Hoorf! Radical Care in a Late-Capitalist Heckscape

Opposite Day! Ricki interviews Elle about One True Thing

• Elle Billing • Season 3 • Episode 9

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In this Bizarro Backwards Opposite-Day episode, Ricki and Elle switch places, and Elle is in the hot seat, answering the questions they usually ask their guests. Despite coming down off a multiday migraine and the word salad that accompanies it, Elle shares how her disability shapes her art practice, why she cherishes her community of Spoonie artists, and why she’s so focused on asking everyone about their One True Thing.

Links to join Ricki’s and Elle’s creative newsletters for all the latest on The Failure Experiment, as well as all other resource links, are **in the full show notes at hoorfpodcast.com

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Elle Billing:

Hi. My name is Elle. Billing. I am a chronically ill queer femme, and I'm tired. I'm here this episode and every episode to dig at the roots of our collective fatigue, explore ways to direct our care in compassionate and sustainable ways, and to harness creative expression to heal ourselves and to heal our world. Welcome to Hoorf, radical care in the late capitalist heckscape.

Unknown:

...and that's how I ate a whole can of beans.

Ricki Cummings:

Hello, Elle,

Elle Billing:

hi, Ricki,

Ricki Cummings:

how are you?

Elle Billing:

Oh, I'm hang-- I'm holding on.

Ricki Cummings:

Well, that's good.

Elle Billing:

I had like, a three and a half day migraine attack this week, and I still don't feel great, like I have this spot on my scalp, you know the spot? It's that one right back, kind of towards the back on the right side that gets really tight when I've been thinking really hard or doing too much eye strain.

Ricki Cummings:

If you were Winky, it would be right next to the bump of knowledge.

Elle Billing:

It would be right next to the bump of knowledge. But for me, it's from over using my right eye. I think,

Ricki Cummings:

I mean, people do have dominant eyes, so, yeah,

Unknown:

so it's that tender bit right back there, and like, touching it is, like, both excruciating and gratifying. Yeah, where it's like, this hurts so bad. But I know that if I can, just, like, massage this a little bit, something in my head will let go and I'll feel better. So that's that's where I am today.

Ricki Cummings:

That's the weird thing about migraine pain specifically is like you don't want anything to touch it, but also pressure makes it feel better.

Elle Billing:

Yeah, I have my ice hat that my friend Dean gave me for Christmas one year, and like, the first two minutes I have it on are horrible,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah.

Unknown:

Because, but, like, that's, that's how it works, like, that's why it's so effective, because, like, you can't be freezing cold and in pain at the same time,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

so it's like, the first two minutes my body's like, like, I don't, like this, the pressure and the cold, and then it, like, short circuits my brain, and then I feel better, and plus icing my headache feels good. But, like, I always dread like that first, like, (growl) putting it on. I'm like, I know this is gonna be worth it, but it just gotta get over. Like, yeah.

Ricki Cummings:

And then three days of that,

Elle Billing:

Mm, hmm, yeah, it was, it was rough. So now I'm just really worn out. But also I'm kind of on a deadline for these paintings and so. And I think part of the migraine, in addition to we had a weather, we had weather, yeah, is I've been pushing myself really hard, and I've been craving salt, so I think I've been dehydrated, oh, yeah, or, like, I'm trying to hydrate, but I haven't been having enough electrolytes and salt, because, like, I wanted to salt my pizza the other night. And like, I never-- gross, right? I was like, this pizza needs more salt. I was like, I think I need electrolytes. I made ramen. And I was like, this isn't salty enough. I was like, I think I need some electrolytes. That's a clue. When your miso ramen doesn't taste salty enough, yeah, so I added some of my favorite watermelon flavored electrolytes to my water, and I slammed it, and you know what? I felt so much better. Like, my headache didn't go away, but like, my mouth wasn't dry anymore, and I wasn't craving salt. And I was like, I wish I had figured this out two days ago.

Ricki Cummings:

So I think what we're gonna do today is like, bizarro episode, isn't it? Like,

Elle Billing:

let's do it.

Ricki Cummings:

We're gonna finally, we're finally gonna interview Elle, the interviewer becomes the interviewee.

Elle Billing:

I'm in the hot seat. Yeah? It's not super hot, though it's, it's comfy. Yeah,

Ricki Cummings:

it's all right. It's all right. So I guess then we start with the first question, which is, how have you received care this week?

