By Dana May
My then girlfriend[1] at the time commented after the fact that she was surprised that I chose to go to the International Cryptozoology Museum with her friends instead of hanging out with her and another set of her friends one morning in Portland, Maine. She had invited me to join her and a bunch of her friends from college on their yearly end-of-summer reunion. I was surprised that she expected me to choose her, not only because of the nature of our relationship, but also—who would pass up what was sure to be an excellent gift shop and exhibitions on such creatures such as Loch Ness and the Naden Harbor Caddy? Really, the question is, why didn’t she tag along with us.
Perhaps I had set my hopes too high for the gift shop (not a single Bigfoot koozie? Such a missed opportunity!), and it turned out that most of the exhibitions lent themselves to an accumulation of various cabinets of curiosity. But I did not walk out of that glorified tourist trap empty handed.
Filling in the space between creative taxidermy and blurry pictures of ape like figures were many canvases of amateur art. Some paintings were of “famous” Cryptozoologists done in what you could describe as a flat-modernist approach to portraiture. Others were renderings of various creatures, usually in a nature setting, some interacting with humans. One painting that sticks with me had a laudable command of light as it depicted a Bigfoot hiding in the bushes watching over some young campers gathered around a fire, their faces aglow, oblivious of their cryptid observer.
In fact, I would say close to half of the articles on display in this museum were these types of self-taught paintings I recognized from my own art. I got into painting during the pandemic and have picked up what style and knowledge I have from reading instructional books, watching Youtube videos, and just going for it. I asked the guy at the front desk of the gift shop what the deal was with all the art and he explained that the museum hangs up “basically anything people send us.”
I walked out with a Bigfoot air freshener for my girlfriend’s car and a dream: I was going to have my art in a museum, baby!
It was on the same trip, possibly later that day, that I drew my first draft of what would be my museum debut as a painter: a close-up of Divine Sasquatch in a watercolor sketchbook I like to take with me on my travels. The idea came to me quite naturally, probably because I have had a photo of the iconic image of Divine in a red dress holding a gun from Pink Flamingos as my longtime screensaver. I also noticed a lack of female and queer creature representation at the museum. #stopfemmeandqueercryptiderasure
I added some white gouache to the blue eye shadow and showed my painting to my girlfriend, riding the high that comes with a newfound inspiration.
“That is ugly,” she said, without apology or jest. And, while in retrospect I can see I put up with way more demeaning bullshit from this person than I should have, I had done enough work to know that she was wrong and to stand up for myself.
I turned to her friend, a charismatic tennis instructor and artist herself, and showed her my sketch. Her response was immediate.
“Oh my God, this is so good! I love it!” she said, and we proceeded to discuss how I was going to eventually do an oil painting of this and get it in that museum. My girlfriend rolled her eyes and picked up a conversation with someone else.
Needless to say, we broke up a few months after that trip, her keeping an unfinished painting I did of her in her pink bathtub in her Prospect Lefferts Garden apartment, her returning a cross stitch pillow I made for her that read, “Everybody is annoying/ Everybody is annoyed/ Everybody is doing their best”.
In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron warns of “poisonous playmates” who are threatened by the creative recovery of others. In Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s chapter on creativity in Women Who Run with the Wolves, she writes that “[b]eing with real people who warm us, who endorse and exalt our creativity, is essential to the flow of creative life. Otherwise, we freeze.” She advises that people who do not “support your art, your life,” are just not worth your time. In building my creative capacity, I have become better at protecting my energy, including who I let into my artistic life.
I have Zach Garry as “Zach the Great” in my phone. I gave him this title after he led what was an epic day trip to the Hamptons with our mutual friend[2] Shieva during the early days of the pandemic, where everyone was itching to get out of the city. It was the kind of day so memorable that it feels like we all summered together there for years. He played Stereolab while zooming down the highway, taking us on a loop that included driving through neighborhoods to critique rich people’s houses and beaching on an overcast day. We all had several outfit changes that day, which included Zach’s swimwear of cutoff jeans and a long sleeve beige knitted dress that only made it harder for him to navigate the waves picked up by the wind.
“I feel like a drowning Victorian woman!” he yelled with gusto, us all laughing as we bobbed in the water, somewhat easier than he did. At the time, I was only a few months into painting. I remember when he came over to my apartment and saw my work for the first time. He picked up an acrylic sketch of what would become an ongoing series of nude selfies in my work.
“I love this!” he said, and proceeded to explain my style, technique, and point-of-view in a way that I myself did not know. My drive to create rides on impulse, a need to do so. There lies profound gift in being seen outside of this internal motion, someone giving name and theory to a personal practice. From the beginning, Zach has treated my creative work with a seriousness that others find easy to dismiss. I have every reason to trust his support of my art and believe he is not just blowing smoke up my ass, because while Zach has a heart of gold, he has a tongue of a catty bitch. His tirades against senseless fashionistas, ugly furniture, stupid people, bad drivers, and poorly-made martinis amongst other crimes are both damning and poetry. I have no reason to think he would spare me if he didn’t genuinely like my art.
The pandemic created the type of upheaval in so many people’s lives, including all of those that make New York City great—artists and weirdos and longtime residents and contributors and supporters of culture who had little choice but to leave the city. Zach found himself in such a position and decided that it was time for him to move to go to school in Albany. The timing was such that I set him up with a sublet of my friend Jay, a friend from my undergraduate days who decided to move back to Detroit when his upstate university job went remote. Jay had also picked up painting, primarily as a means of interior decorating, and Zach felt an immediate kinship with the space.
“He’s an absolute slob and has great taste,” Zach told me later, “thank you so much for connecting us.”
