Buy Art.


This is type of thing I've been thinking about recently, as I struggle to support myself and my future plans & ideals. It's a Hard Think for me, because I'm generally withdrawn and confused about what significance other people's emotional responses have for me, even more so when those responses might be materially embodied as money, the most volatile and emotively charged meme in our society today.

 chival is an amazing lady I met at my first anthrocon back before I was legal (gurl we gettin olldddd) who's in some pretty tight financial straits; if I were to attempt to describe her aesthetic I would have to say something like... psychobilly decoupage ero-guro pinup. There's a lot of wild and potent cartooning in there, but also passages of really delicate close naturalistic observation--often so closely abutting each other there's a brilliant kind of queasy dissonance. There's no-one quite like her, and she deserves your attention and your support! You can read her journal here and see stuff she has for sale at furbuy including this enormous collection of art(currently @ ten bux!!) You can help her out via her paypal address Hellfiresuite[at]aol.com

Thinking about the video above and about Chival's problems made me want to say a little something regarding how I've been feeling about the vital role our money has to play in fostering creativity. As clients of private artists/illustrators/craftspeople/musicians &c selling their goods and services we're also patrons of the arts in a quite serious way--a patron in the same kind if not the same degree as the various Dukes and notables who paid for da Vinci's keep or the Medicis, bankrolling the wholesale artistic reinvention of Florence.

Maybe it's better to think of it just as your furry porn; or your folk art or your rebellion against the mainstream or a hundred hundred other wonderful reasons. To me, it really seems like every $/£/€ you can spend on supporting an artist is part of your vote for what the future could look and sound like. Without that injection of our faith, especially in as perilous an economic climate as we find ourselves in today, we will lose our artists bit by bit, and for furries/anthrofans/whatever in particular I think that means we'll lose a huge slice of our community, and certainly what I value most about it.
I would just add that furry fans are some of the nicest and most creative people I’ve met at any sort of convention, and I’ve never been received more graciously or generously as a guest at any con before. The whole group conveys a spirit of acceptance and childlike fun.
James Gurney
I feel like we give a lot of our (shrinking) disposable income to people who don't need or deserve it. Newscorp and Coca-Cola (...if they don't have the same parent company by now) don't need all the cash we're shoveling into their hungry mouths, but there's hundreds of people around us in the world at large and on this webzone of weirdos and perverts who do, and are working honestly with their hearts/hands/voices/brains to bring things to the table that we've never seen or heard or read or imagined before. A commitment to patronage, to becoming personal patrons of the arts in their many forms, is a rewarding one, both personally and for the health and happiness of our communities.


 stigmata I got another idea for a journal too!! I'll totes write that later B)
Also if you got any space change after bidding & buying from Chival, buy my shit!