I am no longer in business as a freelancer in Germany. However the book is carried by two absolutely wonderful Berlin businesses.

You can order DEMIMONDE at Other Nature or Ivallan’s Books online, or buy it at their stores in Berlin!

Both of these beautiful Berlin stores are worth a visit. Other Nature has a huge, amazing new location just around the corner from their previous location. Ivallan’s is a cozy booklover’s dream.

The post Where can I buy your book DEMIMONDE: The Documentary Art of Suzanne Forbes? appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

We had an art show and book pickup/sale to benefit Berlin’s Black Sex Workers Collective. The venue is aequa, a cozy covid-cautious space aligned with our values.

We raised over 300 euros for The BSWC’s upcoming conference. I hoped for more but it was raining and the local subway was messed up! You can still support the conference right here.

The second book release event is this Friday, March 7, 6 to 9pm.

We’ll be at aequa/e13, Exerzierstr. 13
13357 Berlin. You can pick up your book and gift of original art if you pre-ordered, or buy a book or a framed piece of original art documenting Queer Berlin.

There will be singing by amazing WIZZY, who I call my adopted nephew, and my friend HP Loveshaft.

There will be a talk by Los Angeles curator and author Anuradha Vikram, and a slideshow of over 800 of my drawings from Berlin and 500 from San Francisco. Including the very explicit ones you have seen nowhere else!

There will be original one-time only flash tattoos by amazing Berlin tattoo artist Bard. I’ll be getting a red umbrella in solidarity with sex workers myself!

Most important of all, this event 100% benefits Berlin peer-to-peer organization Trans*Sexworks.

Every cent from book and art sales goes directly to TSW! Of course, if you can’t make the event, you can donate directly to TSW here.

Hope to see you this Friday, March 7, in Berlin!

The post March 7, Berlin book release event: original art and books to benefit Trans*Sexworks! appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

This month as I did image processing and inserted images into the manuscript, I added 200 more artworks and over a 100 pages of text. When the team at Gorham Printing reviewed the files with the layout person, they informed me that I have a nearly 400 page book with 320 images, not a 200+ page book with 100 images.

I did not fundraise enough to publish or ship a 400 page book! My loves, I need your help!

I can’t see how to change the book as it stands; 320 artworks is 10% of my last 20 years’ work and enough pictures to tell a story. It feels right to me. Same with the text; to tell about the people and places that I drew and painted, I needed some words!

I also changed the title; the book is now: DEMIMONDE: The Documentary Art of Suzanne Forbes

I included lots of paintings, lots of collaborative work I did with my Beloved Patrons. I recorded and fact-checked so much Bay Area and Berlin queer and k1nky history for this book! It’s valuable and important to include it, for the people and places to be remembered on the page.

And it is doable, Gorham can do the layout and print the almost 400 page book with over 200 color illustrations and 100 black and white.

We had to decide fast whether to make the wire transfer to the printing house for the initial deposit, so we just did it! But the layout, printing and shipping of a bigger book will cost more.

I need to raise about 500 more euros (thanks to incredibly generous support from loved ones, nearly all additional costs are now covered) to finish printing the book at the increased size; I’m cashing out an old US life insurance policy that will cover 1400 (my life insurance was always to secure my art legacy)! I’m making a Paypal moneypool (here!) with a goal of 2300 euros.

You can help right here!

Anyone who contributes in the next week will be on the book thank you list; anyone who contributes is on the thank you list on the website and gets the PDF version of the book emailed.

Thank you, I love you, I’m too wrecked still from the shock of this to even write clearly, sorry!

The post This Giving Season, preserve Queer Art: help make the BIGGER BOOK happen! appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

If you want a copy of my book DEMIMONDE: The Live Drawing of Suzanne Forbes, RIGHT NOW on startnext is the only way to order it!

I am so grateful to everyone who has supported and shared, and I ask you to do one more round of sharing to help get this book out in the world!

Here’s my Insta, please share like a fiend!

Order the book here until Sunday night!

Demimondebook.com

The post Last 48 hours to order my book! Love you babies! appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

This is your only chance to fund and purchase a book of my art!