Unknown:

Well, like I said, I had a migraine for three days, so I spent a lot of time sleeping and. But as has happened before, my dad had to run and do run errands this week because I didn't want to drive with the migraine, and so I called in my mom's prescriptions that needed to be filled, and then when they were ready, normally, I go pick them up. And then if I need my supplements and stuff, I pick those up too. But I had to send my dad this week because it was this we got new, fresh snow, and like, snow in the sunlight is the worst.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh yeah.

Elle Billing:

And I get really photophobic When I have a migraine, like my eyes hurt so bad. And I was like, Dad, I just can't. And he's like, that's fine. And I was like, I need supplements, I said, and I know that, like, there's, like, six options for calcium and just as many for magnesium, and those are the ones I needed. I was like, I can send a picture or just tell you what the bottle looks like. So he sent me pictures when he was there. He's like, are these are the ones. I'm like, those are the ones. And so we got it taken care of, and it was nice to not have to go out in the bright sun when I was feeling terrible. We got it all taken care of, and then he brought brownies home too.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh, geez, chocolate is always good for migraine times.

Unknown:

Yeah, I mean, it didn't help the migraine, but I didn't. I wasn't as emotionally distraught,

Ricki Cummings:

right?

Elle Billing:

He got treats. Yeah, he brought caramel rolls too. You know, no one mowed the lawn, right? But there were caramel rolls. For those who don't know, when Ricki is staying with us. Every time Ricki mows the lawn, my dad brings home caramel rolls. As to say, thank you,

Ricki Cummings:

and it's much appreciated.

Elle Billing:

Yeah, both directions, yeah. Like, thanks for mowing the lawn. Thanks for the Carmel rolls. It's just how

Ricki Cummings:

One thing I was thinking about, like, every time we do here. there's, like, fresh snow up in that area, like, ever since I was a little kid, I thought about, like, those, like the sun shade goggles that pictures of like Inuit people have with, like the the horizontal slits. Yeah, that's supposed to help take down glare. Have you ever? Have we ever tried that? I've never tried that.

Elle Billing:

I've never tried those. No.

Ricki Cummings:

I wonder. I wonder if that wouldhelp.

Elle Billing:

I just wear the, I wear the I wear the huge dark ones that go over my glasses when I go out. But if I'm really photophobic, it doesn't really matter if I, I mean, it matters that I wear them. It takes that, it helps. But like, even with those on I'm miserable. You know what? Another way that I received care this week, I run spoonie studio, which is like the virtual gathering space for spoonie artists. And we have our Friday gathering, but we also have a group text,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah, explain spoonies. Oh, I'm not sure that everyone that listens to this knows what that is, yeah

Elle Billing:

yeah, spoonie is like a shorthand term for people in this case, spoons. So like, if I wake up who have invisible disabilities or chronic illness, and it a with 12 spoons and I have to shower, that takes six of my spoon is a unit of energy. And so I'll link it in the in the spoons, then I only have six spoons to do the rest of my whole day with. And when I'm out, I'm out like, they don't come back, yeah? And if I, if I'm, if I am acutely ill, I'll show notes, to the to the original piece of writing, where wake up already low on spoons. Like, I'll wake up with only four, yeah, and still have to, like, get... so spoonies. If you see people on social media talking about being a spoonie. That's what they mean. So I run a program called spoonie studio, which is for artists who are disabled or chronically ill, they, where the person introduced the concept of people who make stuff come together and just like make stuff on our own terms, without the pressures of capitalism or productivity culture,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah.

Elle Billing:

And so we have our Friday gathering, but we also have a group chat. And I have to say, the last-- has it only been spoons, the idea being like people who are able bodied and three weeks, two weeks since the inauguration? Yeah, um, like having a group of people who already sort of speak the same language around what's happening with our bodyminds. You know, we well, don't have to think about budgeting their energy. They can speak the language of disability, even though we all have different diagnoses, right? Like in a space where we don't have to educate other people, like we already, we already know that part about each other. We already have that baseline, and we can come together and, and whether we're talking about current events or not, we know we can. And like, we all know that it's on our radar. And like, we can support each other just do stuff, and their body works and their brain works. and encourage each other, and we can share memes for encouragement, or we can go, You know what, I'm having a really tough time right now. This is scary. And like, no one's like, You're overreacting, because you know what? We all know it's scary and like we can just hold that space for each other and talk about ways that, things that we could do, Where those of us with chronic illness or disability or

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

in a way that honors our capacity and also isn't gaslighting or bypassing or any of those things that can happen. So having a space to do that and people to do that with and not feeling any pressure to be any certain way in the midst invisible disability, we wake up and we have a limited number of of it, where we can just go, aaaah, and be like, I know, but at the same time go, here's a cute puppy, like, there's space for all of it. That has been, I think a really important form of care for me and I hope for the other spoonies. I hope they're energy units, getting as much out of it as I am.

