It’s been ten days since the opening reception of my One Hundred Badass Women show at the Huntington Museum of Art. I have so many thoughts about it, and so much to say. I decided to make a blog post to not only talk about what that reception meant to me, but to also try to put in writing some of what I said in my talk in the auditorium that night. There were people who wanted to make it and couldn’t, but there were also people who were in the building who didn’t get to hear the talk because the auditorium was well over capacity. I am still in shock about how many of you showed up that night. Here are some photos/videos I stole from all your Facebook posts:
The day my show opened was exactly two years after I painted Kamala Harris. It’s crazy…it feels both forever ago and like yesterday that I did those paintings. I don’t think time works the same as it used to, pre-pandemic. Now that it’s been nearly two years since I finished this project, I have some insight about it that I want to share. I often don’t find clarity in the “why’s” of what I do until much later.
My “why” for this project, initially, was to cope. I started painting to cope with grief, anxiety, and depression. Everything was shut down, I was stuck at home, and in a dark place full of fear. If you followed this project from the start, you already know…I painted Ruth Bader Ginsburg the day after she died as a way to learn about and honor her life. The act of painting her that day, and sharing that painting on social media, was so healing to me that I wanted to keep going; I decided to paint one new portrait a day for the last 100 days of 2020.
The first Badass Woman: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 11x14, oil and gold/silver leaf on panel.
My second painting was of Maya Angelou. I shared my painting online, along with the following words:
I am going to try my best to paint one inspiring woman every day for the rest of this year. This is such a medicine for me right now, and I am so glad I found it. The present has been feeling gloomy, and though I don't want to wear blinders to that, I want to pay homage to the past. I want to learn about and be inspired by those who have, even in the darkest times, shown up as relentlessly brilliant lights to show the way. And I want to share them with anyone who wants to learn with me.
I listened to interviews with Maya Angelou all day while I painted her. She is so much more than I knew. She was San Fransisco's first black streetcar conductor, AT SIXTEEN. She was raped at 7 and did not speak for nearly 6 years, and poetry inspired her to find her voice again. She is, of course, an absolutely brilliant poet/writer, but she was also a dancer and singer with an awesome voice. I knew of her activism, and of her beautiful writing, but I am so glad to have learned so much more about her. Her birthday is two days before mine, and she was six feet tall like me. I felt like I was standing on her shoulders while I painted her. I have no idea who I'll paint tomorrow, but I am always open to suggestions.
Maya Angelou, 11x14, oil and gold/silver/bronze leaf on panel.
The suggestions POURED in. I wrote down every single name. I didn’t let myself decide who would be painted next until the moment I was ready; this was one of many head games I played with myself to keep it interesting, but it also allowed this whole project to evolve in a really cool organic way.
Every single day I painted for anywhere between 8-12 hours, then spent some time photographing the work and writing about what I learned about that day’s subject. After sharing everything online in the evening, I always had the best discussions with people about the lives of the women I painted. It was so cool to hear personal stories of those who were inspired by my subjects. People also started asking lots of good questions about technique, so I shot time-lapse video of some of them as I worked.
Really quickly, it felt like this project just blew up. From the day of the very first painting through January, my website had over 20,000 visitors from over 60 countries. I did four news interviews, a podcast interview, and was interviewed for countless articles. Eventually when the project was finished, WVVille did an awesome documentary about the project. I was able to photograph the works and offer prints as I painted, and where it fit I gave some of the print proceeds to causes that reflected the values of my subjects. The Ronald McDonald House, Marshall University’s Autism Services, and The Trevor Project were a few of the places I was able to give to. So many other people were being affected by this work that it no longer felt like a solitary project, and I no longer felt alone.
Without realizing it, my “why” had totally changed. I went from wanting to cheer myself up and be a better painter to seeing myself as one part of a powerful collective participating in a healing group project. I was becoming a better painter, but what really excited me were the connections I was making with my community. I was learning from and with others, and I felt understood when I expressed my feelings in writing. As someone who has always been a little shy and inclined toward being a hermit, these were new things to me. It was like a hug I didn’t know I needed. I learned so many things from this project, but the biggest takeaway for me is that I really don’t want to always work alone anymore. Solitary studio work definitely has its place, but I want to do more work that feels collaborative and educational.
