It’s that time again—we’re inking and printing up a storm right now, because we’re just about ready to introduce you to our newest Dead Feminist!
We hope you’ll like her as much as we do—after getting to know her history, we feel like she’s become something of a deer friend.
(Sorry, I can never resist a terrible pun.)
She’s already made her first (and second, and third) impression with us, and oh so soon she’ll do the same for you. Stay tuned!
If you happen to be in the Pacific Northwest right now, you might find yourself surrounded by plus-fours and golf claps. This weekend marks the final days of the U.S. Open golf championship, which is being hosted in our hometown for the first time ever. The Chambers Bay golf course is one of the most beautiful and challenging in the world, and the U.S. Open attracts talented athletes and a ton of media attention. Yet all the coverage has reminded us of the need for a more level playing field for all athletes. So for our newest Dead Feminist broadside, we’ve unleashed the irrepressible showmanship of a golfer and all-star athlete who was a real contender (regardless of gender):
It’s not enough just to swing at the ball. You’ve got to loosen your girdle and let ‘er fly. — Babe Didrikson Zaharias
Babe is best-known for her prowess as a golfer. On the course she was more than a champion: she was a superstar. By 1950 she had won every golf title available to her, and she is still remembered for her 17 straight amateur women’s victories—a feat still unequaled by anyone. Even though her life and career were cut short by illness, she is still one of the most decorated golfers of all time.
But Babe came late to golf—actually, she only switched focus entirely because she couldn’t maintain her amateur status as a golfer unless she gave up her other sports. Many have forgotten that she was also a champion at basketball, track and field, boxing, archery, tennis, diving, bowling, baseball and softball, roller skating and billiards—basically, a master at everything she tried. Babe was an all-star athlete in so many sports it’s hard to believe she was just one person. In fact, she demonstrated this fact by entering a 1932 amateur track and field championship as a one-women team. Babe qualified for three Olympic events (the maximum allowed at the time), but she actually finished first in five events and tied for first in a sixth, single-handedly racking up 30 team points. The second-place team? Well, they scored 22 points—with 22 members competing.
All of this is to illustrate how exceptional Babe was. People love to celebrate multi-event athletes like Michael Jordan or Deion Sanders for excelling at two sports, but how many of those guys were champions at half a dozen or more? Quite simply, Babe Didrikson Zaharias may just have been the greatest American athlete who ever lived. Period.
And this is where things get political. Just take a look at this list of the “Top 10 Greatest Multi-Sport Athletes“—Babe’s numbers blow every name on that list out of the water. (And she competed in many men’s events, as in her day there were often no women’s equivalents.) But Babe’s not on there. No women are. And that’s because even forty-plus years after Title IX, women athletes and women’s sports are of lesser value than their male counterparts. In fact, the words women’s and ladies’ are used as qualifiers, to denote an exception to the default. When you hear the name of a sporting event, and no gender is named, the assumption is that it’s a men’s event. (Heck, I’ve been hearing it all week in the golf coverage: it’s the “U.S. Open” and the “U.S. Women’s Open”—no mention of a “U.S. Men’s Open.”) When an athlete is recognized for her achievements, she is mentioned only on all-women lists. Some sports, like baseball and American football, have no “official” women’s equivalent—while others have different rules for the women’s version, like the arbitrary ban on body checking in women’s ice hockey. Women’s sports make a fraction of what men’s sports make in ticket sales and merchandising revenue. Men’s events still dominate the mainstream coverage air time on television, radio and news. And “you throw like a girl” is still an insult heard every day in America. We’re not advocating for co-ed sports here; we fully understand the practical rationale behind sex-segregation in athletics. But the differing value and respect our culture places on each is another matter entirely. Even the money male and female athletes win and earn is vastly disparate; take the U.S. Open, for example. The winner’s purse in the men’s tournament: $10 million. In the women’s tournament? Less than half, at $4 million. Apparently golf is played on a grass course with a glass ceiling.
