Category Archives: What I’m Making

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs, What I'm Making

sometimes you have to SAVE YOUR OWN LIFE for Serena Williams

New posts two days in a row?! This new perSISTER poster is for Serena Williams.

Serena Williams Saves Her Own Life

Serena Jameka Williams (born September 26, 1981) is an American professional tennis player. The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has ranked her world No. 1 in singles on eight separate occasions over the last 15 years from 2002 to 2017. On the sixth occasion, she held the ranking for 186 consecutive weeks, tying the record set by Steffi Graf for the most consecutive weeks as world No. 1 by a female tennis player. In total, she has been world No. 1 for 319 weeks, which ranks her third in the Open Era among female tennis players behind Graf and Martina Navratilova. Some commentators, players, and sports writers regard her as the greatest female tennis player of all time.

At 36 years old, Serena was 8 weeks pregnant when she won the Australian Open in January 2017. This is amazing. Most who have been pregnant will know how incredibly strong she must have been to do this. My own first trimester was characterized by extreme fatigue and food aversions. After walking the dog I had to take a three hour nap.

Serena delivered her daughter by emergency c-section because of fetal distress. The following is from Vogue magazine from January 10, 2018 (by Bob Haskell): The next day, while recovering in the hospital, Serena suddenly felt short of breath. Because of her history of blood clots, and because she was off her daily anticoagulant regimen due to the recent surgery, she immediately assumed she was having another pulmonary embolism. (Serena lives in fear of blood clots.) She walked out of the hospital room so her mother wouldn’t worry and told the nearest nurse, between gasps, that she needed a CT scan with contrast and IV heparin (a blood thinner) right away. The nurse thought her pain medicine might be making her confused. But Serena insisted, and soon enough a doctor was performing an ultrasound of her legs. “I was like, a Doppler? I told you, I need a CT scan and a heparin drip,” she remembers telling the team. The ultrasound revealed nothing, so they sent her for the CT, and sure enough, several small blood clots had settled in her lungs. Minutes later she was on the drip. “I was like, listen to Dr. Williams!”

This story is remarkable to me for several reasons. 1. Serena knew more about her health issues than the doctors caring for her! 2. This story started an outpouring of discussion from women, especially from black women, who have faced similar experiences with health problems going unaddressed and their voices going unheard. According to the Centers for Disease Control, black women are over three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy- or childbirth-related causes. 3. She didn’t want her mother to worry! Is this because she cared more about her mother’s feelings than her own health? OR perhaps was it because Serena knew that a panicking older African American non-famous woman would have even less credibility under the circumstances?

Honestly, don’t be afraid to make a fuss!

Based on a photograph by Edwin Martinez

Sources: Vogue Magazine and Wikipedia

Addendum: About black women and maternal health—let’s be clear, in a just world it shouldn’t be the job of the patient to educate the doctor. And if we address the problems we have with black maternal health we will be addressing the problems of everyone’s maternal health. And if we improve maternal health we will be improving the health of everyone, because everyone comes from a mother.

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs, Valentine's Day, What I'm Making

Stand for LOVE honoring Edie Windsor

I’m back to work on perSISTERS with a love story for Valentine’s Day. I have a few 11 x 14 of this design in the studio now. This one is for Edith Windsor.

Honoring Edie Windsor whose Supreme Court Case struck down the Defense of Marriage Act

“It has to do with our dignity as human beings, our ability to be who we are, openly.”

Edith “Edie” Windsor (née Schlain; June 20, 1929 – September 12, 2017) was a Philadelphia-born LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM. At that time there were fewer barriers to women in computer science, and she reached the highest technical level in the company. She was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court of the United States case United States v. Windsor, which successfully overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States.

