Pixelated

2 ref sheets done …. 9 million more to go

I can’t believe this took less time to finish than that little shit fumihiro . Whatever. Go look at my artfight everything I do is in service of her hallowed webpages

1 day I’ll set up my toyhouse but that’s hard and annoying and I don’t want to

This is the highest compliment I could receive on my art

I also forgot to mention! The very obvious theme of motherhood here, especially when you look at Sarto’s other works, infants and mothers are very prevalent.

One of the first things I thought when I saw this piece for the first time was the way it feels to raise a child while being surrounded by violence. To nurture a child, but you cannot change what they’ll be exposed to.

Now that I’m looking for common threads between Sarto’s works, consumption and predation are both extremely relevant.

The framing of this piece COULD even be to suggest the woman and baby are also among the meat to be consumed, thus the name— they’re in the butcher-shop as another product, not as predators themselves.

I still don’t understand the frog symbolism, but that’s another frequent mention.

Esther Sarto. Butchershop Bliss. 2019. Watercolour and Gouache on 300gsm hotpressed Watercolour paper.

24 x 16 inches

I’ve been thinking about this piece for weeks. I keep coming back to it trying to figure it out. I’ve seen some discussion, but no interpretation has ever really resonated with me.

There’s nothing particularly uncanny about the woman or baby, the surroundings seem normal for them. The lighting is bright, the room is cluttered but not obscured. The meat frames them in, but I’m not sure if that feels like an oppressive force.

The surroundings are visceral, but not scary in any way. Despite the raw meat, there’s no blood in the room, It seems clean.

The only conclusion I can come to is it’s about survival, food, and eating. The baby breastfeeding vs the butchers room. That comes back to the title, though, which doesn’t make much sense to me in that context.

There’s also several feminist and class conscious readings you could do of this; but I’m still not sure.

Please help me figure it out, I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this piece!!!

oh fuck me i instantly realized I uploaded the wrong version

Made Fumihiro’s reference this year… I was like “certainly this won’t take longer than last year” and then I spent 10 extra hours on it. Curse these terrible slow artist hands of mine

silly scribble

A short comic I made about my experiences as a seasonal worker, and the way places change you.

Prints & PDF

Every user on Tumblr at this point is aware of the transfem focused bans that have gone Severe in the last few days again. Or, every user that is transfem aligned or follows someone who is. Which makes me ask, how/why the hell hasn't the Tumblr staff or @photomatt addressed this at all yet, and how it's still going so hard.

It's very much not like this is the first time this has happened, it's been a prevailing issue for years on this site.

For example, back in 2022, they were made to hire a sexuality and gender bias specialist and reevaluate over 3,000 cases over their clear bias towards queer (especially transfem) users before. It is *almost* surprising how little the staff of Tumblr seem to care about their clear discrimination, after being sued before.

The Verge

Tumblr is settling with NYC’s human rights agency over alleged porn ban bias

The ban allegedly affected LGBTQ users disproportionately.

It's not like this site has a large user base, or is highly profitable (an apparent 30 million dollar loss per year). So it seems that the staff is just going out on a, last minute before the site dies, transmisogynist rampage without real care about lawsuits or even just how the user base responds. I don't know how they can keep claiming it's not discrimination at this point.

TechCrunch

Tumblr is losing $30M each year, CEO says | TechCrunch

Tumblr head Matt Mullenweg also assuaged users fears by confirming that the platform will not remove its chronological feed.

A more recent example was with @/predstrogen, which I think was the banning that got the most attention due to the CEO @photomatt actually commenting on the situation and increasing the amount of harassment she was getting. To the point where Matt followed Rita to Twitter to reveal all of the URLs she owned and also for him to just generally throw an embarrassing hissy fit.

Yahoo News

Tumblr CEO publicly spars with trans user over account ban, revealing private account names in the process

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is supposed to be on sabbatical. Over the last few days, the situation escalated to the poi

Honestly this shit is just so fucking ridiculous and I hope nothing but the worst for all the people making this stuff happen to the users on this site. I couldn't care less about "ahhh she posed NSFW!! Or she posted something kind of weird or mean!!". Tumblr shouldn't be discriminating against users, and that's what they're doing.

I'm also aware of a lot of POC, specifically black users getting banned as well. So please don't forget to give attention to that. I just can't find any good articles to read, but if I find something I'll add it to the post.

I don't think there's a solution to how shit this site is being run. It would be lovely to have another platform to move to but I, personally, can't imagine a site like this that's also genuinely free of discrimination in the way it's ran.

Karaoke Skill Check. The Smallest Church in Saint-Saëns