Ricki Cummings:

How long have you been doing it?

Elle Billing:

Almost a year. I think I started it last March. Yeah, almost a year.

Ricki Cummings:

That's a long time.

Elle Billing:

Yeah, some really good people.

Ricki Cummings:

It's been almost every week, hasn't it?

Elle Billing:

Yeah, the only times that it hasn't happened, I was actually traveling. I logged into spoonie studio from my phone, and, like, nobody went that day, so, but like, I try to show up, you know, every Friday, and there's only been a couple times where no one's come. But like, I've been there. We get people there every Friday. Come hang out.

Ricki Cummings:

Cool.

Elle Billing:

Yeah, it's been it's been good.

Ricki Cummings:

What sort of ways does spoonie studio like work into your practice? I guess.

Elle Billing:

Oh, that's kind of funny. So today's, we're recording this on Friday. So I had spoonie studio today. when I first started it last year, our router didn't have a strong enough signal for me to do spoonie studio in my studio, like if I had my laptop up there and was trying to run GoBrunch, which is the platform we use. It's a web conferencing platform. I couldn't, it didn't have enough bandwidth to run GoBrunch from my studio. So I would just sit in the kitchen and on our first floor and hang out. And I wasn't doing anything studio-ish, I was, I was hosting, and I would talk to other people about what they were making, right?

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah.

Elle Billing:

And, you know, having ADHD, it was kind of okay for me to have to focus. I can get lost in painting. It's happened. We just talked about how I get dehydrated when I paint. But then last summer, we moved the modem and the route, no, we moved all of it into a more central location in the house. So now I have better Wi Fi upstairs, where my bedroom and my studio are. What I've run into is that my mom's bedroom is across the room from my studio, so I still-- she's usually sleeping when I'm doing spoonie studio, but I figured out how to make white like, get some white noise going for her. And if I use my earbuds, my bluetooth headphones right hooked up to my laptop, and I kind of closed the door. I can actually be in the studio painting with my headphones on and have GoBrunch running on my laptop. So I actually was painting today while we were in spoonie studio. So it's as far as, like, how it works into my practice. It's like the thing I look forward to at the end of the week, like Monday through Thursday, I have an evening job. I work a couple two to three hours a night at the sunflower processing plant, doing grain inspection. During the day, I try to get into the studio for a couple hours. I'm helping my mom a lot, but I'm not really interacting with other people very much, and so for me to get to spend time with other artists on Friday, and to know that I have that to look forward to is kind of a beacon at the end of the week. And like, to hear about other people's art that they're doing. There's knitters and crocheters and painters and sculptors and writers and stuff, and so I think feeding ourselves with community and with other art forms, feeding ourselves that way, is a really important part of the artistic life of like the art practice, life,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah.

Elle Billing:

And I also on-- that happens on Fridays-- and on Sundays, I send out a newsletter to the spoonies called the Sunday Spoon where I do a little recap of what happened on Friday. So it has this. The newsletter has the recap, a resource and a respite. There's three parts to it. So it has the recap and then a resource, which is usually something like a product recommendation or another disabled creator to follow. Or one week I said, How to Make a Corsi-Rosenthal box, because we're like, there's like, four airborne viruses going around right now, things that like, here's something that could make your disabled or chronically ill, life a little bit easier. Or here's somebody to follow who's a public health attorney who is updating people on what's going on in the federal government right now, because we can't follow everything ourselves, so follow the people who are aggregating it. And then respite usually is like something cute or funny or encouraging or light hearted to sort of start the week. One time I shared the story about the rats that learned to drive the little carts. Remember? I sent that to our group.

Ricki Cummings:

I do remember the happy little rats driving.

Elle Billing:

Another week, it was the it was Weird Al doing the cover of Hot to Go!Another time, it was a My Little Ponies meme. You know, it's just stuff that's like, hey, this made me smile. Maybe you'll smile too. And that's kind of part of my practice too, because a big part of my whole thing is connection and care, and art as care for myself, but also for other people. And so it's just really woven into what I do.

