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I'm Aspen, a 34yo queer, disabled artist and human (they/them), finding my way in the chaos. I love fiber arts of all kinds, and I love painting and creating just about anything I can, and I aspire to do far more than my corporeal form will allow. I love learning, cats, music, and poetry. Always happy to make a new friend!
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I am deeply inspired by wildlife, plants, mushrooms, and magic.
All my original art and things related to my small business will be tagged #aspennotpoplar.
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Hey everyone. I'm Aspen Evelyn Schiller, and I have a very teeny tiny small business called Aspen Not Poplar. I am a HUGE fiber arts nerd, and I love love LOVE making art. I work with nature-based themes most of the time -- landscapes, flowers, plants, trees, mushrooms, wildlife -- and I am passionate about environmentalism. How could I not be? I care deeply about the world. I care deeply for everyone and everything in it. Not to get too too deep into philosophy in the first paragraph, but we are not just from the earth, we ARE the earth. And what we do to it, we do to ourselves.
1% of all my revenue goes toward carbon removal efforts via Stripe Climate, to put my money where my mouth is. I may be a very small time artist, but every one of us can do our part. This is my way, along with raising awareness, of giving back to the planet.
It's also a spiritual thing for me, though I don't intend to be in your face about it. But for me, it is a deeply spiritual experience. Making art, sharing it, talking about the inspiration for it -- it's all part of my calling.
So what the heck do I do, anyway?
Professionally, I make embroidered jewelry. I paint and draw (acrylics are my primary medium. Watercolors second. I've dabbled in oils, and have an interest in gouache but I'm less experienced there. I'm also a digital artist). I crochet.
Hobbywise, I am learning to weave and sew. I would love to incorporate these into my professional artistry at some point, too. I also love needle felting, especially 2D scenes. It's like painting with wool, and you get to stab stuff like a hundred thousand times. What's not to love?
I write, as well -- I have a few fiction projects in the works long-term, and I write poetry. You might see a bit of it here from time to time. :)
I used to do a lot of nature photography but my disabilities and chronic pain/illness limits me far more than it used to, whether I like it or not. (I most certainly do not.) However, I retain a deep love of nature photography, and remember everything I learned about composition and subject and color, and so on. Nothing learned is ever wasted.
But I think it's time I shut up and show off a bit of what I make! So, without further ado, let's go!
These are two embroidered pendants I made. Daffodils or narcissus on the left, pink hollyhocks on the right. They were made on the same piece of cloth and both were set in mahogany settings!
Lots more pictures under the cut!
This is a set of embroidered pendants I made as well. The linen was painted with watercolor, and violets were stitched with curling leaves surrounding. They are intended to be sold as a set for sapphic lovers. Think of those friendship necklaces with half a heart on each pendant. Remember those? Like that, but for couples. If you know, you know! The settings are baltic birch, hand-stained and finished.
I also embroidered this highly-detailed bee pendant. :) The petals on the flower shimmer just a little, as do the bee's wings. The setting is mahogany, again. I do love my dark, warm woods.
One of my favorite and most detailed embroidery pieces so far is this chipmunk brooch. He's got some tiny red berries to munch on. The piece took upwards of 8 hours to create!
All of my embroidery designs are freehanded or drawn by me.
In my personal collection, I have this gorgeous Amanita muscaria brooch. The french knots for the moss give it such a fun texture. The wood is reclaimed waste wood, perfectly good bits of wood that would otherwise have been discarded from other manufacturing processes, which the seller I purchased from turns into all kinds of things! Reducing waste is a big deal to me.
How about some digital art? This is a piece completed this year, called Joyful Peonies. It's done in a watercolor style, with little budding blue-violet flowers behind, called grape hyacinths! This will eventually be available as a limited edition print!
On a personal art note, I painted this portrait of my baby kitty, Gemma, this year as well. Digital, done in Procreate like the peonies above. I'm really happy with how this came out, it's my first animal portrait!
These are a few of my miniature acrylic paintings. I love these. They were bought by a dear friend and collector of my art. Each is 3 inches by 4 inches!
The first of these three is a pendant I made on commission for a very happy customer. It's about 1 inch in diameter! The second picture was also commission work for a friend of mine, a necklace and earring set. The earrings are 20mm in diameter! The third piece shown here, the lavender and cypress trees under a blue sky, has sold as well. :)
And here's something else I'm really excited with in my jewelry making -- these earring studs, set in stainless steel, are only 1/2 inch in diameter each. That's about 12mm! It leaves me even less room to embroider on. I LOVE pushing the limits of what kind of detail is possible in the tiniest spaces. And I'll share one more, to that end...
These were super fun to make, and made on commission last year. The robin heads were stitched with DMC floss, 1 strand at a time. But the nests and eggs? Those were stitched with sewing thread. I'm really pushing the bounds here. The upper tier with the nests were just about 10mm across for the embroidery. All that detail fit into one square centimeter of space! The robin heads, below, were 25mm or 1 inch across the diameter of the inserts. :) Truly exciting work. I am so privileged to be able to create things like this.
