drawing

an ode to my notebooks:

i tell myself it doesn’t matter, no one cares

but what if it did matter? what if i care? what if drawing kind of saved my life and what if it is precious and sacred and sweet to honor all the ways we have been and are becoming briefly and fantastically ?

i recently saw an installation by Lora Mathis, the work was simple and raw and vulnerable, 3 long rows of scans directly from her notebooks, pinned to the wall with red thumbtacks. Lora quoted Joan Didion on notebooks, “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”

notebook people have always been my people.

the point of my notebook is not data collection. i think of them more like friends. each one a little different container, vessels for shared memories. at once accurate and also imagined, meandering through pasts and futures. keeping secrets. the notebook that i’m presently working with comes with me wherever i go. it’s silly because it feels so exposing to take it out in public, even if no one reads it, it’s a touchable version of an untouchable part of me.

i have moments where i consider burning my notebooks. they hold a lot of pain and suffering, shame, guilt, and parts of me i wish no one would ever see.

until now i’ve thought of my notebooks as by-products or symptoms of my work, simply the process, the route to a destination. but isn’t it all about the ~journey~ baby??

so here it goes, a dive into the shape shifts of lines and ideas that have passed through me and rest now, outside of me, held sweetly by the cardboard bounds of my books.

arranged oldest to more recent as you scroll down ..

2017- 2018 :nipples and belly buttons

i was relearning what it meant to have a body, to draw a body, to be a person with a body and to express anything about all of this. i was focused on essences at this time, the zen is-ness of all things. i am still interested in how we can say the most with the least (as i ramble on aimlessly). two nipples and a belly button, people

+ 8.11.2017 – 12.11.2017 California – Portland, OR
i watch myself move away from california. i explore myself in a new city. i live in a purple, orange, and green home. it smells like cumin and turmeric and sage and palo santo. we’re hippies, we have powdered toothpaste and choose our names. i share meals round a table with friends every night. it’s gray in portland in a way that feels like the cloudy coastal sundays of my childhood.

i’m experimental here, my lines are wiggly, and colorful, shapes dance around, i doodle, my words are still forming here, i’m finding my voice. held by so many loves, emerging slowly, gingerly, tenderly

i listen to SZA’s “Ctrl” album, and Edward Sharp, and Foster the People’s “Sacred Hearts Club”

+ 5.1.2018 – 12.9.2018 Portland, OR
this is the only notebook that i have of its kind, soft cardboard front and back covers with yellow fabric covering the binding. i like it a lot. it’s the one that conveyed this size to me.

i was experimenting with shapes and characters then and i can see the transition from my 3-dot-arm-leg style to bodies with clothes and figures.

i fell in love in this notebook and it’s quite sweet for me to rewatch. i found the doodles i made while waiting before our first date. and the explosive joy afterward.

i turned 24 in this one, i lived in a new city where i knew no one, i was 1 year into escaping an oppressive eating disorder treatment, i was staunchly vegan, i was curious and young and excited and scared.

2019-2020 :as is

a lot of wiggly bodies. a lot of digital versions in black & white.
“as is” was my project mostly uploaded to “as_is” on instagram which is now my doodle account “scribbles4nibbles.” i never liked the change in line weight and loss of character from notebook to digital and i didn’t stick with it too long.
i created a book for “as is.” it is a monologue about bodies, queerness, chronic illness, body dysmorphia, dysphoria, and soup. it’s not printed.

at some point i became overwhelmed, over-steeped in the body narrative tea. all i could do was draw wiggly bodies and talk about it vaguely.

+ instagram: it’s fine. and that’s all. it’s one way to share things i suppose. RIP “@scribbles4nibbles”

+ 8.18.2019 – 3.15.2020 The Hague, NL
this notebook is 75% completed under the pitched roof of my attic room in den haag. the room is painted gray on the top half, the bottom half is white wainscoting. there are black decals of cats perched on the ledges.
i swirl in this notebook. this is part of my “as is” project, a lot of these become digital versions on insta. i have long notes and ramblings about chronic illness, mental illness, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, self, etc, etcc, all via wiggly line. i mostly use muji pens here (and forever more).

i experience heartbreak for the first time, that’s all i’d like to say about that.

i travel a lot in this one, there are lots of silly stories about little cities that i find myself wandering.

some joyful kid art collaborations as an au pair.

a very sweet life. and then of course March 2020 everything changes dramatically.