Ricki Cummings:

So one thing that we haven't talked about, like, all in one go, like, it's been talked about piecemeal throughout the whole podcast and everything. But like, how does your disability impact your practice. How does it influence your practice? How does it work into it?

Elle Billing:

It's a good question.

Ricki Cummings:

It's your question. You asked it,

Elle Billing:

yeah know, but I have to answer it now. I started painting like I took a class in high school art class where I painted, but I don't, really didn't consider myself a painter after that. I was completing assignments. I started painting as like a hobby I might pursue in about 2018. Prior to that, my artistic outlet of choice was poetry and improv. But as my migraine attacks got worse and my medication side effects were impairing me more, I was having a harder time with words, and it was really frustrating me. I don't want my artistic outlet to be another frustration for me. It needs to be something that feeds me, not that drains me and makes me upset. It needs to be something I can do when I'm upset to process those feelings. So I started with printmaking as a way to try and capture the experience of my my migraines. Like right away it was like, my first foray into working with print making and acrylic paint and stamp cutting was I need a way to convey the experience of my disability. So it was like the two--it was like disability based art, and that's why I started. so it's always been kind of the core of why I'm doing what I do. And I've done a lot of migraine inspired work. I branch, I've branched out from that, but a lot of my work is still very centered in the the themes of memory and identity, because of my experience with migraine and also queerness, because identity is such a huge part of that. But my disability also colors how I'm queer. I can't perform, I can't perform femininity the way

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, that-- even I mean, even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Yeah, so memory and identity are themes that I cover, like that I address a lot of my artwork, and a lot of that is because of disability and illness shaping the way that I interact in the world, and having been quote, unquote, the smart kid, the gifted kid growing up and then ending up with a neurological disease that impacts my ability to communicate at times, that was a real knock to my perception of self, to my identity. And so, I mean, that is one way that my disability and my illness shape my art practice, but I choose to make art about, yeah, one thing I notice is, and you've talked about this before, but not terribly in depth, is the way that words and linguistics figure into your art. But it's not always in ways that are obvious. For example, you often use pages out of the dictionary or pages of classical literature, like your Shakespeare ones often, often had actual like lines from the poems or the plays and stuff like as part of the the work itself. But sometimes it's not obvious. Sometimes it's very abstract, and on a much lower layer that it's like, not obvious, that you can see it in. So I was wondering if that's like,

Elle Billing:

yes, that's a choice.

Ricki Cummings:

Yes,

Elle Billing:

that's a decision.

Ricki Cummings:

Yes. But um, one, one thing I mentioned in my own newsletter was that one of the things I learned from David Lynch is that everything is intentional, even if you don't know why. Like, that's my question is, like, obviously there's intention there. You're the artist, you did it, but do you necessarily know when you're making something more or less obvious or concrete in a piece that you're working on?

Elle Billing:

yes, and. so I have some pieces where it's a mix. Um, I'm actually teaching workshops this year about my art process. My art process is very much about embracing duality, because it there, it is a very much a mix of intention and intuition and structure and serendipity. Okay, so, like, there will be times where I tear out specific pages of Shakespeare and save them for a specific layer. I did a piece in my Ophelia collection called I am no brother. No. not brother. I am no mother, I am no bride. I combine those into one word, I am no brother. I did it again. I am no mother, I am no-- I need a nap really bad. This is what happens. See, this is what happens when I've had a migraine all, my words just..

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

I am no mother. I am no bride. You wear yours with the difference. And I specifically used one monologue from Ophelia, and photo copied it four times and made four flower petals with that excerpt. And that was on the top layer; that was an intentional choice, yeah, because there was a line in that speech that mentions the flower rue, right, and I'm -- that was the flower that I made out of that those petals, that was a very intentional choice, because it was the whole meaning of the painting was centered on that flower. But like underneath, there were other pages from the book from Hamlet that were just pages I tore out and used as collage layers. When I did my Berenstein Bears collection, the illustrations that I layered under the paint were all intentionally chosen for each Painting. When I did the buffalo paintings from our trip across Wyoming.