So, if you read this far, I hope you'll decide to stick around. I reblog whatever impassions me, but I'll be posting more and more of what I do, as well. :)
Don't forget! Check out my site at https://www.aspennotpoplar.com/ and join my mailing list if you want updates! This is especially for those who may not want to see all the random whatever that I reblog, but who want to follow me as an artist.
I'm also on Instagram and YouTube, and there's a Discord server I run where fans of my art can interact and have fun. We post memes, we talk about our lives, I talk about what I'm doing or working through. It's a more personal way to connect with me, and, I hope, a place to make friends who share common interests. You don't have to be an artist to join. All you have to do is appreciate art, and follow the golden rule! Treat others well and respectfully and we'll have no problems. :) There's more info if you click the link to join.
Well, that's all for now! See you in the shitposts, friends!
sex position: you, sitting on your throne. me, standing behind you, resting my arm on the back of your throne and sniling so sneetly at your ministers like i have any right to be there
you can download current and past hi-res versions of these over at my ko-fi (ok to print for personal use): https://ko-fi.com/mxmorgan/shop/freedownloads
you can also snag shirts here which go to various orgs: https://mxmorgan.threadless.com/collections/pride
these get reposted a whole lot from here to reddit to twitter to tiktok and on and on, and i don't personally care whether or not i'm credited. i made these for everyone to use, enjoy, and find meaning in them. i appreciate folks who do credit me, but if able, please at least link to the threadless shop in the previous post - folks can get an official shirt where 90% of earnings go to trans led orgs focused on mental health (which is an important matter in general, but very personal to me) and not from a scam bot site selling AI-churned maga garbage where you probably won't get one anyway. i also suggest downloading the files from my ko-fi - they are free/PWYW and you can use them to make your own shirt, patch, embroidery project, whatever. tips are always nice, cuz i do like a pizza now and then, but never required for download.
final thought - breaking the pride tradition and more than likely won't make a new piece. the top one from TDOV is all i'm making this year. i have my focus on other projects currently and i don't want to force a poster design. these came from a specific head space and my current head space is Very Tired lmao so i wanna work on other things. 👍
im just so happy i live in a time period where actual meaningful biological transition is possible. even if we lose rights or the ability to exist in public, nothing can turn back the clock on that, and just by having any sort of access to that our lives are made immensely better. millions of our sisters throughout history would never have dreamed of a day where they could have what HRT does for us.
please don't lose the plot of this. if you're a trans person on HRT you're a living miracle, the dream of hundreds of millions of your ancestors. your lives are all deeply meaningful no matter what anyone says.
Cursed be the one who announced to my father:
“It’s a boy!"...
...How could he twist the course of the stars so much?
How could he have erred so in his astrology?
A lying tongue, a fool’s mouth it had given him
For he foolishly transformed justice to poison
He altered the law and transposed the lines
Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead – a worthy woman...
...I would say "how lucky am I"
Father in heaven
who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water...
...Who would then transform me from a man to woman?
Were I only to have merited this being so graced by goodness...
What shall I say?
why cry or be bitter?
If my father in heaven has decreed upon me
and has maimed me with an immutable deformity
then I do not wish to remove it.
the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure
and for which no comfort can be found.
So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground.
Since I have learned from our tradition
that we bless both, the good and the bitter
I will bless in a voice hushed and weak:
blessed are you [HaShem] who has not made me a woman.
sorry to be a broken record every month but christ menstruation is a stupid concept. oooooh excuse me for not getting pregnant, why the fuck is there goo falling out of me about it? grow the fuck up and reabsorb that shit for nutrients.
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.
i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.
i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.
as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.
disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.
at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.
i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.
i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.
I saw a post about Shane and Ilya being sad that they can't thank each other in their acceptance speeches like other can with their spouses and it got me thinking:
Ilya wins his first awards and hes got nobody he really wants to thank after his team and coach cause he he hates his family but he knows his speech is too short so on impulse he goes "And I want to thank Shane Hollander for being slightly worse than me this season". Everyone knows it was going to one of those two, so everyone thinks hes an asshole to say that but whats new so it works for him. But from then on it then becomes a bit for both of them to thank each other in their speeches in a snide way as a reason they won.
Shane winning the Art Ross Trophy (Awarded to the player who leads the league in total points at the end of the regular season). and going "special thanks to Rozanov for missing at least 5 shots this season, he was a huge help"
Ilya winning the Conn Smythe Trophy (Awarded to the most valuable player for his team in the playoffs.) "Just want to give a quick shout out to Hollander for getting knocked out in the second round this season. Must hate to see me up here."
They find a way to mention the other in their speeches every time all the time.