For twenty years, I’ve used skills developed as a tv courtroom artist to live-draw LGBTQ+ and kink community. Now at the end of my working life, I want to preserve and share these portraits of cherished folx, many marginalized and often erased.

Your 8.5″x 11″ (like A4), 200+ page hardcover copy of “Demimonde” includes color and b&w drawings of SF and Berlin kinksters, drag artists, and lots of trans beloveds!

Please help me make this happen.

It’s the biggest, deepest dream of my life, and it’s now or never.

Here’s how to help support and buy your copy of Demimonde: The Live Drawing of Suzanne Forbes!

Go to the link, choose “free support”, the option of having the E-book emailed, or choose having the physical book shipped to you.  Most payment forms are accepted.

This is the only way to buy the book.

It won’t be for sale on Amazon, at bookstores, or online after the crowdfund ends October 14. I am simply too sick to manage any kind of ongoing business.

Demimondebook.com

I’m so grateful to everyone who has helped so far!

Campaign header photo by Chayna Girling.

The post My art book crowdfund is live til Oct. 14! Please help my last art project happen. appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

Left, @stefanpeterharshman drawn in a Chelsea laundromat, NYC 1984. Right, @simplicityagent Ramon Yvarra painted in San Francisco in 2014. Two men I love dearly. Amazing, creative men who have done fantastic things in their cities for decades. I had no idea they were in the same pose til now!

I’m at peace with having a shorter lifetime, because I have been exactly who I am my entire life, and known and loved so many fantastic people, and made art of them.

As I wind down my life’s work and work on creating a book of my art, you can follow me on substack (free of course) for updates about the book, art bequests and more.

I am incredibly grateful to my Patreon Patrons, whose monthly financial support in this final year makes it possible for me to document my art archives.

The post The blessing of doing the work I love for over forty years. appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

And I mean literally forgotten, from when my MECFS/burnout was so bad I have no memory of making most of these! Back in 2009, a few months before Wicked Grounds opened, I met with Rose and Ryan to talk about drawing postcards for the cafe to sell.

Everything was so organized back then, before the actual opening!

There was a contract I signed and everything. The postcards were about the concept of service, and never went any further than these roughs. I like the detail of the espresso machine and milkshake machine in the top drawing, though I am shocked and appalled at how I drew the “default people” as white, abled and slim.

Latte art at Wicked Grounds in San Francisco. Michealangelo S. via Yelp

Someone else, with much better graphic design skills than me, drew the awesome logo.

Funny thing about opening a restaurant, always: once it starts, no matter how good your plans were, you can’t find your ass with both hands.

San Francisco did not make it easy to open Wicked Grounds. Anyway it was a nice meeting, and ultimately led to me working at Wicked Grounds as an employee in September of that year. After a brutal divorce, losing my Berkeley home and my freelance business and then losing my apartment and being taken in by a beloved Friend-Muse-Patron, I was shattered. I needed connection and community.

Wicked Grounds was my refuge.

I made wonderful friends (many of them seggs workers), got a sweet new boyfriend, reconnected at depth with kink culture and fell even deeper in love with amazing seggs worker spirit. And then I met my husband while working there.

So basically WG saved my life on so many levels.

And I know Wicked Grounds helped a lot of others.

Blessed memories. Sweet kinksters. Puppies frolicking in the back of the cafe where we’d pulled the tables away, drinking milkshakes from dog bowls and shaking the floor with their leaps. “Sanitize as necessary”. Making out with my young boyfriend as we pulled espresso shots!

Live queer porn shoots in the cafe, sign on the door “Closed for porn shoot”. Hot and sweaty Folsom Sunday when we were all topless, wearing just Wicked Grounds stickers on our nipples! Meeting my brother-from-another-mother Mickey Mod, KC and so many more.

Jared from DNA gave me the sobriquet “Velocicougar” – “My God, it can open a door!”

Thanksgiving, Collaring my boy. Our staff Christmas party, and New Years Eve 2009, when my boy and I had the cafe all to ourselves. Candy cane whips, stingy not thuddy!