Ricki Cummings:

I don't know that I recall those ones

Elle Billing:

we never saw a single bison.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh yeah,

Elle Billing:

that one I used pages from a children's encyclopedia about the Wild West. I painted over it with some acrylic paint, and then scratched back with the end of my paint with the butt end of my paintbrush, one line about the like, I paid attention to where I was painting and what the text was, and I scraped back just over one line of text about the disappearance of the bison. So sometimes it's very intentional, like, I want you to see this line, yeah. And sometimes it's

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, just, like, the stuff I'm working on now for The Failure Experiment, it's just a lot of random, weird old text about how

Elle Billing:

right. Like, I look for really interesting the internet works. And so I have, like, glaze over it. Like I've glazed over it with a bunch of different layers. And so, like, you can read it if you want to, but you don't have to, but if you did, it would be like, Oh, that's that's interesting. It adds to the meaning, but it's not necessary, yeah? So it's a mix, because sometimes happy accidents happen books. I don't just buy anything. Except dictionaries, and you end up with a word you don't expect, like, just dictionary pages, and the word etiquette shows up a piece where you also used a page from Emily Post's Etiquette. Like, like, Oh, happy accidents. I leave space for that too. And sometimes I buy specific like, I get all my books at the thrift store or from, like, library discard piles. And like, I will find a book and be like, Oh, I'm buying this, and I, I'm gonna I'll always buy. But, like, the book has to, like, call to me. wait for like-- like, I have an abnormal psychology book from the 60s. I've used a couple pages out of it, one of the pages, couple of pages on addiction, yeah. But like, at some point there's gonna be, there's gonna be a reason I need that book. It has to be something like, I have a, like, a 1937 Etiquette by Emily Post. I have on becoming a woman from 1954

Ricki Cummings:

Oh, geez.

Elle Billing:

Oh, it's awful.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, I bet

Elle Billing:

my favorite chapter is the chapter called"Danger!" and it's about lesbians,

Ricki Cummings:

those wily lesbians, witchcraft and communism.

Unknown:

So like, the book has to call to me and it'll and then something will find its way into

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

into my work.

Ricki Cummings:

I was looking for a way to get this question in a nice like, segue. But no, oh, I think that moment has the the moment for segue has passed, so I'm just good like. So what does a normal, quote, unquote, normal day for you look like?

Elle Billing:

Oh!

Ricki Cummings:

from a care standpoint and-or from an artistic standpoint,

Elle Billing:

okay, weekday or weekend?

Ricki Cummings:

Well, there's more week days, so probably that.

Elle Billing:

So my dog will get me up around seven to feed her. And my dad's usually still home at seven doing breakfast or whatever, or taking his nap, his post breakfast nap before he leaves to do farming stuff. So I'll feed the dog. I'll say hi to Dad, I'll go back to bed, and then Winkie will wake me up again to go potty, because, of course, she can't, can't combine those two, no, gosh, no. Gonna make me go up the stairs two more times. So anyway, we do the food and go into the bathroom, and then she lets me sleep in, usually till about 930 and then I get up. twice a week I shower, which that's a whole thing, because it just, I have to take seated showers. That's why I only do it twice a week. Takes a lot of energy. I take my meds, I brush my teeth. I do all that. I get my mom's meds out and ready so that whenever she wakes up, which is anytime between 11 and 2, they're out and ready. And I don't have to, like, remember, later to get them. I just get them out and ready for her. I eat breakfast and have my coffee, depending on how I'm feeling, I might start painting or reading or working on something on my computer right away, or I might kill time on my phone trying to fire my brain up until dad gets home at noon. I usually sit and have lunch with him, do the crossword maybe, or just talk to him about what's going on that day or during the week, when he goes for his nap, I either also nap or paint or work on my computer somewhere. When I'm on the computer, it's doing like other business stuff, emails, podcast stuff, working on my website, making things for my spoonies or for my art class, whatever. At some point I do take a two hour nap. At some point my mom does wake up. I make sure she eats something and gets enough water. At Five I feed the dog again, and then at

7:

30 I have to go to work. So sometime between 5:00 and 7:30 I also eat supper, and then at 7:30 I go to work, I come home

at 10:

30 and I get ready for bed. So it's just a lot of like balancing my energy between checking on my mom, keeping an eye on my dog, and like doing studio and computer activities and napping, and it's like, it doesn't sound like I do very much. Why would I need a two hour nap? I just can't do much. Like two hours on the computer and my brain is toast.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, actually, I was gonna ask you how. Actually, I'm gonna back up and preface this a little bit like one of the things that artists in general don't like talking about is like the business part of being an artist, especially an independent artist, and so how does your disability affect the admin and business and computery related part of doing your art?