It took me a few months after the breakup to start the oil painting of Divine Sasquatch. I am reminded by my Instagram grid that I did an oil pastel sketch of her a few days before Christmas. The year before my ex and I had spent the holidays together and I felt a panic I had not felt before about spending that time alone. I responded to this fear by organizing an xmas eve dinner, xmas day brunch, and xmas day matinee viewing of Carol at the Metrograph with my friends. All a beautiful, warm time. Many ideas never make it into the world, with infinite reasons for their failure to materialize. Creating is an act of love in that way, that we are worthy of our own self-preservation and dreams. So much about the Artist’s Way and other books of its ilk drive home this fundamental need to (re)connect with and nurture this energy necessary to keep going—to tread water as not to sink.
That spring continued to bring on waves of suck that are want to happen in any one lifetime. At this point, spite pushed me through the finish line of completing the oil portrait of Divine Sasquatch. It felt very important to see this idea through—to prove that she was wrong and that I could get a painting in a museum. I daydreamed of visiting it with my friends and smuggling in a bottle of champagne and having a photo op with Divine Sasquatch hung up behind a display case or on the wall. I had my social media blurb set to publish in my mind. I usually have something going while I’m painting—a podcast, an audiobook, a phone conversation, or often, just my inner world on full blast.
I usually post my paintings on Instagram soon after I finish them, so eager to share them with my orbit. But I held off on Divine Sasquatch, hoping to post a picture of her on display at the International Cryptozoology Museum. I emailed to confirm the address and sent out the painting soon after it dried. An employee reached out to me on Instagram to let me know that they got the painting and that they all loved it, and that it would likely be sent to the Bangor location because there was more room there, and that he would send me a picture once it was up. I followed up in May and June and was last told that they were “curating it and have not installed it permanently to date.” I sensed Divine Sasquatch was not surrounded by admiration, that I had sent her some 440 miles away to spend her days in some basement next to some spare Jackalope taxidermy specimens and footprint blocks. Maybe the Museum curators could sense an offensive striving in me. I gave up on getting a picture from them, broke my ankle soon afterwards, and moved on to other projects. But in the theme of being persistent, I replied to the last email correspondence while writing this first draft and asked if they could “take a picture of her if she is on display.”
Zach asked me to be in a group show as part of a class project this spring, a year after painting Divine Sasquatch. It took another month to get the theme out of him, as he can be hit-or-miss with texting. He told me that everyone in his group project loved the watercolor fruits I have been doing and the nude selfies, and I decided to paint another nude selfie for the show to fit the theme of “Dissecting Binaries.” That same afternoon that I got Zach’s theme text I met up with my friend Derrick for a beer. I met him at Drag March during last year’s Pride, him as Dede and me as Peter, and have been friends in drag and life ever sense. It was obvious enough that Dede needed to be the subject of this painting and with only mild but consistent encouragement on my part, Derrick sent me many mysterious and sexy reference photos of Dede to choose from, a true muse.
Zach visited NYC a few weeks before the show. I took out my work I had long buried away and almost forgotten about when Zach came by my apartment to show him. He came over with a bottle of wine and went through my sketches and doodles and old work and told me which ones should be printed and how others should be framed and how much I could sell them for. I have been painting less because I have been playing music more and that evening with him reminded me to continue painting. I don’t think I had forgotten that I love to paint, painting Dede assured me of that, but I think I needed a reminder that I am talented, that I have a voice. Zach left with Dede and about fifteen of my smaller watercolors, gouaches, and oil pastels. He interviewed me for his project, as well. I didn’t know how starved I was to talk about creative process until talking with Zach about it. So many people in my day job as a lawyer exhibit varying degrees of the wounded artist child Julia Cameron writes about in The Artist’s Way, people stunted in their own creative healing as to have little interest in or animosity towards discussing creativity with others.
One person who I do talk about painting and creativity frequently in my lawyer life is Caroline, who came to the Dissecting Identities show while visiting her family near Albany. I have known her since she was in her first year of law school as an intern, and made sure she was my supervisee when she was hired at my agency when she graduated. She sends me photos of her works in progress, precise drawings in pencil and sometimes gouache, per my recommendation. She came with her mom and her sister, two people I have heard a lot about from our time working together in Queens housing court. At one point her mother said, “here’s Caroline surrounded by all her support systems” and that is art, too.
It’s easy enough for a certain gremlin voice in my mind to dismiss the group show—it was only one day, a school project that I got into because of my Zach connection, etc. I know enough to ignore this voice beyond it providing a prick of perspective necessary to prevent a harmful self-delusion, but not kill the delulu needed to put one’s art out into the world. To dismiss my accomplishments not only puts down the work and support of people like Zach, who made that show a welcoming and cool success, but just misses the point entirely.
The next day after getting back from Albany I met up with Sam Rauer, a co-collaborator of Embryo Concepts. Another blessing—a friendship where MTA delays are forgiven and the conversation can jump immediately into books and movies and everything else that has been inspiring us lately.
“We’ve gotten a lot of Sasquatch submissions for the Beasts issue,” she said over pasta, which reminded me of a work I had submerged in my mind.
“Did you ever see my Sasquatch painting?” I asked.
“What?! No. I don’t think you ever posted that.”
“Oh, I guess I didn’t . . . I should publish it now for this zine!”
“You absolutely should!” she said, and another idea was conceived, and now, born.
[1] She used the term “girlfriend” selectively, around her mother, primarily. Her preferred term for me was “sweetie,” but that is another can of worms I have more or less processed and will spare you further elaboration.
[2] An Embryo Concepts co-collaborator