In Babe’s lifetime, she was not only hampered by a host of restrictions on women competitors, she was also plagued by a media that ignored her accomplishments and focused instead on her tomboyish looks, brash demeanor and (lack of) relationship status. The pressure was relentless: the New York World-Telegram wrote, “It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.” Even Babe, known for her arrogant show-boating and fiercely competitive nature, started wearing lipstick and more feminine clothing, stating, “I know I’m not pretty, but I try to be graceful.” Many have even argued that she switched to golf and married George Zaharias simply to conform to societal pressures to look and act more ladylike. She certainly treated these changes as a media makeover—perhaps to get the press off her back and shift the focus back to her abilities. So Jessica and I can’t help but wonder how her career might have been different if “pretty” weren’t a factor—if she could have been recognized and remembered for who she was, rather than what she wasn’t.
Since Babe was a marvel whose skill transcended all gender divisions, we wanted to make our broadside design as gender-neutral as possible. Instead, we focused on the game itself. Our 22nd broadside, Title Nine Iron, is a tribute to Babe’s best sport (with a nod to her beginnings as a track star), decked out in golf plaids and bright fairways. Follow the flags around the course with Babe’s quote, and let her words lift you over the rough and onto the green. And to keep our visual puns on par with our message of athletic equality, Babe’s bright red pennant is bedecked with a symbolic “Title IX” club: a nine iron.
Babe struggled throughout her career for recognition in the face of gender discrimination. Unfortunately, women athletes still face this sort of battle today—which makes legislation like Title IX incredibly important, even all these years later. So to help give girls everywhere equal access to sports and athletic training, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the Women’s Sports Foundation. Founded in 1974 by tennis legend Billie Jean King, the Women’s Sports Foundation works to advance the lives of girls and women through physical activity.
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Title Nine Iron: No. 22 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 143 prints
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches
Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.
Colophon reads:
Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias (1911 – 1956) grew up in Port Arthur, Texas. Babe reportedly earned her nickname playing baseball with neighborhood boys. She mastered every sport she played, including basketball, track and field, golf, tennis, diving, bowling, billiards and archery. When asked if there was anything she didn’t play, Babe said, “Yeah, dolls.”
In 1932, Didrickson entered an Amateur Athletic Union track and field championship as a one-woman team. She won six events, setting world records for the high jump, 80-meter hurdles, javelin and baseball throw. That same year, she won Olympic gold medals for the javelin and 80-meter hurdles and a silver medal in the high jump. Babe began playing golf in 1935, competing in the men’s PGA tournament paired with golfer, pro wrestler and future husband George Zaharias. Over her career, Babe won an unprecedented 17 straight women’s amateur victories and a total of 82 golf tournaments. A founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, she was fiercely competitive and an entertainer on the course, challenging accepted notions of femininity and athleticism despite constant media scrutiny.
Babe was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 1953. A year after a colostomy, she won the U.S. Women’s Open, inspiring cancer survivors with her victory. Golfer Betty Dodd played LPGA tours with Babe, eventually moving in with her and George for the last years of Babe’s life. Their intimate relationship was never publicly acknowledged. Babe’s cancer returned and she died at age 45. In 1999 the Associated Press named her Woman Athlete of the 20th Century.
Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, in honor of those who embrace their unique identities, “ladylike” or not. Printed by hand in Tacoma during the U.S. Men’s Open golf championship.
Now available in the shop!
Here’s another clue to what we’re working on for the new broadside. A very big sporting event is coming to our town, and it’s had me scribbling inspiration in my sketchbook…
…and Jessica firing up the press.
See you next week with the big reveal!
Jessica and I are working on the next broadside right now—our process begins with choosing a quote and hammering out a rough concept, and then I do a bunch of thumbnail sketches to puzzle out the design. Usually, by the time I start lettering in pencil, I have a really clear picture in my head of what the finished product should look like. Even so—even 22 broadsides later—I’m still intimidated by the proverbial blank page. That’s why all those thumbnail sketches come in handy: they help illuminate the next step, and the next, and the next. And if I’m really lucky, I’ll be so wrapped up in blocking out the composition that I’ll forget to worry about whether or not the design will be any good.