Edie met her partner, Thea Spyer, in 1963 and began dating in 1965. In 1967 Thea asked Edie to marry, although same-sex marriage was not yet legal anywhere in the United States. They kept their engagement secret in their professional and public lives. In 1977 Thea was diagnosed with progressive multiple sclerosis which caused gradual and increasing paralysis. Edie became a full-time care-giver for Thea. Edie describe her relationship with Thea as “lover” not as “care-giver.” They entered a domestic partnership in New York City in 1993, registering on the first available day. In 2007, Thea’s doctors told her she had less than a year to live. New York had not yet legalized same-sex marriage, so the couple opted to marry in Toronto, Canada, on May 22, 2007, with Canada’s first openly gay judge, Justice Harvey Brownstone, presiding. Thea died from complications related to a heart condition on February 5, 2009.

Edie became the executor and sole beneficiary of Thea’s estate, via a revocable trust. Edie was required to pay $363,053 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance of her wife’s estate. Had federal law recognized the validity of their marriage, Edie would have qualified for an unlimited spousal deduction and paid no federal estate taxes.

Edie sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. She was barred from doing so by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7), which provided that the term “spouse” only applied to marriages between a man and woman. The Internal Revenue Service found that the exemption did not apply to same-sex marriages, denied Edie’s claim, and compelled her to pay $363,053 in estate taxes.

In 2010 Edie filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking a refund because DOMA singled out legally married same-sex couples for “differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification.” In 2012, Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional under the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, including interest. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in a 2–1 decision later in 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March 2013, and in June of that year issued a 5–4 decision affirming that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional “as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

These sorts of cases are usually brought before the Supreme Court by groups of plaintiffs which include people of several races and sexes, and no one person comes to represent the case. It was unusual to single out one representative person, but Edie’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, felt that the elder femme’s signature pink lipstick, pink scarf, and pearls would make it possible for people all over the country to relate to her. Also relatable was the IRS sticking it to a devoted widow. I believe it is important to note that this is how an economically privileged white woman comes to represent a diverse population of LGBTQ folks. But there it is. One should also note that lusty and frank Edie was encouraged NOT to talk about sex publicly during the case. It was thought best for people to think of her as sexless, which they would assume she was since she was 84 years old. Old ladies aren’t “perverts,” right? Edie did marry again in 2016.

“If you have to outlive a great love, I can’t think of a better way to do it than being everybody’s hero. Suddenly I’m exalted, instead of being this goofy old lady, which is what I feel like.”

Sources: Wikipedia here and here, Ariel Levy in The New Yorker Magazine, and the obituary there, plus numerous interviews and clips found on YouTube.

Black Lab Makery, Come and see this, Female Power Project, What I'm Making

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Herself

I didn’t want to do a piece on Frida Kahlo when I started the #FemalePowerProject because it seemed to me that her work and her life have become kitsch and thus a minefield of meanings. I was urged by more than one advisor to proceed. But really, it wasn’t until that crazy election and the up-cry of female pain it elicited that I was able to frame my thoughts around the potent triumvirate of pain, anger, and creativity that Kahlo’s life exemplifies—that many women artists’ lives exemplify. Women’s experiences really are different from men’s, but still the male is seen as the universal. Here in our work female artists are showing that women’s experience is just as universal as men’s, and maybe more so, since there are more females in the world. The other is the self. The words on the shawl translate into English as “Here I have painted myself, Frida Kahlo” from her painting, “Self Portrait with Loose Hair” (1947). Design references: Tehuantepec textile designs; Kahlo’s imagery of drops (tears, milk) and binding ropes; floral hair ornaments; her eyes and brow.

I have a few of these shawls for sale in poly chiffon for $125. They measure about 3 feet by 7.5 feet. This design is also available on stretched canvas at 55 inches x 22 inches for $300 free delivery from the fabricator. You can contact me directly or find these shawls at Black Lab or Femme Fatale DC. There is a version on canvas for sale now at Femme Fatale. Look at the sidebar on this page for information on how to contact me or visit these locations.

“The Woman Who Gave Birth to Herself” shawl design honoring Frida Kahlo. Created by Leda Black (Creatrix), the work is part of the #FemalePowerProject Click on the image to enlarge.