Elle Billing:

Yeah, I have such limited energy. Like, right now I am in creation mode. That's all I want to be doing. I don't want to be on the computer, because switching tasks takes as much energy as doing a task, like switching brain modes. But I'm also, like, I need to do other things, so I try to pick, like, one or two days just to do admin, and then the rest of the time I ignore my computer and just paint or I'll do admin during my break at work at night, like catch up on emails while I'm waiting for cans to cool. It's hard. for. For the normies, right? The ableds, running a small business is a more than a full time job.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

I can't even work a part time job. So, like, I have good support. I have people who I can ask for help. I have people who can do things for me, if I ask them, Who can help me get things done. But I still can't put, like, even with help I don't there's no way to put in 40 hours a week doing all the things that need to be done, which is why my business is not as far as I want it to be. But I also have to redefine success for myself because of what I'm doing and what I can do. So like, I'm happy with how far my art practice is. Like, I'm really happy with the paintings I'm making right now. I'm really happy with the work you and I are doing together collaboratively. Spoonie Studio is something I'm really proud of. The workshops that I'm teaching. This is the, like, the founders year of my art workshops where, like, I have the bones of the of the program and like these, this first group of people that's gonna go through the workshops with me are kind of helping me put the meat on the bones. And like, I went back and looked, like I had to do the transcript for the first workshop, and I was doing it at the table, and mom was eating something, and I lifted up my headphone, and I was like, Hey, Mom, did you know that I'm smart? Like, I was listening back to, like, what I had said during the workshop. And I was like, huh, that was really good. Like, I because, like, sometimes I think I don't know, what am I even doing, right? Like four years ago I blew up my life, or my life blew up, and I got the hell out of there, and I still have moments. What am I doing?

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah

Elle Billing:

have I been painting long enough to be teaching other people about it? Well, I'm not teaching them painting lessons. This is like process, how to find the why of your art, how to create more meaning, how to make art that matters in a time when we need that. I know about that. That's the type of art I've always made. I when I did theater, I was all about theater for social change. When I was writing poetry, it was poetry with some guts. It was, you know,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

now I'm just doing it with visual art, I know what I'm talking about. Listening back, I was like, Oh, I do know what I'm talking about. This is okay. I'm doing okay. I'm just doing it slower, and that's okay. I don't know if that answered your question. I think so. I guess my disability makes the business side of my art slow, slow, yeah, yeah. It's just it makes it much slower.

Ricki Cummings:

Well, that I think moves us into our last question, because we're getting close to out of time here. So what is one true thing that you have learned from your art practice,

Unknown:

that there is, it doesn't matter if it seems that someone has always, has already done something, because, like, no one has done it exactly the way that I'm going to do it, with my, like, with my experiences and my perspectives. There was one, there was at one point a couple years ago when I was still putting together, like, what is it that I do? And I was like, well, it's sort of like cubism, except queer, and it adds the fourth dimension of time, okay? Because cubism, it was like, like, all three dimensions, right? Represented in the two dimensional plane, all perspectives at once. Blah, blah, blah. Well, I have issues with Picasso. He's he was a dick

Ricki Cummings:

documented. That's, that's, that's fact he was a terrible person.

Elle Billing:

He from his own mouth, yeah. Plus, I just read Hannah Gatsby's memoir, and she gets into that again too, where she's like, Picasso was a dick. So it's on the front of my brain again. And I'm like, But, and, but and, but this my style isn't Cubism. You wouldn't look at it and go, Oh, it's a piece of cubist art, but, like, philosophically, that's what I'm doing with the timeline, right? And I, I was like, but I don't want to call it that, or even say "it's like, cubism, but" because that's already been done. And I was like, but no one's done it the way I've done it. And on the one hand, I don't have to do something completely original that nobody's ever done before,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah,

Elle Billing:

like, right now I'm working on a painting of Saint Agnes, right? Saint Agatha, sorry, Saint Agatha of Sicily. And a lot of people have painted her,

Ricki Cummings:

many people

Elle Billing:

many people. No one has painted her the way I've painted her. It's okay if I'm doing Saint Agatha, you know, because the way I'm doing her is different, and the reason I'm doing her might not be the same reason someone else is doing her. It's okay if there's one more Saint Agatha painting, and it's okay if it's hot pink

Ricki Cummings:

better! in my opinion. But

Elle Billing:

we'll see. We'll see how this turns out. We're kind of at the awkward stage right now. So I guess the one true thing is, like, no one's gonna do it the same way that I'm doing it or the same way anyone else is doing it. What's the more important is that it's true. Like, I think I would rather create something that's derivative and true than something that's completely original and like, doesn't mean anything. And I think that's where I end, where I fall on a Gen AI too. I mean, among, I mean, there's lots of ways to tackle that too. But like, from an artistic standpoint, it's not true. Like, there's no truth, and that's why it just-- can't agree?

