Madeline von Foerster: “The Golden Toad” Series


“Bufo Periglenes” by Madeline von Foerster. Oil and egg tempera on panel. 8″ x 8″

Shortly, the astounding artist Madeline von Foerster (previously mentioned here and here, and featured in Issue 02 of Coilhouse Magazine) will be showing her most recent series of paintings, “The Golden Toad” at the Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, WA. (Her work will be hanging alongside several exquisite pieces by her good friend and contemporary, Benjamin A. Vierling.) Foerster’s exhibition statement:

“This new series of paintings envisions fairy tales of the future. The current, unprecedented devastation of Earth’s wildernesses foretells a time when the great forests are gone, and with them, half the animal species with whom we share the world today. In comparison, the present will surely appear as a sort of Golden Age, abundant with lush forests and wondrous beasts — what sort of tales will they inspire?”


“Frog Cabinet” by Madeline von Foerster. Oil and egg tempera on panel. 18″ x 24″

“Stylistically, these artworks suggest the rich paintings from the School of Fontainebleau, a sixteenth century efflorescence of French Art, which exalted the enchanted forest. An aura of mystery and possibility pervades the paintings, which are meticulously rendered using an uncommon Renaissance mixed-technique of oil and egg tempera.”

“Although imagining the future, a common theme of the paintings is memory. While researching these works, the artist hunted for a fairytale titled “The Golden Toad,” which she was certain she had read. However, memory was deceiving her, for the Golden Toad (Bufo periglenes) is actually a Costa Rican amphibian, recently extinct. Ironically, though humans are responsible for the planet’s vanishing forests and extirpated species, it is in human imagination and memory that these lost treasures will continue to exist. Therefore, the Golden Toad, now gone, returns in mythical form, to remind us what we can still save.”


“The Tale of the Golden Toad” by Madeline von Foerster. Oil and egg tempera on panel. 24″ x 36″

The Madeline Von Foerster/Benjamin A. Vierling show at Roq La Rue Gallery opens this coming Friday night, July 08, and runs to August 06, 2011.

Wooo! Historic Vote for Same-Sex Marriage in New York!

“We knew it was going to be a matter of when – not if,” said Robert Ostergaard, 44, of Chelsea. “That’s the arc of history.


Photo by James Keivom

Congratulations, New Yorkers! Tonight, we’re celebrating with you.

(California, you’re NEXT. Time to step up.)

“IT”: A Poem Confronting Trans-Hate

This is poet Kavindu “Kavi” Ade from Philly performing a spoken-word piece called “IT” at the Brave New Voices 2010.

The poem deals with gender identity and anti-trans hate (trigger warning!), hospital and watching Ade perform is an intense, emotional experience.

Amazing line: “they wanna paint you the color of smashed hymens.” Holy shit.

[via DarkSKIN]

“Dark Girls” Documentary Explores Colorism, Racism, Self-Acceptance

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(Via Siege.)

Some thought-provoking, intense, and intensely heartrending clips from Dark Girls, an upcoming documentary by Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry that examines “the deep-seated biases and attitudes about skin color– particularly dark skinned women, outside of and within the Black American culture.”

The film is slated for an October premier at the International Black Film Festival in Nashville. Follow Dark Girls on Facebook for updates.

Birdwatcher Arrested, Subjected to Strip and Body Cavity Searches For Possession of… Sage?

Probably one of the more despicable leads you’ll read in American news this week, via the Orlando Sentinel:

Bird watcher wrongly arrested for possession of pot had sage in backpack. Deputy thought herb was marijuana; State Attorney’s Office ordered arrest without lab test.

Robin Brown was thrown in a Florida jail on felony charges of marijuana possession three months after sheriff deputy Dominic Raimondi mistook the sage she had in her backpack for pot. A field test had yielded a false positive, and after Raimondi filed his report, the State Attorney’s Office ordered for Brown’s arrest without ever conducting a crime lab narcotics test.

The 49 year old birdwatcher was taken out of her place of work in handcuffs and driven down to the station to be stripped, subjected to a body cavity search, and spend the night in jail. Such was Brown’s punishment for possession of a personal use-sized amount of marijuana plant… that wasn’t actually marijuana plant.

News of this story came to my attention via my friend Stephen, who comments: “Body cavity searches are getting to be a disturbingly common occurrence. Folks complain about sex education corrupting children, but when law enforcement wants to poke around inside your orifices, that’s just patriotic.”