+ 9.28.2020 – 4.24.21 Washington – Washington, DC
i start to take some time to digest here and “as is” starts to make some sense.
i am in a relationship, we move to a remote town on the coast of washington state, (this is an important distinction because we also move to washington dc). i have some months in the winter isolated in a cabin with my boyfriend and i work on a book. i weave together patches from different notebooks and make “as is.” covid is raging in the US. sometimes it’s hard to pretend that any of anything matters.

i find myself in a straight-passing relationship, a straight feeling relationship. i focus on gender and sexuality, body, identity, self, souls, little things.

this notebook is my only square notebook which is fitting because i was making a lot of these images for instagram and the book was formatted as a square.

+ 1.1. 2023 – 10.26.2023, San Francisco, CA

nearly a whole year this book was with me and it shows.
the whole spine ripped off and i replaced it with duct tape
the edges are frayed, there’s a sweet collection of tickets, drawings, and business cards at the back. the cover has a custo.disco tag on it (https://teafry.me/custodisco/)
it’s fitting, trav influences a lot of my creativity this year.
this notebook is filled with words and fewer drawings. i focused on defining my self and my projects. over and over again i recommitted myself to my self. finding my footing in a new city yet again. for the fifth? sixth? seventh time? barely still in my twenties. a lot of life. in this time i’ve felt the pieces falling together – there’s a cohesion between my 2-D, 3-D, and lived work, things make sense for me here. a lot happens here. i brainstorm and question things, i weave in and out of relationships with friends, tasks, habits, self, practice, i throw parties, wiggle around.

when you’ve moved around often and begin again in new places over and over the relationship to self is strengthened.
to carry my own things, to find my own way, to keep myself company.
now, to come to the table with others
to come to the table with another
i’m afraid to lose it.
but is it selfish?
to live a life in pursuit of the root of self?
let’s look for the web that connects us
i am made up of every relationship i’ve ever had, the ways we change each other lives through us, part of all of it. waves. i’ve been held by passion and love. it’s all ok, this moment in time.
i’m focused on my relationship to time. i watch seasons pass from the same window, it’s growing and becoming there is no replacement for the exchange of being here. living in the unfolding.

+ 11.5.2023 – present … San Francisco, CA

it is unusual for me to write about what i’m making as i’m making it. there’s not yet enough space between myself and the thing. this notebook is full and i feel like my style emerges more easily. i’m working through a lot of things relationally and a lot of this style is relations and conversations. some things don’t make sense until a long time after when you can thread the pieces together. someday i will make a quilt and it will be awesome. i think i’m getting close.

+ 11.5.2023 – 6.21.2024, San Francisco, CA
..continued
i do, in fact, make a quilt. it is transformative.
i write about dreams, i think about everything. my body doesn’t stop being mine, my heart keeps beating. “of course, i’m ok. i’m alive, well, breathing whole. resting. im not moving fast. i’m slowing the fuck down. i am ok – ill walk in the sun. ill be ok. i am just alive. without judgement – i’m just alive. i’m breathing part of the whole thing. ”
i have sweet and meaningful conversations here
things shift, like really really shift, the vibrations are really strong here, the words are powerful and this time of my life feels like a renewal. i’m proud of a lot of thing in the book. this book contains the first words of “shoe tying isn’t easy.” the two characters are everywhere in one section. the visioning, the storyboarding, the manuscript. it’s cute, and i like to look at it.
transcend. literally what the f*ck happened on may 16,
“thursday evening
dining room.
could we
– hypothetically –
transcend.
i’m going to get some sleep.”
i turn 30.
yeehaw disco was a hoot
“i am not alone. i can never be alone. we are alive together. what you believe will happen.” i feel a strong sense of interconnectedness beginning here.
“home. i am home. arrived. home. still no words” june 5
i draw schatz for the first time here
i pack my bags and leave for spain

the completion of a notebook for me is always profound, subtle but profound, the container for my thoughts, memories, dreams, for a whole season.