A Militant Stitcher

There is no need to throw numbers and percentages, statistics or charts and graphs at you.  For one thing, we have grown empathy exhausted by the sheer weight of depressing facts as to how we are destroying our planet, environment, species, air quality, relationships, food, families, and all and every and each aspect of our human existence.  And for another, in our heart of collective hearts WE ALREADY KNOW everything we continually post and blog. We do, we really do.  When I had the honor and privilege of having an art show for my art dresses-I was determined to explain some things that make up the world of me, seen through my eyes, from my perspective.  The only vision I really actually know- as clouded and partial and fragmented as it can get at times.  Blurred by the need to survive. Taken down by one too many days loading dumpsters or not, a few too many all nighters-or perhaps not enough, and much, MUCH too much time worrying needlessly about pretty much everything. Useless for sure.  And wasted energy times a brazillion. The very reason, I am quite sure, that my hair continues to grey. At my show I hung my "Howl" dress with the words of Ginsberg written painstakingly across yards of silver grey dupioni for my beloved daughter muse. The only person for whom I would ever have hand written his words in such exacting detail.  I hung my "BodyBag Ballgown" which is a Goth and Steampunk nod to a gown which could take a woman from vanity at the ball to death and zipped up burial after the big one hits. There was whimsy and joy too . . . my wee granddaughters crumb covered "Fairy Princess" dress, which is never washed-just worn and worn again at mud pie gatherings, late night gaming sessions with cookies, and to every conceivable outing, picnic, and creek forging.  There was a  collection of circus dresses which brought me great joy to make and looked like Cirque gowns for toddlers. Loved them!! I had my "No One Owns the Roses" dress which is too personal to discuss but consisted of 101 handmade silk roses covering a shade shifting party dress skirt of the most exquisite rhubarb dupioni silk once again. There was my "Nervous Breakdown and Body Faults" dress which spoke of how as seamstresses we torture ourselves and each other to get stitches and seams PERFECT whether or not it will EVER matter or be seen. And the body faults part, I am quite sure you know what that consisted of.  My "Picasso's Business Suit" paid homage to the great man himself and I painted a crow which I know my daughter could have painted oh so much better but never mind and I lined the jacket with an amazing shimmery blue silk with words about "Woman and Crow" and Picasso written in wonderful script. The whole suit is decorated with birdseed beads. Thousands of them.  Each dress had a story and a picture which went along with it. Gawd it was an experience and heady stuff.  An art show. Mine. My work. But the greatest of them all had to be my "SHAME ON LADY GAGA THE ANTI-MEAT DRESS" and the reason I am shouting right there is so that you will hear me.  Will it help to tell you how many slaughterhouses there are in our country? How many detailed medical reports will give you the realistic facts as to the UNHEALTHY aspects of eating flesh and dairy? Would it inspire anyone to have a book store sized reference section of all that has been written about the INSANELY cruel methods of captivity and slaughter in the meat and dairy industry? Is there a person ALIVE who cannot imagine the pain and intolerable suffering that accompanies warm blooded JUST LIKE US animals kept in conditions beyond description and killed by methods and people so unkind and cruel WE MUST LOOK AWAY to take part in the savagery?  OK. So here is how my dress came about  . . . and yeah, I am serious about all of this.  I read a long article about Lady Gaga and her dress--the meat dress she wore at the 2010 MTV video awards and the subsequent outrage and much publicized debate and the $6,000 paid to a taxidermist to preserve all of that dead flesh by bleach and dye and formaldehyde and I COULD NOT SLEEP.  I started researching like a mad woman-no like a SANE woman- and I found quote after quote after quote written by all of the greats as to the inhumanity of our lust for flesh and our cruel disregard for the sufferings of our fellow passengers on our glorious ship of earth and our selfish refusal to confront what we are doing and I decided that no matter how many more people would never speak to me, I had to become a MILITANT STITCHER. The bodice of the dress has a quote by Schopenhauer, yeah and I know, the haters among you will tell me that he was a mean man and mean to women and didn't live what he preached-WHATEVER-keep it up for as long as you want but this ONE PERSON, that would be me-simply LOST IT. Or found it actually. In my best of all possible ways, I made this "Shame on Lady Gaga the Anti-Meat Dress" because I feel ABSOLUTELY HELPLESS in the face of such hatred and condemnation by people who eat meat, consume dairy and eggs, and SWEAR BY the whole you gotta eat your body weight in protein and meat and dairy mentality. Such hostility. Such entitlement. I DON'T get it?!! I have kept and butchered chickens.  I have herded goats and watched them killed and slaughtered.  I have been party to the entire animal husbandry circle of life and death. I know of what I speak.  In my deepest, strongest, purest place in my soul I know I am right.  I have held a shivering, fragile baby lamb in my arms, close to my heart, and smelled its sweet soft curls and marveled at the barest butterfly breath of its existence.  I have rested my head against the side of a calm, kind cow and felt the kinship of warm blood and warm skin and warm heart.  I have held tiny peeping chicks and petted polka-dotted chickens.  I have moved among my sister friend goats and they have raised their heads to me in greeting and snuffled and bleated their shared conversations. I know, without a doubt, that WE ARE ONE. My dress speaks to the undeniable link of blood and bone that we share with all living creatures. It speaks to my love of all of those relationships I have shared so deeply, with my domestic animals, our horses in the back country, and the farm animals I have tended. For me the reason for my "Shame on Lady Gaga the Anti-Meat Dress" comes down to this: until we acknowledge that we have caused and ARE CAUSING EVERY MOMENT tremendous and undeniable pain and suffering to millions of animals, we will never be free of worry, we will never be happy, we will never sleep in peace.  The very thing that enables us to turn away from our cruelty and continue, the very attitude that allows us to look away and justify our actions, the very ability we have to blindly pursue our own lusts over other animals lives-allows us to live unkindly as people, unfairly as citizens, and inhumanely as fellow passengers. And this dress is my VERY SMALL, tragically insignificant attempt to be a STRONG AND LOUD voice in this world moving too fast for its own good and too selfishly for its own survival. I am learning still.  See how many times I mentioned silk dupioni in my story? PETA thanked me for my "Shame on Lady Gaga and the Anti-Meat Dress" and then told me that my dress was not 100% VEGAN because it is SILK!!! Ohhhhhh. I had to learn about silk and the manufacture of silk and silkworms and WOW!! I am not angry about this. I am EXCITED. I am thrilled and PASSIONATE to contribute however I can in the FIGHT AGAINST ANIMAL ABUSE.  I am learning all I can about living CRUELTY-FREE. I wrote a short story about my beliefs. I will always remain a MILITANT STITCHER. LOVE ALWAYS and don't eat animals!!!