how just perfect the whole vibe was.
I wanted to get a pulse on the business witch scene, and I am quite impressed! It was so niche but still varied. Art, crafts, jewelry, tarot, makeup! Whimsy, spook, old-school-new-age, new-school new-age! Oh my! I met seamstresses, hairdressers, illustrators, photographers, toy makers, 3D printers, crafters, and tarot readers! Goth, witch, horror, gaming, geek, nerd, cottage, or goblin. Fabulous!
Introducing Annie @annie_lena_photography
A N N I E
"My name is Annie. I am a transgender artist from Milwaukee, recently transplanted to Philadelphia, working with nearly every 2D medium throughout my life. As a transartist, self-portraiture is less about practice and documentation than it is about inward examination and expression. It is a universal human experience to have incongruous versions of who we are and who we want to be. Once relegated to the fringe of fantasy role players, and bound by narrative purpose, the visualization of the idealized self has expanded to the mainstream, with cis and gender non-conforming people unconsciously engaging in the crafting of personas, fueled by a capitalist paradigm to make ourselves marketable. Artists use lies to tell the truth, so even an artist's idealized version of themself is still a plunge of the shovel digging to find it. I had done a mosaic self-portrait many years ago. It was on cardstock that had been partitioned into hundreds of tiny little squares, with a corresponding grid laid over a photo of myself I could use to match shades. The bits of color I used were cut from magazines, due to their opacity and availability of materials. The final piece was 14x10, mostly grayscale, looked like distorted pixel art, and exists now only in my memory. Wanting to revisit this medium on a larger, more precise scale had been on my mind for months, I just didn't have the time anymore. Then came Lockdown.Working less hours and in need of a way to stay occupied, I began with taking home tabletop-sized cardboard bakery boxes delivered to our restaurant every day. I had a loose plan, starting with dabbing the cardboard almost to the edge with white gesso, for it to come out from behind the floating face and give the edges definition. Once again, I used grids, but with only a couple dozen sections, and working from a selfie on my phone. I begin with a black and white rendering, to establish shapes & values, like building forms before pouring concrete. I think back to my old drawing and animation teacher, Tim Decker, who told us to "draw from the shoulder". I watch for lines that flow past their ends as I piece together shapes and contours from a series of pieces, as if making a single stroke. It takes planning to avoid overlap, and decide how I will place color over it. I knew nothing of color theory beyond the primaries and complementaries. I would soon learn that a lighter shade of blue paper can be so dull and muted, it lacks the highlighting abilities of a darker shade that is more vibrant. Color usage was no longer linear, and after almost a decade of dallying in oils on canvas, I was finally learning to paint. What I love most about doing mosaic portraits is that no matter how precisely I may plan, I haven't a clue as to what the final piece will look like; the right moves and proper placements can only be found in the moment. It is the process itself that makes this cluster paper scraps and glue more than the sum of its parts, and bridges the gap between the inanimate medium and organic subject it depicts. "
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