There are many, many different ways in which Robin Brown’s story disturbs me. I’m not even sure what aspect to focus on; I just know that I owe it to myself to think actively and critically about what an increase in occurrences like this might mean, and that reportage of incidents like this should be shared as widely as possible.

Thoughts on the May 28th Jefferson Memorial Protest/Arrests?

This news is being reported elsewhere at greater length, in more detail, and with more inflamed passions. Still, events that occurred during the most recent silent dance protest inside the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC– “in celebration of the first amendment’s champion and in response to US District Judge John D. Bates’ ruling” that prohibits peaceful demonstration on memorial grounds– should be documented on Coilhouse as well. Whenever an incident like this takes place, the more space we create in our communities for rational discussion and analysis, the better, right?

In addition to affording us an opportunity to think more deeply about the ramifications of a ruling like Bates’, the circumstances surrounding the May 28th Jefferson Memorial protest give us the chance to critically examine and debate the most powerful forms of civil disobedience we have to choose from.

How, in the future, can American citizens most effectively protest the passing of laws that we believe to be unjust, even insidious?

Here’s an excerpt from a particularly interesting op-ed piece, “D.C. Circuit Opinion Banning Dancing at Memorials Deserves Very Close Scrutiny” by Forbes writer Ben Kerschberg, written shortly before the May 28th protest took place, in response to the galvanizing ruling against Brooke Oberwetter:

The D.C. Circuit states that “the government is free to establish venues for the expression of its viewpoint” and that “it is not obligated to allow other monuments expressing alternative viewpoints” It further states: the “Jefferson Memorial . . . was built by the government for the precise purpose of promoting a particular viewpoint about Jefferson.”

Respectfully, could the court please explain–it did not–what viewpoint about Jefferson the Memorial embodies? And did Oberwetter in any manner act in a way “expressing alternative viewpoints” antithetical to that embodiment?

Mr. Jefferson isn’t here today to weigh in on this matter, and quite frankly, given our separation of powers, his opinion neither would–nor should–have any bearing on the courts.

But I do think he would be disappointed with the D.C. Circuit’s opinion here.

“The funkiest UFO in the galaxy is about to land in Chocolate City.”


News vis M. S. le Despencer, thanks!

Best lead to a new article EVER, right?

Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will open its doors at in 2015, has acquired Parliament’s Funkadelic Mothership (the second incarnation, that is — the first having long-since departed for other galaxies).

The legendary stage prop will serve as a crucial building block of the museum’s permanent display permanent music exhibition. Via Funk Music News:

When the band lowered the Mothership from the rafters of the Capital Centre in Landover in 1977, the response was rapturous. Not only was it instantly stunning — it felt like a cosmic metaphor for the sense of possibility that followed the civil rights movement.

That symbolism isn’t lost on the Smithsonian.

“With large iconic objects like this, we can tap into . . . themes of movement and liberation that are a constant in African-American culture,” says Dwandalyn R. Reece, curator of music and performing arts for the museum. “The Mothership as this mode of transport really fits into this musical trope in African American culture about travel and transit.”

It will be exhibited alongside other artifacts from American music history — Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, James Brown’s stage costumes, Lena Horne’s evening gowns. But it will be the only spaceship.

YES!! “Free your mind and come fly with me… it’s hip! On the Mothership. Swing down, sweet chariot, stop, and let me ride…”

Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger

A live Letterman performance of “Take it From Dr. King” by Pete Seeger and friends, 2008:


Via the always elucidating Roger Ebert.

The amount of music Seeger has made in support of civil rights, cultural tolerance, non-violence, and environmental protection over the past century is epic. Songs he either composed or co-wrote include: “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song),” and “Turn, Turn, Turn!” He –in cahoots with Joan Baez– was also greatly responsible for popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” during the 60s.

Seeger was just shy of his 90th birthday at the time of the above Letterman performance, during which he intoned: “We sang about Alabama 1955, but since 9/11, we wonder, will this world survive? The world learned a lesson from Dr. King: we can survive, we can, we will, and so we sing. Don’t say it can’t be done; The battle’s just begun. Take it from Dr. King, you too can learn to sing, so drop the gun.”

He is 92 years young today.


Via Wiki: Pete Seeger entertaining Eleanor Roosevelt (center), honored guest at a racially integrated Valentine’s Day party marking the opening of a Canteen of the United Federal Labor, CIO, in then-segregated Washington, D.C. Photographed by Joseph Horne for the Office of War Information, 1944.

