Marrus

For the Gor fans among you:

When I was the creative director on the ill-fated Gor magazine, I blended Greek, Roman, and Etruscan letters to invent a Gorean alphabet, and then turned it into a useable font.

My idea was that the characters’ word balloons would be in Gorean, which readers could decipher.

John Norman (the author) liked it so much that he wrote me a phonetic letter in my Gorean, telling me what a good job I’d done💗

If you have my book, it’s in there, along with some more artwork. Also, linguistics nerds will likely have issues with this, and I am OK with that 😜

Someone recognized my paintings from an art lecture at Rutgers University - particularly this one: “Pierced Monarch”, for the “bad tangents” intentionally used in the line of the jaw. 🤯

If you’d like a lithograph, please hit up the comments✨

A perk of my job is dispensing Crone wisdom to people (usually female) of about two decades old or younger.

-squeeze my hand harder and look me in the eye when we shake. I can’t feel you there. Let’s do it again. (They usually err on the side of too hard, but that’s better than too soft, and when I do it with really little girls, I make a game of it, doing a little wiggly shake.)

-stop saying you’re sorry. You deserve to take up space.

—Apologize when you’ve actually done something wrong. If you can’t name it, you’re making yourself smaller for someone else who doesn’t deserve it.

-(Interrupting young men who interrupt young women) “she’s not finished speaking”.

-keeping my eyes focused on a person being interrupted.

-pushing back on a parent who is shoving their recalcitrant artist into showing me work, when that young person hasn’t been asked, or offered, and I haven’t been asked, either.

There’s little about my job that gives me so much life, while simultaneously exhausting me so much.

I COMPLETELY forgot that I set gift cards up. They’re at the bottom of the “art” section on my site.

“Know someone who loves my work, but not sure which piece is their favorite? Wanna support a one-woman-owned micro-business? Think Jeff Bezos has enough piles of gold? Get a gift card!

This digital card creates a unique code, which the recipient can enter at checkout to subtract the gift card value from their order total - and it never expires.”

I don’t remember where, but I know it was in a Spanish-speaking country, and she was mesmerized💗
EDIT: Oaxaca, Mexico

Frozen, chocolate covered strawberries at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival!

Please buy your tickets early and online, because we’re selling out! 

The holidays fast approacheth. I bet you know someone who needs a Lickalottapuss T-shirt, and I know where you can get one, because I drew it 😜
https://marrusart.threadless.com/collections/foolishness

(Also, I cannot express how much it pleases me that my phone knows the word “Lickalottapuss“.)

Last year, for RESCU (a charitable organization which raises money for Rennies with financial challenges), at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival, I drew all over an artist proof for a live audience (lol), for people to bid on. This adorable puppy was last year’s winner.

I want to do it again, so please keep an eye out later on this December.

Community takes care of its own 🙂

The Faire has just opened. The Jousters, on their horses, are leading the procession of visitors into the park. The Sheriff has just thrown down his stop sign, and the Jousters, knowing the schtick, stop, one by one.

The first horse stops. The sheriff nods. The horse continues on its way.

The second horse stops. The sheriff nods. The horse continues on its way.

The third horse stops. The sheriff nods. The horse continues on its way.

The fourth horse stops. The sheriff nods. The horse continues on its way.

But before the fourth horse has completely cleared the sheriff’s stop sign, it drops a massive load of horse apples. They land all around the stop sign, directly in the path of the people, but happily, miss the prop itself.

I just got a solid week of ab workouts with all the laughing. 
🐴 💩💩💩💩💩🤣

When you go into a friend’s home, and you see this on the wall, and you say, “oh, I really like that”, and then you realize, you drew it decades ago😂

One of the many things I love about being a street artist is interacting with people who might never otherwise walk into a gallery.

For example, these two fairy princesses, combing through my print racks at the Connecticut Renaissance Festival 💗✨🎨🌈💗

I am working at the Connecticut Renaissance Festival, when an intense, self possessed kid, maybe nine years old, wearing a duck-billed Donald Duck baseball cap walks into my booth. I riff off of his billed bill, and he is very comfortable saying he doesn’t understand the joke.

