Like Mother Teresa, only better.
It’s Friday and that means it’s time for you to sneak into my office so we can look at the videos I saved for you this month. COME ON:
Happy weekend, friends.
We had blackouts in our neighborhood every few hours the past few days and so when it all came back on yesterday I spent hours trying to reset everything in the house to get the internet to come back up because Victor is out of town and whenever he leaves things stop working properly and I become accidentally Amish almost immediately. I finally got my computer to work again and decided that I guess I can just live without tv and then I found this on my door this morning.
*sigh*
Y’ALL.
This Saturday is INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY and Nowhere Bookshop is cordially inviting you to come and visit and celebrate with us. (There’s extra parking behind the store if needed.)
Why should you come?
First off, there will be a golden ticket hidden somewhere in the store on Saturday and the first lucky person who finds it will win a year’s worth of audiobooks from Libro.fm. “Do audiobooks count as real books?” YES THEY FUCKING DO.
Stop at our bar and cafe for cupcakes and snacks and we’ll also be making our special sparkly lavender lemonade and pink prosecco rosé.
Exclusive book merch is available Saturday (including the blackwing pencils which I don’t know what those are but people are very excited about them?):
And cool in-store giveaways:
And I had 75 of my drawings printed up (double-sided) on heavy card stock that I’m signing and tucking into my books on the shelf.
They look fuzzy in the image because I suck at taking pictures but I assure you, they’re pristine and gorgeous. If there are any left over I’ll tuck them into book orders that come through online.
In fact, we going to be tucking little surprises into any orders that come in from our website this weekend because I know we have friends and fans all over who can’t make it. So maybe you’ll get a Nowhere medal or sticker or magnet or an advance copy of a book we’re excited about. WHO THE HELL KNOWS? IT’S CHAOS. (And you can order personalized copies of my book here and I will happily implicate you in a crime or draw a picture of a giant metal chicken in your book, if requested. We mail all over the world.)
AND we’re going to give one lucky person who signs up to be a new subscriber to one of our book clubs on this weekend 6 months free! (Do you know about our book clubs where we send you books right to your house? There’s Fantastic Strangelings (weird and wonderful), Nightmares from Nowhere (horror), Happy Endings (romance) and the Little Bitty Book Club (picture books). I pick the books for the first two and I apologize in advance for the weird emails you’ll be getting from me. I think we also need to start a YA bookclub and a graphic novel bookclub too but that’s all in the future. Or a manga book club. OR A WITCHY BOOKCLUB. Sorry. I’ll stop. I got overwhelmed.) Click here to join us or find out more about our clubs.
Come see us!
PS. If you see me, don’t ever be afraid to say hi. I fact, always say hi unless I’m actively peeing or crying. Basically if no liquids are coming out of me you should say hi. Also, I have a hearing problem and ADHD so feel free to throw something at me if I seem like I didn’t hear you. Something soft, I mean. Not like a chair or a drink. Unless it’s really necessary. Use your best judgement.
PPS. If the cat/possum drawing is too small for you you can order a bigger size on the same heavy card stock right here.
PPPS. If you’re not in San Antonio go check out your local indie bookstore because there are celebrations happening all around the world on Saturday and it can be hard out there for an indie bookshop these days. Your support keeps us all going. Because of you we’ve been able to make a safe and welcoming place for people to gather and read and learn and grow. I’m so lucky I get to be a part of it. Thank you.
Once or twice a year I open up slots for people advertise on my blog and today is that day! I don’t use ad networks or pop-ups because they’re annoying so instead I just offer flat-rate sidebar ads to anyone with something cool that needs attention. My sweet advertisers pay the bills that keep this blog running so please go to my righthand sidebar and give them a visit because I adore them.
Want in? Text ads on my righthand sidebar are $100 a month (payable through paypal). They are first come-first served and they fill up quickly, so email me at advertising@thebloggess.com if you want in and I’ll personally walk you through the details. Also, I realize ad networks are reading this and will email me to tell me that I am under-pricing myself and need to use them but please don’t. I intentionally do this so that my sidebar is full of real people and their dreams and not a bunch of ads for casinos and vape pens and scammers using photographs stolen from real artists to sell knockoffs. Also, people always ask if I accept ads for books that aren’t mine. I totally do. I fucking love books.
Graphic sidebar ads (like the one for Dead Boy Detectives on the right) are sometimes available for $300- $700 depending on size and placement. (And in case you’re wondering…Instagram or sponsored posts are available but they start at $5k and I only do them for products I personally love, so it’s very rare.)
And if you happen to have something special that you want more eyes on but you can’t afford $100 a month just leave a link to whatever you’re proud of in the comments so we can all see it. A blog, a substack, your art, a charity, something you love…whatever you think needs attention.
First, if you missed yesterday’s post about the artist we’re trying to identify you need to go back and read it first so you understand, okay?
Second, if you’re easily affected by talks of suicide be warned there are a few mentions here so feel free to skip this one. And no judgement because sometimes I’m in a bad place and have to protect myself until I’m in a better place too. Giant high fives for protecting yourself. I love you.
Third, I think we may have found the artist.
My friend Tami and an anonymous reader here on the blog both found the beginning thread I needed to dive deeper into the records and newspapers. From what I can tell, the unknown artists immediate family is all gone now but there might be very distant cousins still alive who may not want their family history shared so easily. It’s complicated because I am very in favor of lifting the secretive stigma regarding mental illness, but also I’m against personal stories being shared without consent so I’m trying to meet in the middle in only sharing the name of the (probable) artist rather than the names of the rest of her family even though all of them have been dead for decades.
