Just a quick note that we’re closing the week off with another $150 to Black Mamas Matter thanks to your zine orders! An extra thank you everyone who sent sweet notes on receiving the zine, and to those who came back to buy more. Happy Weekend <3
A big thank you to everyone who bought a zine this week!
Your purchased totaled $454 as of Friday morning, and I rounded it up to $500. I covered the cost of printing and mailing the zine to you, as well as all transaction costs (Squarespace and Stripe) and donated your full $15 to BlackMamasMatter.org.
At the risk of “virtue signaling”, I wanted to make sure you were updated and that everything is transparent!
Also it’s Juneteenth- if you don’t know about it, read a bit today.
x
Jillian
I made an art zine about the start of 2020 and it’s for sale at Electric Blanket Now! 100% of profits will be donated to Black Mamas Matter. Learn more Below.
The zine was made over the course of our first few weeks living in Los Angeles, starting mid April, after four weeks of isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. I was home with two very small children after leaving our beautiful home in Berkeley, California, renting a small house while looking for a permanent home. We hadn’t been out in the real world other than short neighborhood walks, and the waves of emotions were manic at best. I wrote a note to myself to “make art while it hurts”, knowing the profound feelings sitting deep within would be fleeting- the world seemed to be shifting rapidly, daily.
My hope is that the zine will be a reference point to look back on in five, ten, twenty years- maybe in five days or weeks- so much of it is already obsolete, as the country “reopens” despite the virus still pervading, as the country enters the third week of an uprising against police brutality and racism that will hopefully bring change to the world… Fingers Crossed. My goal is to release Volume Two late in the year. Who knows what our collective story will be then.
It’s also been challenging to balance my excitement over the zine, which arrived from the printers literally while people protested in every city in the world, and knowing that nothing else matters right now. That what matters is that we stop everything in effort to be loud and raise as much awareness as possible about the reasons people are on the streets, the history that brought us here, and the things we can do to change it. So yes, there’s an art zine and I’m super excited about it, but I’m only down to promote it if it can serve a larger purpose- which is why I’m donating 100% of proceeds to Black Mamas Matter, an organization I’m already donating to amongst others.
And so here we are. If you’re not sure whether you should speak up, you should. If you’re not sure you agree or you’re walking the line because you’re afraid of the consequence, well, I hope you can learn why that’s the wrong side of history to be on and join us over here where Black Lives Matter, where Trans Lives Matter, where it’s time to go out and vote, to use your voice and your platform and your privilege as loudly as you can.
I hope you enjoy the zine as much as I loved making it. It’s depressing, but real, and maybe a little bit funny.
xx
Jillian
Our daughter turned one and we threw together a casual backyard pizza party for close friends who could come say hi. It was perfect with the exception of missing some dear friends who were out of town for the long weekend. We all promised we’d make it up soon.
We had just made the final decision to move from our dream home in Berkeley to Los Angeles to be closer to family, art, live music and sunshine. We thought we’d have a going away party before we left. It was mid Feb. We had no idea it would be the last party in our epic yard.
We left our home, our friends who we’ve built a community with over the last 12+ years, our son’s school, our whole world- without saying goodbye.
It’s been a bizarre, emotional, wild time- moving a world which was really quite wonderful in the middle of a pandemic with two kids and two pets and no help is … jarring… a lot… so much.
I sent my film in to be processed on my last day in the Bay, the day I also broke my mamiya, and finally have a sec to post it while the banshees watch Magic Schoolbus and climb on me. I’m really glad I had at least started to take goodbye photos of friends and I can’t wait to get back to do visiting portraits and give hugs to the family I’ve acquired over these really special years.
Hope everyone is home and safe and getting by.
xx
I couldn’t wait to take our son to the zoo. We did not go to the zoo. We nursed a high fever instead.
I couldn’t wait to have a day date three days later since we had childcare and no work. We did not have a day date. We nursed our second child’s high fever instead.
I couldn’t wait to get back to yoga and tend to my body which had been tending to children non stop. I had a list of things to do which had piled up. Instead, the blisters popped up in my throat. Then the blisters popped up on my daughter’s hands. We all had hand foot mouth.
I was so close to weaning. After three months of trying, we were down to two feeds. Suddenly I would do anything to hydrate my baby who only wanted my milk.
It turns out, a lot of parenting is just giving up on expectations, letting go. Accepting that absolutely nothing will get done today, maybe not tomorrow either. Being present with the virus and the crying and sitting on the floor to make a puzzle for the 6th day in a row, taking pleasure in small things like my son’s voice, ice cream cake on my throat, the feeling of success when my one year old ate frozen yogurt after a mouth blister hunger strike.
A lot of parenting for me has been questioning everything. I thought I would be someone successful - I had such potential - and here I am serving snacks and changing diapers… but on days / weeks like these, I also think, god, who the fuck cares about success. Yogurt success is just as good, at least for now. She ate yogurt!
I am not in a corner office wearing a killer outfit and red lipstick using my degrees or covered in paint in an art studio pursuing my passions. I am home in pajamas covered in snot and food and I can’t stop coughing or put down crying babies. I am not in Palm Springs. I am not in Hawaii or Mexico… I was there though, and it was beautiful. It will be beautiful again. *
(*This is not a judgement or value assessment on “working” vs full time caretaking mothers or a suggestion that you can’t have a corner office and also be a present parent. I’ve done both and they’re equally as challenging, and I’m currently part time both, which is also challenging. Parenting is just challenging.)
Some recent desert and beach film to keep me going. Palm Springs * Scottsdale * Los Angeles, 35mm & 120.