Another thing I learned is that I really want to keep showing up in an authentic way, allowing myself to be seen. I think one reason I used to feel like hiding is because I couldn’t be really honest about who I was. If you know me, or follow my social media, you know I came out as trans about a year after I finished this project. Reflecting back on it now, it is clear to me that in doing this work, I was dissecting a lot of my feelings around gender in general. It scared me to come out. It terrified me that I might lose this sense of community I felt, that I might lose my place among women, because that is certainly not what I want. But ultimately, it was the love and support I felt throughout this project that made me feel safe to come out. I want to thank everyone who followed along for making me feel loved, and seen, and safe enough to be myself.
It was also this love and support that ultimately decided my last painting.
Medusa, 16x20, oil and gold/silver/copper leaf on canvas.
I started getting suggestions to paint myself very early on, but I was pretty uncomfortable with that idea. You guys made good arguments though, about honoring myself as a way to show young people to do the same. Toward the end of the series, I was leaning toward painting Medusa as number one hundred. I thought it would be cool to make the last one a mythological woman, and the #metoo movement’s reclamation of Medusa as a feminist icon was super interesting to me. As I was reading in my studio, I looked up and saw just the eyes of this painting looking back at me from behind the smaller portraits I had leaned up against it. I had started this self-portrait a couple years prior, and could never get the composition right. In the moment I saw it, I felt it had been patiently waiting there all along for the addition of snakes.
I wasn’t out at the time…no one knew I was trans, and that I was wrestling with gender identity as I painted these women. I didn’t even fully understand that at the time, but I did know that I felt weird about painting myself in this series for that reason. Painting myself as Medusa was a way to see myself in her story rather than trying to fit myself where I didn’t feel I belonged. This is a portion of the writing I shared on my website along with that painting:
What if I read Medusa’s story without buying into the belief that women are jealous, catty, vengeful beings who compete with and hate one another? It sure seems like Athena was protecting Medusa in that case. Or maybe transforming her into a protector of all women. In fact, Medusa comes from a word meaning to guard or protect. Makes sense why Athena would want her on her shield. It also makes me look at the result of Medusa’s “curse” quite differently. Wearing those male gaze glasses, I saw her existence on an island full of stone men as very tragic and lonely. When I take them off, I see Medusa living a lush life of doing whatever she wanted in nature. She was free from the misogynistic society that wrote her story, she had some cool garden sculptures, and a bitchin’ hairdo. There was a benefit for the rest of the world too. One at a time, Medusa was ridding it of the type of guy who thought head-hunting a rape victim was a fun game.
This idea of the lens with which we view the world is something that has stayed with me throughout this entire project. Those particular glasses do not show us reality. If they did, I wouldn’t have had to dig as hard as I did to learn about these women. Those glasses show us a myth that we are under no obligation to accept, just as I am under no obligation to accept the Medusa myth I was told as a child. We are free to sort through it, dissect it, and question everything. Once I did that with Medusa, I no longer saw her as an ugly and tragic character. I saw her as an unparalleled BADASS.
Now that I have had a couple years to digest all of this, it makes total sense to me why I can see myself in Medusa. She was different, an outsider. A total monster to some people. Realizing that I didn’t have to accept the version of her myth that demonized her made me also realize I didn’t have to accept the notion that I am flawed in some way because of who I am. I absolutely value my lived experiences as a woman, and I feel in some ways like a fierce protector of women, and I always will.
I am thrilled to say that I’ve been awarded a grant from the Waymakers Collective to create some art that digs deeper into gender in ways I’m really excited about, and I want that to be for everyone. I heard Lizzo recently say she was a woman of black experience who makes music for everybody. I am an Appalachian person of trans experience, but I want to make art for everyone. Everyone is affected by gender stereotypes, especially women, so I’m excited to see what kind of conversations might come from that work.
To every single person who followed this work and elevated this project with your support, wisdom, and love: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping to creating this loving, supportive community. This work was not a solitary endeavor, and it profoundly changed my life for the better. I am so grateful. To every person who showed up for the opening: There is no way I could possibly describe what it meant to me to be able to stand in that packed auditorium and speak my truth. There’s no way I can convey how good all those hugs and kind words felt afterward. That is the kind of love that can soften a lifetime of scars. Thank you.
❤️ Sassa