Leaving Sex Education & Other Spoils of Childhood

This is the year I am leaving sex education, and other spoils of childhood. Because, frankly, I am twenty-two, almost twenty-three years too old for my mother to insist that sex is bad. Bad for me, because no one wants to marry a used vagina.

I am taking my soap, dirty laundry, loud music and my laptop screen-time away from an older, more respectable generation. The unused mess of birth control pills can leave with its immoral, cancerous self; The fertile stink of overgrown teenager can blow away with its cloud of depressive self-doubt; The childish daughter can grow up, and come back when she is woman enough to represent her family.

The black sheep does not need sex education in the first place. She was born out of a black-hole. Literally, she is a black-hole kept warm by black fluff. She is the Boogie-Woman that everyone’s mother warns their children about. The perverse black-hole that eats nice boys who don’t know any better.

It is time for me to quit mother-tit-sucking and fend for myself. Time to stop leaching from all the sons around me. Create a universe to call my own; A home to fill groceries made of my brain sweat. Brain sweat, because it is not appropriate for a bright, talented girl of today to work traditional women’s roles; It is not time to wash dishes and have sex with a lover in return for survival.

Winter Finds Misplaced Boyfriend

I’ve been painting with warm pinks and beige yellows since that taxi scurried you away. Far away from the warm fleece blankets we were wrapped up in. You became a small yellow dot in a grey and white city.  I was left cold in a house with wind blasting through a large gap in the wall while the windows were being eaten alive. I almost considered boxing myself in that yellow cab with you, but I’d end up in the wrong place upon arrival to the airport, never mind naked under a red, fleece blanket.

Oh, how you were my fireplace, when I’d stick my toes by you. How do I follow a fire around? You cannot capture it in a briefcase, like you can with money, or your computer. Hugs hold tight and love frees its flame.

I imagined the abstract concept of days like blocks in two weeks worth of stacking. slowly waiting, to stack. And each mocking day is not getting any warmer.

House Keeping Time

Time could be wasted, drunk, poor and unpaid.
Time is spent, folding towels.
Time, counted in spin cycles,
counted in full, knotted garbage bags.

at the hostel, time is
foreign for a four-hour shift.

Love and Bio-Diesel

my mother
my father

are building a room in their house
waiting for when I will fill it.

Our house will be a bio-diesel tank

I will be thrown out vegetable smoothie spilling outta my guts
out that pretty Bistro on Main St.
that pretty pretty Bistro, circulating in and out
pretty pretty girls.

I will smell of kitchen – deep-fryer thickened air
I’ve been marinating in. I am soupy waste oil.

I’ve been at the cold Exit door once before,
but this time, Mom & Daddy’s diesel truck is waiting for me
A tiny little tank for me
for me to grow up in.

when I am one crying cricket
solo, out in a cold, unfriendly field

Ditching Dollars: An Emerging Artist’s Journey to Honest Art

I’ve been thinking of you. You and your power to consume my art, once I expose it to you. You have the choice of licking it, exchanging money for it, chucking it. I’ve been hoarding my art for most of my life, I’ve refused to sell it to you for a long, long time. At the same time, my art has tried to please you, begged you to fall in love.

The art is young; it resolved to not poison its growth with thoughts of money. It’s goal is not to grow up as a mountain of cash.

Also, its direction should not be dictated by the art du jour, preferred subject of its audience, curators, critics, collectors for the goal of popularity. It should remain flexible when it comes to exploration, expansion of ideas, and general learning.

To Art:

• Yes, you can be a simple painting on canvas, your forte in the technique, despite the art world’s current fixation on concept, philosophy and process.
• You can be anything you want, just as long as you are true to yourself (as an extension, expression, and/or tool of expression of the artist or whatever it is).

and the journey of learning and art-making continues…

Vancouver East-Side Culture Crawl 2008 – Mimi Li & No Naked Girls

Sticky tack. The traveling artist’s new partner in crime; Stick your paper on the wall – voila! a space-saving easel in a busy hallway at the Vancouver East-Side Culture Crawl this weekend.

You followed the signs: No Naked Girls. Besides the obvious, paintings of non-naked girls on the wall, You might have caught me pen in hand, drawing a monster of colour on the wall at 1000 Parker Studios. Children seemed to be the most captive audience that I have encountered. A sweet girl even requested me to cut out a home-made business card just for her! Their parents stop for their children, who watch the monster grow for several minutes, before they head to the other studios upstairs.

Some of my personal favourites were the woodworks studios, including Greg, who teaches the wood-lathe to make wooden bowls and other beautiful items you’d usually see as pottery. It’s incredible to see diseased wood shown off in such beautiful patterns. A pine-cone like wood-piece, and cherry wood – mmmm! One day I’ll be lucky enough to have time to check out the other studios open to public. Maybe next year!

Some nice students from the UBC newspaper interviewed me and featured my photo and my artwork in this week’s article! The Ubyssey mentions artist Mimi Li at the Vancouver East-Culture Crawl 2008.

By the way, I’ve designed a new website just in time for the Vancouver East-Culture Crawl this year. Ink illustrations, paintings and animations in Vancouver at www.mimi-li.com