He asks: do you have anything for seven dollars?

Me: no, but I’ll DRAW you something for seven dollars.”

Kid: OK.

Me: what would you like me to draw?

Kid: I like when things drop in water and it splashes up.

Me: you mean like a corona? It looks like a little crown?

Kid: yeah.

I don’t have something suitable for the drawing , so I send him off to find a piece of paper. He returns with a page of an old calendar. I then complete my commission. He gives me seven dollars.

Kid: I could use white out to make the lines go away.

Me: I wouldn’t. It adds verisimilitude.

He asks what that means.

Me: it’s like the truth of the moment in time. A blank piece of paper is just a blank piece of paper. But the grids on THIS paper will add to your memory of this moment.

I love my job 💗

I start the drive to today! (booth 2423), have generously offered me space to sign copies of my book, from 3-5, Friday through Monday. It’s been way too long since I’ve felt that crackling energy!

My shirt collections are called, "New Orleans", "Night Doodles", and "Foolishness", and now that I think about it, that could be the entirety of my resume.

I'll bet you know someone who neeeeeds this Man-bun: https://marrusart.threadless.com/collections

Nobody: Do you have Impossumable Burger Baby Onesies?
Me:

(Linksie in the commentsies)

New t-shirts up. I never thought anything I did would work adorably on baby onsies, but I'm pretty sure these will:) https://marrusart.threadless.com/

People have kvetched at me to make T-shirts for years, so now I’m making T-shirts, starting with this there’s some other stuff up there too! or hit up https://marrusart.threadless.com directly 💗✨🎨

Hey folks out in Virtualandia ! If you enjoy the things I create, please consider joining my Patreon? It starts at a half a cup of schmancy coffee, and ensures that I can keep writing, drawing, painting, and instigating! Hit up www.patreon.com/marrusart. Thanks for helping me do what I was put on the planet to do!

Want your very own Impossumable Burger T-shirt? Right this way: https://marrusart.threadless.com/

Please share TF outta it - mebbe I can retire on this foolishness.

This happy pack of seniors on in the of
Some of them were so ***r that I could not tell who had been born into what body. They had such a about them.

Mathilda, the creature I made for Mardi Gras, showed up in another form.

I call these white pencil & ink drawings “Night Doodles”.

Here is a picture
Of the picture
My friend took of me
Drawing a picture
Of a two-thousand-year old tree.

I call theta brain waves, “the Elves”.

Right before I go to bed, I give them something I need to figure out. They sort it while I’m asleep, and the next morning I know what to do.

This irritates friends who witness my midnight shenanigans: How the hell did you have your presentation ready?

I just gave it to the Elves💖

Sketchbook page.
I’m always admonishing myself to do better/differently. No one ever grades me harder than me.

A study in contrasts:

A birthday party for a q***r friend: Pierrot-costumed clowns hu***ng each other on stage, a black burlesque dancer flattening a white cake with her butt cheeks, to across the street, where a half dozen kids in a car (two were packed in the trunk) at eleven at night, pile out with little buckets with “inspirations“ in them, begging for donations. The youngest is five, the oldest, perhaps sixteen. There is no parent with them that I can see, but I know someone is lurking somewhere.

Then, sudden sea shanties at an impromptu piano bar. Then today, fixing the last damage of the catalytic converter theft, where an angry man with wild eyes walks over the bridge, slams down a sign, and spits on my car. The mechanic fixes my O2 sensor, and doesn’t charge me for it.

Then, a fellow with Parkinson’s, who’s only been in New Orleans for three weeks, but has already bought a house in the Quarter, (though he’s not sold the one back in Indianapolis yet), and he’s certainly not going to be here for the summers, because it’s too hot.

A screenshot of two squares from my Instagram: the top, a painting progress shot, the bottom, my mule boyfriend, Footloose.

How lovely surprise synchronicity can be.