November 2022

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an illustration of a fat, feathered, bird-clawed & horned, queer & trans Jewish demon, seated above Yiddish text reading "feygele." the figure is chained by the wrists but appears arrogant & inviting.

a poem with an illustration of bird with a person's head & crown of stars. the title (in Hebrew) is "sheyd

FEYGELE, 2020.

a sheyd (Jewish demon) inspired by two major stylistic influences, Leonard Baskin & Aubrey Beardsley, and also by the #AugustAdiPOSE & #FatArt hashtags on Twitter. the title/text “feygele” is a Yiddish word meaning “little bird” often used as pejorative slang for a queer person – here also playing off the figure’s size & the bird-like attributes of sheydim in folklore. a queer/trans fat Jewish aspiration!

paired with the poem “sheyd” from my chapbook:

commanded, as you are, to love the stranger,

must you not also be a refuge

to the strangest who reside among you?

call us in from the corners, we little birds

who sing in unfamiliar tongues: our cries

also reach heaven.

though our prayers take different forms

we too are people of the book;

we too keep our covenants, in the 

twilight places where we make our homes.

even as you safeguard yourselves fully against us,

so do you imprison a portion of the soul we share—

let there be spaces in your dwellings and your teachings

for us to come and go in peace.

we bring with us both the fear and the joy you have forgotten:

in the dust, in the ashes of your empires

shall you see our footprints.

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an ink painting portrait of an Afro-Latinx transfemme person with a shaved head and full beard, wearing dangling earrings, two necklaces, circular glasses & a print top. she is surrounded by a floral border with ribbons of fabric hanging down from the bottom.ALT

Portrait of Noèl, 2017

still one of my favorite portraits i’ve ever done! a friend & former student of mine who is now an incredible fashion designer. from her Design Museum profile:

Today, Noèl is a Mexico City-based artist interested in shifting perceptions of intimacy and revitalizing a sense of fantasy through the dissection of queer and Afro-Latinx identity through clothing construction, mixed media installations, fiber practices, and video. Her work centers the power of physical touch and moves through a romanticized reality of the discarded. She poeticizes the relationships of her Dominican elders and her own stories of existing as a queer, fat, femme, racially ambiguous, trans person.

she’s currently raising money to build a foundation for her clothing brand & you can help out here!

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title page illustrations for Dream Askew (left) and Dream Apart (right). the Dream Askew illustration features a derelict frame created out of junk, with talismans and herbs hanging from it, a nail-studded bat, electrical equipment and candles. the Dream Apart illustration features a frame created out of smoke rising from the chimneys of shtetl houses, up into the sky where a multi-eyed, winged angel watches. both illustrations have a sigil/logo at the center.ALT
illustration of two tattered cards, one with a storm cloud that has an eye and the other with a small eye & the edge of a hand.ALT
illustration of a pair of tattered leather steel-toed bootsALT
illustration of a fiddleALT
illustration of a paper amulet with Hebrew text and imagery (a small fish, a Star of David, a magic square)ALT

title pages & interior illustrations for Dream Askew (in green) & Dream Apart (in sepia), 2018, Buried Without Ceremony

DA/DA was my first real TTRPG job & remains one of my favorite projects ever - two beautiful games about survival (queer communities in the near-future apocalypse, Jewish communities in a historic/fantastical shtetl) that truly live inside you once you’ve played them. this was the beginning of the Belonging Outside Belonging system/style (built on the frameworks of Powered by the Apocalypse), which has gone on to inspire many other incredible games!