Pieces in progress-green ware pt. 1

in

What a special medium. Ive been working with clay for the last 4/5 years, it has remained dear to my heart ever since. I started connecting to it instantly and felt a part of myself start to speak through it. Im coming into my puzzle of an identity more and more the longer i create with it. I feel all the faceless ancestors of mine teach me.

This medium goes through fire and dryness and unpredictability in such a consistently magnifying way. It’s beautiful in each of its stages. A wet maleable dough, a form that starts to hold its shape, it can be carved into and added on to until it reaches a state of fragile strength, its put under fire, forced to cool, and painted with liquid that burns into glass for its final form. All while being in an uncertain state. Your final piece may not come out exactly as you expect it to, it may come out in pieces, it may come out fully intact. The beauty in that is so powerful and has been my biggest teacher since i started.

This collection, like all my pieces, are a connection to me. I expect nothing and receive everything. I wanted to record a few of the pieces ive been making in its earliest stage- pre-bisqued and raw.

I’m excited to play around with not only functionality but making them come alive through the shadows they create, I noticed this pattern when I first started making this collection and I’ve been chasing different shadows in some of my pieces ever since.

June & July Journal

in

June & July

I finished A Very Easy Death by Simon De Beuvoir. Its a fast read that took me a long time to want to pick up. I have grown up taught to except death as it comes. Within my family there are health conditions that have seen better days in the recent years and its not an easy thing to experience. So you could imagine picking up a book about the last few days of the authors mothers life was something I was a bit uncertain I could handle. But I got through it and it was a beautiful telling of pain and comfort in family that spoke directly to me.

For my birthday I got myself Ed Templeton’s 87 Portraits, from the Arcana bookstore. I missed the day he had a book signing but luckily they had some more shipped in.

My sweet sweet Sol sent me a card game for my birthday, I haven’t played it with friends yet but it looks exciting!

Plants pictured: A pothos plant I grew from just the nodes of my moms 40 year old pothos! A pink syngonium, and a new Pothos N’ joy I got from leimert park.

Many many beach days, as many beach days as I can get in a week! This is something very very new to me and I plan on writing a bit more about it but being at the beach in a bathing suit, just loving myself and not hating my existence in this vessel is something i’ve never experienced until this year. Ive struggled with body dymporphia my entire life, from outside perceptions of me that have distorted how I see my body. Its a beautiful thing to feel more comfortable than I ever have.

I had a glaze day at the studio, got some pieces out of the final kiln and built this nomster planter!

and last but certainly not least, I rode a bike for the very first time in my adult life, invigorating to say the least. Also, terrifying but I felt like my childhood traumas were healing.

everyday is a health day

in ,

Every day is a day to take care of your mental physical and spiritual health. As it is all connected, we experience these three things hand in hand, daily. 

I live with chronic debilitating illnesses both physical and mental, every day is a battle i fight through. 

I am not ashamed of living the way I do. Unfortunately there are more days than I’d like, where my chronic pain takes over. I’ve had a cold for over a week now and normal to me is my immune system on overdrive. With my inflammatory disease, my pain is sometimes not manageable. My main medication is a an snri, working as an antidepressant that also increases the serotonin and norepinephrine in my big brain that calms down my pain receptors. I picture them going off uncontrollably like a parade of fireworks. My medications help but at the same time they dont. Its funny and ironic because when im happy and working and creating its like im in another dimension where my body is just as happy, I go numb to my own conditions because I am energetically more positive. Its hard to wake up sometimes with no money and not think of drowning. 

I notice changes in my body when I don’t drink enough water, stretch my body a few times a day, and when my stress levels increase so does this pain. Fibro isn’t something that can be cured and it’s not exactly something that has enough study to be fully understood. Taking the time to listen to myself and study my body greatly decreases my chances of a monthly flare up. 

Right now I have a rheumatologist, pcp, psychiatrist, therapist, and an obgyn that have provided me with help in managing these conditions. Getting care from multiple doctors that take their time to listen to me has been a blessing I didn’t even think could happen. 

I started therapy when I turned 25 thanks to my mom even though she doesn’t believe in it. Her gift to me was medical insurance that I’ve been able to use and help myself live a more manageable daily life. That does not mean it is easy for my mom to pay that every month, I have this little cloud over my head racking up the bill to pay her back because quite frankly it isnt fair that she has to put half of her check into me and she deserves more. I can’t describe the feeling of being able to go into Kaiser again though. I lost my medical insurance when I was 17 and since then have been seen by doctors that have harassed, lied, and hurt me. 18-25 living with illnesses that they believed I didn’t have because I was “too young to have that pain”??? 

Ex: Going into urgent care with multiple ruptures cysts in my uterus and being in a hospital room for 10 hours only to be given ibuprofen and sent home. I was told I couldnt have pneumonia last year because I was too young. (After catching pneumonia before it advanced to an infection in my lungs, catching covid before covid) I was treated unfairly by the first obgyn I went to who made me cry a river while he uncomfortably misdiagnosed me, told me to take medication and tried to tell me my allergic reactions were happening because I was drinking alcohol?!? Which I wasn’t (from my long, excruciating history with medication i know not to do things that upset my body even more) 

I started a chronicallysickchronicles where I write in more detail about my monthly flare ups and what I did to manage and balance myself.. It is not an easy thing to live with chronic illnesses. It is also something that does not stop me from living. World mental health day was two days ago, it took me a while to write this. I think its extremely important to note that every day is a new day and chronic illnesses whether mental or physical or both look different on all of us. We experience everyday differently and are all connected by it. 

You are not alone, I am not alone. We are unique and pretty fucking resilient..



call me Leeza

in

Cue Diana Ross- Im Coming Out

Hi my name is Leeza, Im 25 years old. Ive never come out or felt like I had to about my sexuality or gender, I am ever evolving and never felt like it required an explanation (quite frankly I still don't) I am free, I am agender... Ive been labeling myself under non binary for the last 4 years I think to make it easier on myself to deal with it and others but the truth is I've never felt like the gender binary existed in me. I am pansexual, I am sexually attracted to whoever the fuck I want that reciprocates what I do. I find love in everything and everyone that gives me time to get to know them and vice versa. I don’t care about your perception of me, my self is fluid. Call me Leeza, azeel, king, sir, sis, queen, they, them. It is as fluid to me as everything else. We are all our own balance of our feminine and masculine energies. Respect how people identify themselves, respect everyone, and firstly respect yourself..

I have felt like my gender expression has always evolved, but my identity has never revolved around my gender. I have always felt the need to express myself through whatever I had access to. My identity has always been about my expression and my experience, not forced societal concepts on what and who I should be.

We aren't meant to fit into labels and boxes made up of others perceptions. The only perception of you that matters is your own.

My sexuality is fluid, my gender is unimportant to me and therefore should be to you as well. Do not sexualize me, only I can do that. It really doesn’t make sense to judge… just cause I got big titties doesn’t mean anything other than it is a fact I got big titties inherited from the moms and that’s that ok just cause I wear a tank with no bra doesn’t mean I want to be perceived for your own twisted version of me.. y’all try wearing a bra for no reason but to make others more comfortable!

Basically, let’s just stop perceiving okay? don’t perceive me. I and you and we do not exist and yet we are all here together, let’s not perceive each other but love instead xx been missing so much love and lovers in my life but I have been filling it with my own and finding new and beautiful things to learn from and love. Watching my plants grow, vacuuming every corner of my room daily, remembering to write down my thoughts, reminding myself that it is okay to be where I am and who I am at this present time.. It is okay to love yourself at every stage in your life.