Chrissy Lee Polis: A Rally for Peace

For many of us who have been following the story of Chrissy Lee Polis, the 22-year-old transgender woman who was brutally attacked in a suburban McDonald’s near Baltimore ten days ago, it’s been a difficult week. Watching the story go viral provided a sobering look at the amount of phobia and ignorance that still surrounds many people’s concepts of both gender and race.

The attack occurred on April 18th, when Polis stopped at the restaurant to use the ladies’ room. Polis told the Baltimore Sun that she heard her assailants saying “that’s a dude, that’s a dude – and he’s in the female bathroom.” Immediately afterwards, she was beaten, dragged across the floor by her hair, and kicked by two teenagers as a McDonald’s employee recorded the attack on his camera phone and other workers stood by idly. The cell phone recording of the attack (TRIGGER WARNING: extremely violent) shows several employees gawking and laughing as the attack progresses. A sole employee makes an attempt to break up the fight, but retreats almost immediately. A grandmotherly woman attempts to come to Polis’ aid; a police report revealed that she was punched in the face by one of the assailants when she tried to intervene. After two minutes, Polis collapses into a seizure on the floor. The McDonald’s worker who is taping the scene warns the attackers that they need to flee because the police are coming.


A crowd rallies outside the McDonald’s where the crime took place

Coverage of the story on the web has been as painful to watch as the footage itself. It was awful to witness the first wave of discussion, which appeared almost exclusively on white supremacist blogs, with transphobia piling on top of racism as details about Polis’ identity emerged. It was painful to watch mainstream, high-traffic blogs use the word “tranny” in their coverage (the best example of this being, if memory serves correctly, Time-Warner-owned blog Smoking Gun, though their posts appear to have now been scrubbed of the slur). And it was painful to watch Polis’ own twin brother continually refer to her as “my brother” and pointedly use male gender pronouns at her support rally (here, at 1:15). All around, a damning look at the country’s state of gender awareness, or lack thereof.

Polis has been released from the hospital, and spoke to the Baltimore Sun about her experience living as a transwoman in her neighborhood. The McDonald’s employee who filmed the attack has been fired. Both attackers have been apprehended and charged with assault. Hate crime charges may or may not be applied to the case; we’ll likely know in about a week.

In the face of the ugly, seething hatred that surrounds this story, the most encouraging element has been the turnout of support. Over 135,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the McDonald’s Corporation holds its employees accountable for the assault. More inspiring than anything have been images of the rally held at the scene of the crime this past Monday. Hundreds of people showed up outside McDonald’s to voice their solidarity with Chrissy Lee Polis. One of the right-wing hate sites covering the assault early on asked the question, “what happens when sanctified leftwing grievance groups collide over black homophobia?” In their small imagination, people can only choose one side: black vs. white, gay vs. straight, trans vs. cis. There are no gradations or complexities in their world.

Except, that’s not what the images and footage of this rally show us. There are people from all across the race, gender and class spectrum standing up for Chrissy Lee Polis. Trans activist Dayna Beyer, who helped organize the rally, recounts the event:

What was initially intended to be a vigil as the victim appeared severely injured… evolved into an upbeat rally of a united community demanding an end to violence and discrimination.

Having been involved in far too many vigils for murdered trans women over the years, and accepting the general apathy in both the trans and LGBT communities, I expected 30 people to ultimately show up. Instead, 300 did.

…when the program ended and the crowd would have normally dispersed, a funny thing happened. No one left.

People mingled for another 75 minutes until the lights were turned out in the parking lot. There had been no trouble, no counter-demonstration, no hate speech – just love and sisterhood and camaraderie. Locals and activists, gay and straight, cis and trans.

Maryland still has a long way to go. Earlier this month, the Maryland Senate voted down a bill that would have provided protection for trans people against discrimination in housing and employment. Before the bill even hit the Senate, language pertaining to use of public accommodations was stripped from it. Blogger Amanda Hess writes, “opposition to the bill largely focused on the toilet issue—a hysterical concern over gender non-conforming people sharing public restrooms.” Perhaps the tragedy of this event will push lawmakers to rethink their position.

Perhaps things will change.


Image by Anne’s Legacy Photography

Wonderful Irish Anti-Bullying PSA


Written & Directed by Anna Rodgers & Aoife Kelleher. Produced by Zlata Filipovic. (via Sarah Forrester, thanks!)

This moving short was “created as part of BeLonG To Youth Services annual Stand Up! LGBT Awareness Weeks. The campaign promotes friendship amongst young people as a way to combat homophobic bullying. For more information on the campaign please visit BeLonGTo.org.”

Bravo, BeLonGTo. You’re doing it right!