Fingers crossed…time to start in.
For our last broadside, we focused on a woman from the Islamic world; now we’re back with an homage to Judaica. The juxtaposition of the two pieces was no accident on our part. Yet the timing of world events was something we could never have planned. We originally meant to tie our new piece in with the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz—last month, the anti-Semitic terrorist attacks in Paris gave us a terrible new perspective for our piece.
What really bowled us over is that the young woman we chose to highlight for the new piece underscores the relationship between the two events, the two time periods in history. You see, our gal is a historical figure, yet the world has only just discovered her. So here we present to you the words of a young writer, whose diary, along with her faith, carried her through one of the darkest times in human history:
Although life is difficult, it is also beautiful. — Rywka Lipszyc (pronounced “Rivka Lipschitz”)
Rywka’s story is astonishing, if only for the fact that it can be told at all. Rywka was a teenager living in one of the worst Jewish ghettos of Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. By the time she started her diary at age fourteen, she had already lost all but one of her family members. While working as a factory seamstress and caring for her younger sister, she poured her heart and faith into the pages of her notebook. At times the diary is a harrowing account of wartime hardship; at others, it reads like the missives of any normal, modern teenage girl. The pages are dense but not numerous: just a few months after it begins, the diary ends abruptly—and with it most of our knowledge of Rywka’s life. We know she was deported to Auschwitz a few months later; and that her sister was murdered upon arrival at the camp. We know she was liberated from Auschwitz by allied troops 70 years ago—but then her trail goes cold, like that of so many other victims of the Holocaust. Historians are sure she did not survive for long after the liberation, but that’s all they’re sure of: no further details of Rywka’s fate have been uncovered. No photo of her exists, nor any other trace of her life beyond the diary, a few registration records, and the memories of a trio of surviving cousins living in Israel.
What is truly remarkable is that the diary survived the war, the camps and the intervening decades. A Russian army doctor allegedly found the diary in the ashes of the Auschwitz crematorium. The doctor made a few notes in the margins, and then put it away in her closet at home—for the rest of her life. Upon her death, her son found the diary, and then he stashed it away for several more decades. When he died, his daughter—the granddaughter of the army doctor—traveled back to Russia from the U.S., and found the diary among his effects. This time, however, she knew just what to do with it. She took it back with her to the States, and turned it over to the JFCS Holocaust Center in San Francisco. They then authenticated and translated the diary—and published it in book form less than a year ago.
Jessica and I were able to get a hold of the new publication at the Pacific Lutheran University library (many thanks to Holly Senn for tracking the book down for us!). In reading the text, we were struck by Rywka’s use of metaphor—particularly her mentions of flowers growing among thorns. So we took Rywka’s imagery and wove the broadside’s design and theme around it.
Common Threads is a winter garden of pale pastels and subtle metallic golds. The delicate colors and shining metallic ink (which includes real gold in the formula) represent the fragility and preciousness of life among the thorns of war and persecution. The floral motif echoes themes from Rywka’s diary, and stands for the resilience of the Jewish people—whose culture has flourished beautifully despite some of the worst trials endured by humankind.
The overall design of the broadside is based on Rywka’s dual cultural heritage. The border is reminiscent of Jewish embroidered challah covers and sabbath cloths, while the style of floral illustration is derived from Polish folk florals. The stitched lines are a nod to Rywka’s trade as seamstress, which she viewed optimistically as a way to move forward and make a living in a future beyond wartime.
To help fight anti-Semitism worldwide and defend civil rights for all, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to the Anti-Defamation League — one of the nation’s top human and civil rights organizations for over 100 years.
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Common Threads: No. 21 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 145 prints
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches
Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.