If we have the right person then “L Perea” is Laura Perea.
She and her twin sister were born in 1914 and lived with their parents here in San Antonio, about 15 minutes away from my house. Their father worked at a university and taught foreign languages, which might explain why her art was in three different languages. She and her twin were incredibly bright and were awarded often for the highest grades at school. In college Laura continued to excel and had the highest gpa of any freshman at her university. The twins never married and they stayed with their parents. In 1948, when they were 33, Laura’s twin died after intentionally ingesting poison at their home. Two years later Laura is listed in the 1950 census records as a patient in the San Antonio State Hospital Mental Institution (previously called the Southwestern Insane Asylum).
And a few years later, her paintings were made. History shows that the San Antonio State Hospital (still in existence now) was terribly overcrowded, understaffed and had serious issues in the 50s so her art probably shows a very truthful reality.
I assume Laura had a breakdown after losing her only sibling, or possibly attempted suicide at the same time but survived. I’m still looking, but so far she just sort of disappears (as far as I can find) until her death here in San Antonio in 1995. She lived, is all I can say. She was cremated, like the rest of her family. Location of ashes unknown. My hope is that she lived a full life and continued to do art and heal and tell the stories of those who didn’t have a voice. I’ll keep looking.
But what I do know is that yesterday when I went in for my ketamine treatment (for depression) I started to fall into the same sort of panic that I normally get when the world goes black, but instead of the isolating dread I often feel, I found myself comforted in the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. It sounds ridiculous but somehow it felt like someone from across time held out a hand. And Laura’s image of the women waiting for electric shock therapy came back to me so clearly.
And probably that’s just the hallucinogenic drugs talking but it was the first time in the years that I’ve been doing this treatment that I didn’t feel quite so alone when everything went dark.
Today I’m more than halfway through my one-year substack challenge of doing art every week to improve my mental health and today I’ll be sharing my drawing from last week, which is embarrassing far from the skill Laura mastered, but which feels somehow prescient:
Thank you Laura, for your shine.
And thank you to everyone reading this now who may doubt their own importance but who may one day send out ripples through time to someone who desperately needs them.
PS. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her art but I think they deserve to be seen. I’ve reached out to some outsider art museums to see if they are interested in sharing them with the world, but no response yet. They may be too old. Too tattered. But if that fails I have some other ideas. I’ll keep you posted.
Thank you for listening, friends.
Thank you for staying.
Thank you for shining.
SEE BOTTOM OF POST FOR UPDATE.
So often I stop at estate sales and bring home strange, haunting things that I don’t really need but that I can’t leave behind…especially on Sundays when so much has been picked over and so much will end up tossed in the garbage if it doesn’t sell.
Today was one of those days. And I brought home these large, battered but poignant art pieces that aren’t really my style but that I can’t stop thinking about. Partially because they are remarkably done, but unique like self-taught outsider art…and partially because I suspect they were all done by a patient in a mental hospital over 70 years ago.
This one is watercolor. The title is in Spanish but translates to “Waiting for electric shock treatment (E.S.T).” It (like all of them) is by someone called “L Perea” (I think) and is from 1952.
This one is pen and ink and seems to be of an asylum or institution:
It’s signed “L Perea, April ’55”
This is a large watercolor:
The writing says “The Dipsy Doodle – We want everything neat and clean and tidy and orderly and sanitary and sterile. Some V.I.P.s are coming over on an inspection tour—and oh, yes! Another thing—look happy – that’s orders.“
There’s no date on this one. I’d never heard of the dipsy doodle before but it was an old song, apparently. The lyrics:
The dipsy doodle is the thing to beware
The dipsy doodle will get in your hair
And if it gets you, it couldn't be worse
The things you say will come out in reverse
Like "You love I and me love you!"
That's the way the dipsy doodle works.
You can't eat, you can't sleep. You go crazy.
You're just a victim of the dipsy doodle
And it's not your mind that's hazy
It's your heart that's at fault - not your noodle.
You better listen and try to be good
And try to do all the things that you should
The dipsy doodle will get you some day
And when it gets you the things you will say
Like the moon jumped over the cow - hey diddle!
That's the way the dipsy doodle works.
This one, which is pen and ink and very eerie:
The title is in french but I think it translates to “The man, what is this?” September ’53
And this one, a watercolor:
The front says “The Searchlight – I didn’t realize how important it is not to tell the truth – until it was too late.”
On the back it has more written but I can’t tell exactly what:
” …and after Ray threw the (indecipherable) at me, I told the truth – so they put me in here.” 1952
I tried to find the artist online, hopeful that maybe afterward she (I assume it’s a she since she draws other women mostly) got out and was discovered and found a life in art…but I can’t find anything.
And maybe this is all that’s left. But it breaks my heart…because I’m also a self-taught artist who uses my drawings and writing to find escape from this often broken mind. Because tonight I’m fasting because tomorrow I’ll be at the clinic getting IV infusions of ketamine to try to treat my treatment-resistant depression. Because I know that I could have been her so easily. Because I had family myself who died in places like that and were forgotten.
I guess in some way I want her to be seen, even if we don’t know her name or where she ended up. Maybe someone with greater research skills can find out what happened to her. Or if not, we can at least look at the story she left behind with her art…the stories of so many people who never got to tell theirs.
