“Pirate Fate”

It is hereby official, and this be my Letter of Marque; I am in pursuit of the Pirate Queens, and it has become verily pertinent to document a journey that is, essentially, my purpose. I will be working on this multifaceted art installation and highly complex research project for the rest of my life. I no longer need nor seek your permission. No quarter asked; none given.

I meant to get started on this blog some time ago and it’s going to take me a while to catch you all up. Currently I am working on my Pirate Queens Artist Residency. I’ve been rejected from most coastal residency programs (such as in Greece, Italy, and a couple lighthouse residencies on the East Coast of the United States- 19 applications total), and in 2023, after being rejected for the 3rd time from the Key West Art Studios, a fully funded and very prestigious, highly competitive residency, I collapsed. I was devastated. I had been looking for approval and acceptance for what I was working on, and when I didn’t get it, I felt that what I was doing was lame, stupid, unimportant, uninteresting, clearly not worth funding. I took it upon myself that I was not a worthwhile artist, my ideas did not matter, and that neither me nor my artwork were enough. Outwardly, I gave up; no one wants what I got. But inwardly I could not stop and quietly continued building my Pirate Library and voraciously reading everything pertaining to the Pirate Queens. And throughout, I never stopped working in my Pirate Visual Journals, a creative practice that combines journal writing with art making in a book of raw self-expression in the theme of piracy, which suits and reflects the dark side of my personality quite well.

I am not a researcher, historian nor archivist, and as a matter of fact, being Epileptic, I have learning disabilities and never really did well in school, which is ultimately why I went to art school- what else could I do? What would become of me? It is hard to let go of my self-imposed labels such, as I’m stupid and I can’t learn, that run me into the ground and often threaten to derail my efforts, but for the first time in my life, I am absolutely fired up about all my research and cannot get enough. And while I have no idea how to organize what I am reading, let alone remember it to figure out how to connect it all in context, and can’t seem to get a handle on all these avenues I keep getting distracted by- albeit relevant roads leading to the center- I am fucking forging on. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing or how to do it; nevertheless, I tirelessly continue on with whatever it is I seem to be doing with very little comprehension that would enable me to articulately define or describe it to you. I have no 3-minute elevator speech to gain your support, but I could talk to you hours on end about the lost 1715 fleet. What I do know is that I am onboard whatever ship this is to wherever it takes me, for however long it takes, and I have faith that all of this is leading me somewhere where X marks the spot.

This log is an attempt to organize and record my destiny in pursuit of the Pirate Queens…