Leather elders meeting in the cafe. Littles playing! So much beautiful kink scene. So much glorious SOMA leather spirit.

Wicked Grounds, San Francisco’s first kink cafe, at 289 Eighth St., closed Monday afternoon.
Flickr/ Lynn Friedman

Although the physical cafe is sadly closed, the team is still very active, creating educational content, events and classes in a new space, and Patreon community. The Wicked Grounds website has books, classes, calendar of events, toys and more.

You can find Wicked Grounds online on the website, twitter, Instagram, and on Patreon.

You can watch me talk about those days, at Bawdy Storytelling!

As I wind down my life’s work and work on creating a book of my art, you can follow me on substack (free of course) for updates about the book, art bequests and more.

I am incredibly grateful to my Patreon Patrons, whose monthly financial support in this final year makes it possible for me to document my art archives.

The post From the Vaults: illustrations for Wicked Grounds. appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

I am acutely aware of how much suffering is happening in the world, and so aware of what is to come. The disease I have, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME, is exploding worldwide. And the people who are suffering right now, if they survive, are the people most likely to get it.

Being traumatized, starved, injured and repeatedly infected with viruses, bacteria and fungi, makes people much more likely to develop Long Covid and its most severe version, MECFS.

MECFS is a disease that impacts marginalized people first.

Bisan Owda, above, describes the immunological impact of trauma, starvation, and repeat infection. Suffering is an inflammatory state, and ME is triggered by illness, inflammation and nervous system dysregulation.

ME is seen as a white woman’s disease because white women are the people who have the privilege to actually BE sick and seek care while having it.

AFAB People of the Global Majority are even more likely than white AFABs to be dismissed, gaslit, medically abused and medically neglected when they report ME symptoms.

PoTGM/BIPOC people, who are much less likely to be able to stop working and be sick for years, are instead worked to death by the systems they are forced to live under.

Many die young, undiagnosed.

At 57, I’m one year past the average lifespan of a PwME or Person with ME. I’ve been preserved by family, friends, privilege.

And I’ve been guided and educated by the ME community and the disability community. I am a better person for having this disease and being in this community, and I’m grateful for it. Strange but true. The wisdom of the disabled community is most transformative thing I’ve ever known.

The courage of our advocates is a huge part of it.

And why do we need them? Because this. Our disease has been ignored, stigmatized, denied, psychologized, and above all underfunded and under researched since the first big outbreak in 1955.

One of our valued experts Nancy Klimas, a professor of microbiology and immunology, has said: “My H.I.V. patients for the most part are hale and hearty thanks to three decades of intense and excellent research and billions of dollars invested. Many of my ME/CFS patients, on the other hand, are terribly ill and unable to work or participate in the care of their families. I split my clinical time between the two illnesses, and I can tell you if I had to choose between the two illnesses (in 2009) I would rather have H.I.V.”

When there is any research, it has centered white women.

It’s essential to see the BIPOC women who work to make ME known to the world and get help.

Their leadership makes such a difference for all of us.

One of our most precious advocates, activists and leaders is Wilhelmina Jenkins, who has been fighting for herself and other ME patients since 1983.

Here she’s talking to Time about Black women and Long Covid. This article features Wilhelmina, Cynthia Adinig, Ashanti Daniel and Chimére L. Sweeney, all leaders doing crucial work in ME and Long Covid.

You can find Wilhelmina on twitter, Instagram, facebook and youtube.

Her incredible 2019 piece about her experience and her work to make Black people living with ME visible is here on MEAction.net.

Here’s Wilhelmina doing a webinar for SolveME in 2012!

Jen Brea has made a huge difference in ME visibility over the past decade plus, with her film Unrest, TED talk, advocacy and more.

Jen Brea got sick, as we call it, back in 2011. Her TED talk was the first ever about ME, and Unrest won a Sundance award and many others, has been on Netflix and has helped so many people learn about ME. You can watch it for free on Youtube now!

And Quella is making learning ME science fun, and funny!