A last minute decision to spend a few hours in the city
at the end of winter break
grabbed my camera in case
dropped in on some best friends
and favorite visiting faces
drank beers in the park
overlooking our old city
swoon.
For years, I’ve struggled with how much I feel comfortable sharing online. When I was in high school and college I had my eyes set on a future as an actress, so I was ready to live a public life. When I got back to California after four years overseas, I was working at Twitter and posted constantly as second nature, working day and night to trademark Tweet as a post on Twitter rather than a generic post anywhere (stretch, I know, but these are things trademark professionals think about, I think). Instagram came around and we were annoyed, so I hesitated for years, but eventually I joined in and started posting photos of friends and Vespa rides in 2012. All along, I had been blogging hundreds of photos a week on my personal tumblr. It was a wild west and we were all in.
When I closed the store in 2015, I retreated from my online presence. I stopped blogging, made my instagram private, almost never tweeted- I took time to pause. I wanted to live in the moment and share with those I actually have relationships with, and when I had my first child I felt even more strongly that our privacy mattered. I never posted photos of my child’s face, or his name or even his sex for that matter. It felt great to hold some things dear. All along, I consumed endless content of other stories, sometimes driving me crazy with jealousy (ie, I too wish I was in ____ instead of wherever I am) or bewilderment (how can the world go on with smiles and happy people when I’m waiting on results on the severity of my baby’s cancer, doesn’t everyone know the world is terrifying?) But it also grounded me and helped me make sense of my own life. Other people’s stories helped me find my place and know I was ok. I’m fairly confident every new parent has spent hundreds of hours searching for images of rashes and “is ____ normal”, wondering how generations before us survived without knowing whether now was the time to call the Dr or go to the ER…
I’ve always been a story teller, and I’ve had a life filled with dramatic stories which have brought me to where I am today. I’ve been documenting life since 1994 when someone gave me a camera and some film and later a video camera which I obsessively snuck everywhere to document our obnoxious and pretty rough, unsupervised youth. I’ve been telling stories through art for as long as I can remember. Not telling stories is actually a challenge for me, and now that I’m a mother, I realize just how valuable those stories are for all of us. Before sharing stories, we would be much more likely to feel alone and isolated, something I think is especially true for pregnant people and those with small children. It’s something that’s true for all humans, especially women - leftovers of puritanical and patriarchal silence about our bodies and our existence.
So, here we are. I have so much gratitude for the stories that have been shared which have helped me along my journey. Did you know that having an armpit breast is an actual thing? Thank god for the one woman who wrote an article about it because when I was pregnant with my first and a full, lactating breast grew in my armpit, I knew I wasn’t alone. The ah-ha moment when you realize you didn’t even know you had postpartum depression but that it can kick in at any time? Thanks Chrissy Teigen for coming out with that story and the photos of your postpartum body, which reached millions of women and made us feel human. Learning all about what a colon does? Thanks to my good friend whose husband just had his removed for sharing all of the intricate details and normalizing that life happens and we all must move forward. Stories help us learn and grow and find our place in the world. Stories help us pass on history to our children, and document our place in time. Stories help us release built up tension and anxiety and find catharsis, the opportunity to move on. Stories help our imagination expand, help us think creatively, spark inspiration.
Electric Blanket has always been about stories. It was first a zine of art and photography and poetry and stories, and then the store offered several touch points for story- a cup of coffee in exchange for a note, a chalkboard with rotating uncomfortable questions to answer (what is the one thing you wish you’d said to someone that you never said), an installation where people left electric blanket stories on a tag which would be hung from above… It was an amazing way to let the insides out in a safe space. It was beautiful.
I’ll be sharing stories and interviewing people who I think are amazing because I know so many amazing people, thanks to the store and life at Twitter and my journey on three continents before that and since then… and lucky I have a forum in which to share, to possibly help even just one person learn something about themselves or their place in time.
xx Jillian
It’s been… Well, a lot of minutes. It’s hard to believe five years have passed since closing the doors of the shop. So much has changed in my life and in the city, the country, the world- but in some ways, it feels like yesterday because I took with me a collection of the most incredible friends and community built through those days and nights at the store. It was a magnet for creative and beautiful minds, misfits and creatures who belonged.
My world has turned in ways I hadn’t imagined was possible. A few weeks after the store closed I got engaged to the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and six months later we were married. I was pregnant within a few months, started an event production company with a friend, and entered into a new world of motherhood. I struggled through postpartum depression, breastfeeding challenges that consumed me, and just as I started to emerge from the darkness, we miraculously discovered a tumor growing on my baby’s spine. They caught it all and we set out to find a new normal, and three months later I was pregnant again, sick and managing a slew of placenta complications which thankfully all ended ten months ago with a healthy baby. I cofounder an event production company with a friend which we closed when she moved cross country and I’ve been helping startups and small businesses with branding, finding myself drawn to the roots of what I’ve always wanted to do: MAKE ART. Build things. Be a part of the community of makers I’ve envied forever because I am, at my core, an artist.
So, here we are. It’s the end of a decade, the end of what have been five extremely challenging years. I’ve survived and have the most beautiful, incredible family. I have my hands and my heart and my head, the most wonderful friends, and plans to explore. Maybe the store will pop up again in some form, but for now, we go back to the roots of Electric Blanket, which started as a zine and will start again as a zine, Issue 2: The Breakup. It’s time to break up with a decade and start fresh on our own terms. It’s time to let go.
I hope you’ll send your stories and collaborate, and I’ll keep you posted on printing and release. I’ll also be working on the site to include archives of all of our previous projects and community collaborations. All in time. For now and always iterating, electricblanketnow.com
xx
Jillian
