Writing and silkscreening your queer identity

Hey Invizinkers!

Workshop #4 is up this Tuesday December 15, 6-9pm at DefSup!

Who are your favorite queer writers? These are some of the books and voices that I (Susan) adore, that shaped the way I think about being queer. If you've got a favorite writer or story, bring in the book and pick a passage and we’ll read it, and let those voices inspire ours.

Or, bring in a piece you've been working on – no matter how unfinished — and we’ll do some workshopping!

We’ll be tapping into the topic of IDENTITY but anything goes so bring what you like (short poems, prose, songs, fiction, drawings, et all). Start pondering that one, and we’ll do some writing. And then we will pick some words and start silkscreening them. (Excited to learn how to do this!)

And yes to pizza !

See you Tuesday at the gallery.

READ SOME ZINES

QUUERRRR ZINEEESSSS

https://www.etsy.com/c/books-movies-and-music/books/zines-and-magazines

http://wemakezines.ning.com/group/queerzinesandqueerzinesters

https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/shop

http://www.autostraddle.com/50-zines-by-queer-people-of-color-184692/

WorkShop #4

Invizinkers! Time for workshop 4! Tues Dec 15, 6-9pm
bring some shit you wrote, no matter how unfinished! we are lookin to tap into the topic of IDENTITY but anything goes so bring what you like. (short poems, prose, songs, fiction, drawings, et all)
I think we need pizza for this one. yes?

Part one: 
· Introduction to queer writing, we read you some killer examples!
· 10 to 15 min writing on a prompt, or workin on something you already have started
· Share it! everyone who would like to, shares what they wrote, or read part of what you are working on. *hand to lora or susan if u wanna b annonymous.
-How to crit and improve your work.

Part two: Silk Screened Patches yo! 
Lora teaches silkscreening
· We collectively decide which words or phrases stood out from the readings; choose a couple of phrases to create as silkscreened patches. Wear your words! : P

Part three: 20 min. to revisit earlier writing and begin reworking, maybe head towards a finished piece for the inVIzInk Zine.

Remember! January we want to see some writing and get going on making the zine...

**inVisible INk! For young LBGTTIQ writers & artists (ages 14-30)
http://invisiblezine.blogspot.ca/
This project is a free workshop series in writing and zine-making for LGBTQQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, queer, questioning and 2-spirited) youth in Tbay.

WORKSHOP #3: VISUAL POETRY WITH SHAYNE EHMAN

Hello inVISIBLE Inkers!
We've got some exciting stuff planned for our workshop on Tuesday, November 17!  https://www.facebook.com/events/1715381525357623/
Filmmaker and visual artist Shayne Ehman is on board to lead the workshop. WE are deconstructing and messing up poems.  Then hand painting them with ink and goop! 

FYI who's Shayne? Here's the trailer to his short film Asphalt Watches:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMbq0G8ShNY

Have you been writing or sketching away in those notebooks/sketchpads? Are you brainstorming possible pieces to submit to our collective ZINE? We know you are! Please bring your latest ideas so that we can start to brainstorm and watch this project takes shape.

See you for all that and more on the 17th!
http://www.katharinemulherin.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=71https://www.facebook.com/events/1509797209346243/

WorkShoP#2!! Bloggin n collage'n

https://www.facebook.com/events/1528942040729689/

GluEy KeyBoarD PARtY! 

Blogging and Collage'n with InvizINk.
Tues Oct 20, 6-9pm
Drop-in, enjoy some snacks, meet new folks! This is the second of the exciting arts project series for LGBTQQ2S and allies youth aged 14-30ish.
whatwedoin?
1) GenderBreads, led by jayal and sam
2) Introduction to Prompts by Sam and to Visual Prompts (collage) by Lora and Jayal
3) Susan's Blogging Workshop! LearN ALL theTHinGs!
how do you use blogs, lets share our blogs. blogs.
4) Open Writing/ Art making, collaging, question period, submissions to blog accepted, read the minizines!

Need a bus-ticket? Let us know.
Location!? 250 Park Ave (corner of court st and park ave, across from the casino) in the Definitely Superior Art Gallery. Go in the glass doors with all the posters on them, go down the stairs, first blue door on the right) There will be signs up!

Failing better

Just came across these quotes from Dani Shapiro's memoir on writing, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of the Creative Life.

The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail — not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime. “Ever tried, ever failed,” Samuel Beckett once wrote. “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” It requires what the great editor Ted Solotoroff once called endurability.
[…]
We are all unsure of ourselves. Every one of us walking the planet wonders, secretly, if we are getting it wrong. We stumble along. We love and we lose. At times, we find unexpected strength, and at other times, we succumb to our fears. We are impatient. We want to know what’s around the corner, and the writing life won’t offer us this. It forces us into the here and now. There is only this moment, when we put pen to page.
[…]
The page is your mirror. What happens inside you is reflected back. You come face-to-face with your own resistance, lack of balance, self-loathing, and insatiable ego—and also with your singular vision, guts, and fortitude. No matter what you’ve achieved the day before, you begin each day at the bottom of the mountain. … Life is usually right there, though, ready to knock us over when we get too sure of ourselves. Fortunately, if we have learned the lessons that years of practice have taught us, when this happens, we endure. We fail better. We sit up, dust ourselves off, and begin again.

Do you ever feel like this?

Read more here

FIRST WORKSHOP!

InVISIBLE Ink Mini Zine workshop with Intros, other 10% set the vibe, maybe stencil spray paint cover art for our journals!
Tues Sept 29, 6-9pm at defsup!

Drop-in, enjoy some snacks, meet new folks! Need a bus-ticket? Let us know. This is the first of this exciting arts project series for LGBTQQ2S and allies youth aged 14-30ish.

Neither male nor female - What it's like to identify as 'non-binary'

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/neither-male-nor-female-what-it-s-like-to-identify-as-non-binary-1.3241902

"Here is the online posting of the rather-early-morning broadcast from today. Though "Haywood" is an interesting substituting-pronoun choice, the forty-five minute interview was shortened rather well. The second half of the clip details a bit more of the issues with accessing HRT from Thunder Bay, and how I managed to after multiple years of navigation outside of CAMH and local clinics." Beht Haywood

QUEER THE NORTH

https://www.facebook.com/groups/967184160005489/?fref=ts

Join inVISIBLEink! Now on facebook
invite ppl you know who would like it!
Check there for full workshop schedule and upcoming cut & paste parties!

Getting specific in the storytelling

I just read this New York Times article on a transgender actors in film and television, featuring Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black), Tom Phelan (The Fosters) and Trace Lysette (Transparent).

The interviewer asked, "There's been a push on shows like Modern Family To make gay people seem just like everyone else. But there are big differences between the gay and straight worlds. Do you think roles that treat transgender characters as next-door-digger takes might be erasing what makes transgender people unique?"

I love what Laverne Cox said in response: "Me embracing my trans identity but also my identity as a black woman from a working-class background from the South, all of these things make me special. I'm not interested in your racing. In some ways trans people are like everybody else, and in some ways we are not. When we get specific In thestorytelling, that's when the universality happens."

When we get specific in the storytelling, that's when the universality happens. I want to tattoo that on my arm some days. What does that mean to you?