Ricki Cummings:

No, it's, it's not that I don't agree. It's that I totally agree completely. But I want to make sure-- this is going to add several minutes to our runtime, I'm sure. But like, I want to make sure that we have a definition of truth.

Elle Billing:

Oh, right.

Ricki Cummings:

Because, I mean, obviously we're not going to define an abstract concept like that, but like, what does truth, I guess, mean to you?

Elle Billing:

Okay, and... truth in the same way that I ask people, What is one true thing you've learned from your art practice? I took a workshop on painting Cloudscapes. They were beachy Cloudscapes. It meant nothing to me. Like tropical escapes to me, I'm like, why would I paint a beach scape? It doesn't mean anything to me if I change it to a desert landscape. That's true for me. I lived in Idaho. I've been there. I have a connection to that landscape. I add some windmills, cows, you know, that, or sagebrush. That to me, lots of people paint landscapes. I kind of like painting landscapes sometimes, not all the time. There has to be something true about it for me to want to do it. I didn't want to paint flowers until after my grandma died, there was no there was no motivating factor for me to paint florals. My grandma died, then there was some truth to them. That's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in the one true thing question this this season, is because one true thing is a huge piece of my art practice, like I have to have something true in each of my paintings.

Ricki Cummings:

Is that truth, factual or emotional to you? In that sense

Elle Billing:

that's a really good question, and I don't know,

Ricki Cummings:

it sort of reminds me of that very old writer's advice, write what you know, you know,

Elle Billing:

right? Which is what I used to teach my students, to write what you know. Yeah

Ricki Cummings:

at the same time, like, if you only stick to what you know, then you're going to get you're possibly going to get stagnant. And so like the idea, I think I like the idea of just including one true thing, rather than making that like the whole of the subject.

Elle Billing:

You said, Write what you know, right? Well, I didn't know cyberpunk, but each of the paintings in this series has one true thing in it, like I'm doing a cyberpunk Saint Agatha. She's the patron saint of breast cancer survivors and breast cancer patients. That's the one true thing. Is my family history of breast cancer and the fact that I have to go in every six months for imaging like, write what I know, paint what I know I don't know cyberpunk. This is intellectually difficult for me. I'm stretching myself. But there's still something true

Ricki Cummings:

So I I guess your one true thing is in each of the paintings.

Elle Billing:

one true thing

Ricki Cummings:

true things. Yeah, that's interesting. Wow. Now that, now that we've sufficiently run over time, I think I can say thank you for being on your podcast.

Elle Billing:

Thank you for having me on my podcast. This was fun.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,cool, cool.

Elle Billing:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hoorf to get the complete show notes and all the links mentioned on today's episode, or to get a full transcript of the episode, visit Hoorf podcast dot com. Join the Blessed Herd of St Winkus.By signing up for our newsletter, you can get Hoorf episodes delivered directly to your inbox. What's more, you get invitations to our monthly Coffee & Biscuits Chat, where you get to hang out with Ricki and Elle, talk about the show and connect on the topics that mean the most to you. You can sign up for that at Hoorf podcast dot com. if you become a patron for only $3 a month, you can support the creation of this podcast, help pay my editor and join a community of caregivers out here, just doing our best. Thank you again for joining me, Elle Billing, the chronically ill queer femme who is very tired, on this episode of Hoorf. Until next time, be excellent to each other. Hoorf is hosted by Elle Billing @elleandwink, audio editing by Ricki Cummings@Rickiep00h music composed by Ricki Cummings. Hoorf is a production of Elle & Wink Art Studio, LLC, all rights reserved. Hoorf can be found on all social media platforms.@HoorfPodcast, at H, O, O, R, F podcast, I did it again.

Contributor

Ricki Cummings

Producer