Fat Feminist Activist Artist's Blog

It’s been quite a week, never to bed before 3:30am any day and up before 9:00am running like a jackrabbit.  But after a 24 hour work binge and marathon drive I made it to Grand Rapids with my art and it is now installed at the Schuler Books Downtown.  It looks awesome…if I do say so myself, thanks to Brant and Brian my fabulous movers.

They got to the store long before I as I was still running errands…had to get my happy pill perscription refilled…or well let’s  not go there.  lol…They helped me open all the boxes…there are even some boxes left unopened, that are holding up the wall partition.  Can you  imagine too many diet books?  NO!!! 

Anyways I snapped a few pictures with my paste encrusted cell phone so I will post those.  But trust me more wonderful pictures to come.

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I have just put together my artist statement…I hope this makes sense…I’m going on very little sleep.

The Obesity Crisis Contained: The Venus of Willendorf Project

I am a fat feminist activist artist, and I am sick and tired of everyone including doctors and the multi-billion dollar diet industry itself going around saying that “Diet’s Don’t Work”…and in the same breath trying to put all of us on a diet.[1]

The purpose of my installation is show the viewer in a shocking and bold way how much money and time we put into this useless endeavor of dieting.  It is my thesis that it is not the fast food industry nor the Chinese All You Can Eat Buffet that are causing the so called “Obesity Crisis” but back lash from years of dieting, food restriction and disordered eating. My hope is that my project will inspire people to get rid of their diet books, accept themselves and others the way they are and help me bring down the diet industry.  Donate your diet books to my art, and my next project entitled “Diet World” A massive maze constructed completely of diet books that will follow the paths of different disordered eating patterns. My hopes is that this piece will travel the country educating the masses on the dangers of dieting and what real health looks like, I think you all will be surprised.

People come in all different shapes and sizes, not everyone who is fat is unhealthy and not everyone who is slender is healthy.  I think that it is high time that we accept diversity in shapes and sizes just as we have accepted diversity of color.  Eat more fruits and vegetables, go outside and play, and for g-d’s sake keep your eyes on your own plate! Health at Every Size!

________

Brenda Oelbaum

https://fatfeministactivistartist.wordpress.com/

I just figured out how to add links to the side bar.  I swear I should really not be doing this,I just can’t seem to learn this stuff fast enough.  A friend was on here looking for information about ArtPrize, and of course there was not visible….Now I have a link to it and even a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal about it.  But look at the time…OMG…it’s 3:10 am…how am I going to work tomorrow?? 

In my panic to feel like I had something big enough to show in ArtPrize, I started yet another Venus.  4 small and one giant just didn’t seem enough.  So I got 4 copies of the Last Chance Diet into a fifth small sculpture, I still have not finished the Venus of Fonda, I have to put her two halves together…but I needed to wait until she was completely dry ( no more mold for me please ).  I’ll start on that tomorrow morning.  I also need to pack up all the books in the front of the studio so that when I host the WCA-Michigan Meeting there Thursday night I don’t scare the members. 

One of the things we are going to talk about on the night of the 16th is having a WCA-MI Members Show in the space during Ann Arbor’s Art Walk in October.  If my membership sees that mess they will never volunteer to put up the show.  I’m doomed I tell you, doomed. I am burning the candle at both ends and in the middle.  I so need that girl my old assistant Aisling told me about to contact me.  I need an replacement art slave so badly it’s not funny.

As fast as the books get logged into the computer…and dragged to the studio…I move more in.  Diet books are kinda like horror films just when you think you have seen them all another one comes out.

I’m too old to pull all-nighters and yet I did last night…I still haven’t slept well maybe for an hour this morning before I went to therapy at 8:20am.  I’m a complete and total zombie but I still have miles to go before I sleep.  This morning I really thought I saw the floor in the office for the first time in over a year.  But I still had like 10 boxes of books at the studio that I had not entered in the Diet World Inventory.  I want to make sure I can tell people how many books are in the installation.  If I could have a print out of all the titles it would good to.  I really want the viewer to feel the “volume” of the multi-billion dollar diet industry.  I want to sufficate them with the weight of the books like I have been sufficated.  I can’t believe there are still titles that I have not entered yet.  It’s madness.

I have been looking all over for a few copies of Susan Powter’s Stop the Insanity for a while now…I had almost finished the Powter Venus when I got the idea that I would use the images from her book to give the Venus tights…as Powter had at one time had a fitness line out of her own. Unfortunately I had used too many of the picture pages inside the venus…and was scrambling to find a few more copies to fill in the bare spots. Someone told me at a used book store about Half.com which is an offshoot of Ebay…where I could find the book for around 75 cents, plus shipping and handling…sure enough…I was able to get two copies…they arrived from two different sellers within two days…it was awesome… but…one had bookworm holes in it. Not that it mattered much to me…hey I’m just going to be ripping the books up anyways. But as the vender was selling it listed it as Like New…I had to send her comment. Well incrediably she refunded my money shipping and all and said I could keep the book. OMG…well Crazy Aunt Gail…gets a super big hug from me and a thanks for contributing to the project…That reminds me… I should make a contributors page on here. EEEk!!! more work. But thank you so much Gail…that is just awesome…I totally appreciate your business sense..and charitable nature. If only I could train bookworms to eat only diet books…that would be brilliant.

Picture of the book to come… with the worm trails…so cool.

Here are the pictures as promised…Yes Book Worms do exist

Actually we took these pictures a few days ago,  so there are a few new pages on her…but she looks pretty much the same.  I closed her up a bit too early and there are some pages that did not make it into this piece…it was suggested that I count and weigh the missing pages and put an asterix beside her title that says *6 Richard Simmons’ Never Say Diet Books minus 23 pages…such and such grams of paper…so that you really see the OCD nature of Eating Disorder and Dieting…I do feel a bit like a cheater but as this is the first of the Diet Guru Small Venus’s…I need to be gentle with myself.  She is lovely….

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Another quote from the book…found by Aisling…got to love that grrrrl

“fat people die young, please don’t die”

Richard Simmons