Colophon reads:
Rywka Lipszyc (1929 – 1945?) kept a diary from October 1943 to April 1944, while living in Poland’s Łódź ghetto. Discovered by a Russian doctor in the crematoria remains at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the diary was published in 2014, sharing Rywka’s amazing story with the world. Her parents and three siblings perished in Nazi ghettos and killing centers. Despite horrible living conditions Rywka survived, working in the ghetto’s clothing and linen workshop, learning to sew, organizing a library, and attending classes. Her diary ends abruptly, but records reveal she was deported to Auschwitz, then liberated to a field hospital after the war’s end. No further trace of her has been found, but Rywka’s words survive, a reminder of her incredible faith despite all odds — and her dream of becoming a writer fulfilled.
Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, honoring words and images of every faith as an invaluable thread that binds us together.
UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!
Jessica and I thought we’d show you a glimpse of what we debuted in California this week. Look for the new broadside to appear online at the end of next week!
It’s that time again—Jessica and I are hard at work on the next broadside. Actually, we’ve been hard at work on this piece for months already. I think it’s safe to say that this piece has the most research and labor behind it than any we’ve done so far.
There’s a lot at stake this time, and we want to get things right. And besides—as you can see, the piece is chock full of teeny tiny bits, and the registration is going to be tight. So we’re doubling down on the proofreading skills and triple-checking every detail.
Now the design is done, I just sent out the finished files for the plates, and we’ll be on press starting this week. More soon!
At long last, Jessica and I are ready to unveil our newest broadside—a piece that has been weighing heavily on our hearts and minds. Our journey began in April, when over 200 girls were kidnapped from their school in Chibok, Nigeria. Since then the media has been filled with accusations leveled at Islam—a culture we know to have a long history of valuing education, innovation and knowledge. We also know that the danger of extremism knows no cultural boundary—and that it would benefit us all to build a world where every girl has the opportunity and security to obtain an education.
So after months of exhaustive research, we decided to go back in time to some of the earliest days of higher education, and to the life and work of Fatima al-Fihri—the woman who founded Al-Qarawiyyin, the oldest university still in operation today. Because Fatima lived in the 9th century, no direct quotes have made it to the present era. Instead, the piece highlights Fatima’s honorific title: Oum al Banine, or “Mother of the Children.”
The phrase weaves through the piece like the mortar between stones, repeating again and again like a mantra. The design mirrors the Arabesque decorative style, as well as the common practice of decorating Muslim houses of worship with text (often phrases from the Qur’an). Because it is forbidden to depict the Prophet in Islam, architecture is usually adorned with text and geometric patterns instead.
I spent a long, long time creating this illustration—not only because of all the ornate patterning, or the carefully-researched Arabic script. Not just the time I spent trying to find images of Al-Qarawiyyin, or information about Fatima’s life. Somehow, the act of creating this illustration became something of a mantra in itself. All the time required to draft these patterns and compose the page became a form of meditation—and I needed that with this piece. Because much more than that, this became an exercise in trying to understand.
I was trying to understand why we had so much trouble finding a voice for this piece. Why we had to go back 1200 years to find a woman like Fatima, who had made a lasting contribution and who was remembered. Why we could not find a relevant, direct quote at all, despite months of research and consulting scholars on this topic. Why it is so difficult and dangerous for a girl to obtain an education in so many parts of the world. Why there is so much violence and hatred and fear surrounding a belief system with so much beauty inherent within it. Why we are still asking these basic questions after so many centuries have passed.
The answers did not come with the completion of the drawing. They did not come off the press with the finished prints. They will not come through my fingers as I type this. If they cannot come as a result of war, or negotiation between heads of state, or elected office, or royal birthright, or the swell of the mob—they won’t come from me.
But I do know this: every human life is worth the same, and deserves the same chance in life. And more than anything else, I know that education, even at its most basic, is the best chance anyone can have to make a good life—for themselves, and for the rest of us. Education is the best defence we know against extremism, poverty, and violence. So this is where we begin. Where we should always begin.
Our 20th Dead Feminist broadside is an ornate tribute to Fatima’s world and the institution she founded. The composition, structured like a Persian manuscript page, features an illustration based on the architecture of Al-Qarawiyyin, with its angular rooflines and sweeping curved arches. Interspersed thoughout the piece is a hand-drawn geometric pattern that mirrors the tilework throughout the university and mosque. Wrapping around the “walls” behind a pair of columns is the Basmala (the phrase that begins every sura or chapter of the Qur’an), lettered in Arabic script.
