after farting around nashville for a year post college, i visited new orleans on a whim and found myself in the middle of jazzfest, which i’d never heard of before. i attended every day of jazzfest, fell in love with new orleans, immediately returned to nashville and gave notice on my apartment, rented a uhaul and was back in new orleans in two weeks! and i’ve been here ever since… save for those pesky post-katrina years.
those early years in new orleans were difficult for me, trying to find my place here, make friends, find a job, establish a community. thankfully i did eventually find a queer/lesbian community to belong to, and that continued to influence my folk art painting. i was painting on canvas, wood, old furniture, random household objects or really anything that would accept paint. i spent a lot of time combing thrift and antique stores for things to paint on.
in this time frame i also met and started working for my friend and mentor nita tatum as her screenprint shop assistant. the classes i’d taken in college gave me enough experience to help her and having access to her equipment and expertise helped me with my first t-shirt designs which were mostly related to my activism with queer nation, the lesbian avengers, and later the dyke march.
here’s a few relics from my first and only self-produced solo show in the spring of 1993 plus a pic that was featured in ambush magazine from a 1993 pride art show a few months later with a few of the pieces that didn’t sell at my solo show. in it, i’m wearing my “viva la vulva” design tshirt which i sold as a fundraiser to get me and my partner at the time to the 1993 march on washington. the “dykes take over the world” lesbian avengers shirt was one i designed to help us get to the 1994 stonewall 25 celebration in new york.
this early 1990s timeframe was when i first came up with the name “art by mags” and it has just stuck, encompassing anything and everything i’ve created ever since.
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