Left, amazing advocate Quella, a medical researcher and proud med school dropout. Here she describes how migration trauma primes the pump for MECFS.

Quella is teaching us all so much. Unpaid, while sick.

Living in Aotearoa, Quella has access to medical care that’s as good as it gets for us. But MECFS has no official treatment in any nation of the world. And despite being a medical student, she has been medically abused and maltreated by doctors galore.

I would not have thought it was possible to make hilarious and engaging “reels” about any of our symptoms, let alone the nastiest, but Raquel Parackal, aka Quella, does it.

Living with ME means becoming your own doctor, your own researcher, your own medical trauma therapist.

I couldn’t do it without our community. And GoBlueForMECFS, who created this annual event, is a big part of it. The folks behind the account did an incredible job this year raising awareness, foregrounding the diversity of ME patients, making graphics, and of course sharing so many GoBlueForME posts!

We have to make progress on this disease, The whole world is going to need it.

Above, a newspaper article from thirty-eight years ago today, 1986, the year I got sick.

I’m still sick, still fighting.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Geiler Scheiss, who supported me so kindly and gently as they made the beautiful photographs.

Instagram here, it might be a little spicy for some workplaces!

Here is my last year’s GoBlueForME blog post, Last year’s highlights of all the dear ones who did GoBlueforME posts, and a lovely one from Beloved Friend, Muse and Patron Sebastian, for 2024.

Here are some resources:

MEAction’s Resource list.

Mepedia

Health Rising is our favorite site for ME research news

Deutsche Gesellschaft für ME/CFS (German Association for ME/CFS) Run by volunteers, that’s how fucking underfunded this disease is!

And there’s so much more to say, but again, I am exhausted.

The post MECFS Awareness Day 2024: Suz for GoBlueforMECFS by Geiler Scheiss. appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

The program, “On Abolishing the Family – and finding Alternatives”, featured readings, a panel, pop-ups, and more. Sadie Lune performed as an ecosexercise workout instructor along with a screening of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens short film.

It was very fun and beautiful to see Annie and Beth air-hugging trees on the big screen.

Sadie’s workout voice was amazing as she exhorted the audience to breathe and move.

The HAU staff had kindly organized a reserved chair for me, but I had forgotten to specify that I need a chair with arms and so I wound up exhausted from supporting my body and had to leave before the panel Sadie participated in.

I’m just grateful I was able to be there.

Previous collabs with Sadie Lune:

Second Annual Longest Night

The first Longest Night

The Lamp of Spring

My latest IRL portrait of Sadie, on a very cold Fall day.

Vampire Baby Jesus

Sadie in Thistle and Spire

Book release party for “As You Wish, my Lady” – vanilla

Book release party for “As You Wish, my Lady” – NSFW

Sadie’s piece in the Coven show at Schwules Museum

Sadie’s pregnancy photo shoot, documented

Vampire Lesbians of Neukoelln – NFSW

Diptych portrait of Sadie Lune and Jo Pollux

You can learn about Sadie’s work on her (NSFW) website. And here’s her Insta, and her twitter . My flickr gallery of drawings and paintings of Sadie is here!

I am so grateful to my Patreon Patrons, whose monthly financial support makes it possible for me to continue making art as a homebound disabled person.

With your support, I can work from home or safely outside and keep telling the stories of Berlin.

The post Sadie Lune at HAU! appeared first on ChipInHead.com.

She is unforgettably fierce and always creative. Her Rorschach number a few years ago remains one of my favorite Berlin burlesque performances of all time.

So glad I could catch this Sketcherei zoom session!

La Loba’s performances and costumes were iconic.

Thank you for another accessible event Sketcherei and La Loba Lucía!

Sketcherei supports performers and sex workers and always has great music and vibes. Insta here, upcoming events here! Alexandra Ru (aka Barsketcher) and her mom are running the sessions together, and I love that they offer zoom access.

I’m so grateful to my Patrons on Patreon, whose monthly financial support makes it possible for me to keep working as an artist, to share my art for free, and to support Berlin performers!

The post La Loba Lucía performs for Sketcherei! appeared first on ChipInHead.com.