To help ensure the safety and quality of girls’ education worldwide, we are donating a portion of our proceeds to Girl Up — a nonprofit campaign of the United Nations Foundation that assists some of the world’s hardest-to-reach adolescent girls.
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The Veil of Knowledge: No. 20 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 125.4***
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches
Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.
Colophon reads:
Fatima Al-Fihri (c. 800 – 880) grew up in Fez, Morocco with her sister Miriam, daughters of a wealthy Tunisian merchant. The daughters were well-educated and devoted to their community. After the death of their father, Fatima vowed to spend all her inheritance in building a mosque, both a place for worship and a center of learning. In 859, she founded Al-Qarawiyyin, which offered courses in grammar, rhetoric, logic, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, history, geography and music — drawing scholars and students from all over the world. (Gerbert of Auverge — later Pope Sylvester II — studied there, and was credited with the introduction of Arabic numbers and the concept of zero to Europe.) This important spiritual and educational center of the Islamic world, one of the largest mosques in Africa, is considered the oldest university still in operation. As a woman with such generosity and vision, Fatima is remembered and honored as Oum al Banine, “the mother of the children.”
Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, with the knowledge that all women must have the right to an education.
UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the shop!
*** The edition size needs a little explanation—every broadside has a symbolic edition number, but this piece is extra special. This number is the solution to an equation we devised out of numbers that are highly symbolic in Islam. Arabic culture is credited with the invention of algebra—a term derived from an Arabic word meaning “the reunion of broken parts.” We arrived at our edition number by multiplying 66 (the number that represents Allah in Islamic numerology) by 19 (considered by some mystics to be the “Key to the Q’uran”), and then dividing the result by 10 (ten-pointed stars are common elements in Arabesque patterning, as well as our broadside design). The “.4” in our edition number represents four artist proofs that exist outside the numbered edition, and set aside as gifts for four important women in our lives. These four women mirror the four “Women of the First Rank in Islam” (Khadijah, first wife of the Prophet; Fatimah, the fourth daughter of Khadijah and the Prophet, and the wife of the Fourth Caliph; the Virgin Mary; and Asiya, wife of the pharaoh and stepmother to Moses).
Jessica has been churning out a crop of lemonade journals lately, including some fun new ones from the outtakes of our Focal Point print. Look for them soon in the shop!
Don’t be distracted by Ric’s smile—see the puddles everywhere? See the winter gear people are wearing? Sunday was the craziest Wayzgoose yet, hands down. That’s because we had both the biggest crowd ever and the worst weather imaginable. So that smile is one of triumph: getting a decent steamroller print that day required beating some serious odds.
It rained sideways while Jessica inked.
It hailed while we lined up our block.
Photo by Dr. Jamie Brooks
It froze while we peeled our prints up.
Photo by Dr. Jamie Brooks
It blew a gale while I painted.
Still, despite the mishaps, I think it turned out alright. Jessica and I are calling our print “Park Place”—created in gratitude over the passage of a bond that would fund our city park system. The map in the center shows most of Tacoma’s parks, with twelve of our favorites called out like properties on a Monopoly board.
We even took a snippet of the illustration and sent it over to the talented screenprinting booth folks, who turned it into a t-shirt design during the event (you can just see a peek of it in the upper left corner).
Since the rain and wind prevented us from hanging the finished prints outside during Wayzgoose, most of the people who came that day didn’t get to see anybody’s finished print. So today Ric, Jessica and I remedied that.
Thanks to Spaceworks Tacoma, all of this year’s steamroller prints are on exhibit in the Woolworth Windows downtown…
…where you can see them—in fair weather or foul—now through August 21.
Thanks to everyone who visited or volunteered at Wayzgoose this year, and to King’s Books and the Tacoma Arts Commission for making it all happen!