It’s been a while since there’s been any bug stuff!

I didn’t stop loving bugs, as you can see from these pictures!

I tried a new material for the first time on this metal crown: chrome/chameleon powder, like you see in fancy gel nail polish. I’ve been wanting to try it for ages, but I’m always skittish about new materials.

So I did a trial run on just a tiny part of the crown – the small brass bugs at the tips of each ray. I did my usual hot water and soap soak of the brass findings, then dried them in the sun and attached them to the metal filigree crown with uv resin.

Sprayed the whole thing black, then added AB Jet crystals, gradient pearls, and iridescent titanium finished cicadas.

Then I rubbed the green/purple chameleon powder on the black-painted brass bugs and varnished them with an acrylic varnish. The brushful of varnish picked up the powder easily, smearing it around, and the duochrome effect was limited. It was obvious that I really needed to use the recommended tacky UV resin base coat and UV resin top coat for the best effect.

So I did, in my next big project – The Purple Queer Wrath Tiger!

I also had a wonderful Bug Art encounter at Club Gretchen, when I went to draw at the Queerberg Presents Festival.

When my taxi pulled up, I saw a crowd of femme and non-binary looking folks gathered around benches in front of the club. They were picnicking and working, with boxes of paste-up art. Some were my age, which I love to see! The group is a paste-up urban art crew* who renews the two large murals every two months. This month, insects were heavily featured! Imagine how happy they were when I walked up in my butterfly dress and scarf and beetle backpack!

@fasermacka and @gretl.wand took the pictures, and I gave them my card and they kindly sent copies soon after!

I also got to meet IRL the wonderful urban enhancer TextileStreetArt, who gave me a piece of tatting lace! How cool to meet this artist I’ve followed online for several years.

I took the tatting lace home and painted it with UV resin base, rubbed duochrome powder on it, and covered it with clear UV varnish.

It might seem rude to receive a gift of an exquisite handmade piece from someone and immediately transform it. But street art is a dialogue, an act of faith in leaving something to the elements and the street’s uses of things. It’s made to glitch/remix/collab.

I may wear this as a necklace or chest piece, as Kaey does above!

My relationship with lace and street art goes back to my own very beginnings as a graffiti artist.

I had lace doilies all over my West Village bedroom in 1981, and got interested in using them as stencils. Using spraypaint, the effect was remarkably like tie-dying, another thing we did a lot when I was a teenager.

The very oldest – I was 14!- of these projects survives, in our hallway in Berlin. I spraypainted the plastic T. Rex skeleton with Krylon Pastel Aqua, a color much loved by graffiti artists, then laid the lace over it and sprayed dark blue.

This was long before the days of plastic-friendly or acrylic spraypaints; it was in the days when I used solvent-based Krylon enamel exclusively of course (and you had to steal it, you couldn’t buy it.) Although I couldn’t afford to buy it now!

So the unprimed dinosaur skeleton remained a little tacky for the first decade or two, until finally the paint and the plastic and the dust all kind of fused together.

I believe I tried the lace trick in the wild too, but of course there is no documentation. Still, the dino is here. Has always been in every place I’ve lived. I had a wonderful insight about my life today, one that speaks to why I am fairly at peace with a shortened lifespan and physical limits.

I thought, “I have been able to be exactly who I am my entire life, and that is a very rare privilege.”

*About the paste-up wall art at Club Gretchen:

On her post about the installation, Gretl Wand says,
“again 2 beautiful walls were created with a great crew thank you!”
otte von @omasgegenrechts.berlin
bassa
@_ola_art_official
@_ablin_
@iseefernsehturm
@doyouspeakmagick_official
@art.omato
@stickermaidberlin 💋
@textilestreetart
@marlix_art
and thanks for the support of
@tweet_streetart
@mutabel
@mini._mantis._art
@o0_markant_0o
@metraeda
@vividtrash
@rudelbildung
@___ghostcat____