The SACRIFICIAL LAMB
art, for art's sake
Like many of your favorite Comics Pals, I spent a lot of this past week attending ComicsPro adjacent events. I didn’t spend any face time at the con itself, because everything I’m working on has between “another month” and “another year” before I can really start talking about it. But that didn’t stop me from meeting up with friends and editors for a drink, a chat, and a therapeutic rant about the extremely strange experience of painting text documents with the contents of your guts and handing them over for money, over and over again. You know. “Writing talk.”
Time comes, friends, when you gotta remind yourself to do something creative for fun. Just for the guts, not for the money. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the past several months crocheting, which we’ve talked about it before on here. Mostly I’ve been making little hats and bags and things. Not not art, but not…feeling like art. It felt like crafting - like making something for the having of it, for the joy of expressing myself, right?
I think about it, maybe too much. Crafting is a loaded word for a lot of women who have had millennia of art dismissed as ‘crafts.’ Clothing sewn for whole families, warm garments made by hand, moms making Halloween costumes and birthday cakes - these are all difficult, skilled, creative activities that can easily be considered art and often are not. Better minds than mine have built entire fields of study dedicated to rediscovering and validating women’s ‘handicrafts’ as works of art. But that’s not really my situation.
Personally, I knew I was just ‘crafting.’ Following patterns didn’t feel expressly creative to me, but it did give the good dopamine. Counting and stitching on the couch after a day of hardcore wordsmithing helped my brain uncramp while keeping busy the underused portions. And at the end, I get to have a new hat, or whatever.
So what would make my crafting feel like art? For me, I wanted to make something without a pattern, something of my own conception, something impractical. Something that I made to be an object of beauty, to be looked upon, and to express some inner idea that dwelt in my mind but not yet reality. Something that wasn’t in the world, that I thought ought be, so I made it. And finally, something that connected this personal skill with that vision. Enter the Sacrificial Lamb.
“THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB.
Crochet, beadwork. Secondhand acrylic yarn, reclaimed jewelry.
Complete with a bejeweled slit throat and a medal of St. Gerard, I’ve been crocheting since I was a child and feeling motivated to make real art from it lately. This is the first in a series.”
I started thinking about how to explain the concept of the sacrificial lamb, its meaning, and why I find it interesting, but it’s done much more effectively by The Reverend Professor Doctor Natalie Contrapoints Wynn, in this clip here. (You should really watch the rest of that video. It’s about Twilight!)
Is it nerve-wracking to share a new kind of art with folks you’ve reached with another kind of art? Absolutely. It’s the equivalent of coming out into the living room and asking your parents if they want to see the dance you just made up in your room. But I talk a lot of shit on here about creative bravery, and how important it is to get over your shit and make things sooner, and finish them, and show the world. So I’m gonna practice what I preach, and show you my weird art.
What’s your secret creative pursuit? Do you share it with anyone? If you haven’t, you can tell me about it in the comments below - I’m dying to know.
CLOWN ABOUT TOWN, the final volume of my Harley Quinn run, is out March 25th, giving you time to pre-order from your favorite comic shop or book retailer. (I’m a fan of Golden Apple in Hollywood, you can pre-order here.)
I’ll also have some signed copies available in the TiniHoward.com store on release day. As a free subscriber, you get 10% every day with our code SCORPIOROOM. (Paid subscribers, you get 25% with your code, in this post here!)
If you’re looking to get caught up on my Harley run before volume three, you can do so with signed copies - only a few left! )
Alright Scorpio Roomies, it’s taken me most of a day to put this together, and I’ve got two fun projects I need to be working on, some prose editing for you, and some prose editing for the future.
Stay weird, talk soon -
-TH 2.25.25 22:13
Love to see the lamb, but disappointed you weren't wearing it at the parties.
If you have no fans of your art, I am dead. It's beautiful and moving and intricate and all around cool, which is how you know it's art.