CHLOESHITSAY

Chloe Allred. Laguna College of Art and Design MFA. Paint. Paint. Paint. 

[gnomecentric]

At 1:30 today I was in a work meeting at the studio. At a table with half filled coffee cups and paper plates with bits of brownie, we raised our voices and fought over unswept floors and the amount of erasers left on the ground. These are the kinds of arguments that happen in art studios, that happen with the mad and beautiful task of teaching art to kids. Unorganized pastel sets. Wasted paint. Charcoal finger prints on white shelves. Our voices calmed, settled, resolved—the tension dissipated. We all love the studio and sometimes you just need to fight a little.

At the same time as the Eraser Fight of 2018, a man in a white van in Toronto drove a straight line through a crowded pedestrian pathway, transforming people into flying and lifeless bodies. The latest headline on my phone tells me that 10 are dead and 15 are injured. Another headline tells me about a mass shooting suspect fleeing through the woods in Nashville. Four dead there. Yet another headline tells me about a royal baby and this royal baby’s first day on this planet.

To the royal baby and all the other little babies born today, coming into this beautiful, strange, fucked up, petty, and confusing world: At some point in your life you will find yourself angry and fighting over something small, perhaps erasers. Maybe dishes, uncleaned and left in the sink. You may find yourself in an argument with your friend, both enraged by something you can’t even remember the source of. In those instances, royal baby, back up your view. Back it way up, zoom yourself out into the stars and have a look at our beautiful, little blue planet. Anger is easy, hatred seductive. So seductive that it can pull the sane into doing insane things, like plowing a white van through a crowd of people who were just innocently walking though their day.

It can all end so quickly.

And so, with this unknown amount of time before you, how will choose to use it? I know for myself, royal baby, I don’t want to come to the end of my life and look back to realize it was one lived in anger, or pettiness, or a sleepy kind of numbness. There is a bunch of bullshit in this world, baby. But there’s plenty of beauty too.

[gnomecentric]

My friend Gabriela flew me to Seattle in early January. She knew I was going through a difficult time after a family holiday implosion, and after coordinating schedules and checking flights, she booked me a ticket. I arrived in Seattle on a Saturday night—the air was cold but pleasant. Gabi scooped me up curbside in her Subaru and we went back to her apartment. Gabi’s apartment was ultra cozy with soft, glowy lights. On the couch where I would be sleeping, she had placed a note that read, “Welcome Home, Chloe.” along with a fancy little chocolate. Seeing that, that thoughtful welcoming, made my eyes well with tears. We went to the market to get food for dinner. As we walked through the grocery aisles and gathered things, I mostly thought of what I couldn’t eat, but tried to emphasize what I would eat. Gabi, I could tell, could see through me. My life recently had been marked by change—a loss of a close friendship, a breakdown in the fabric of my family. I felt I was teetering. And with that I had started to restrict my diet and weigh myself religiously, taking comfort in the declining numbers on my scale. Gabi, like myself, had been anorexic as a young woman. As we made dinner in her kitchen, in the warm light of her apartment, she asked about my weight loss. I don’t remember what she asked exactly, but I could see the concern in her eyes. I knew she was right to be concerned. Anorexia doesn’t feel past tense to me—it feels like something waiting inside of me, that if I am not careful, can waken and take over my behavior in times of stress. And there are a million little things encountered everyday that can waken it—coworkers talking about their latest diet or supposed food allergies, advertisements, packaging on foods proclaiming low calorie counts, transformation Tuesday posts showing one sad-fat side contrasted with a happy-thin side. A month and a half after that trip I would throw away my scale, and as I did so, I thought of the look that Gabi had given me in her kitchen. It was a look that said so many things: I am here for you. I understand. You matter—you don’t have to change yourself or your body. I started this painting with only vague ideas of its meaning. As I have worked on it, it has begun to unfold itself. There is Gabi, that look of understanding in her eyes. I am in the background caught up something strange and a large snake is back there too, huge, coiled, ominous. But Gabi, her friendship, her understanding—it is larger and more powerful than that snake. Friendship. When I first dragged myself out of anorexia as a preteen I did it mostly alone. I took my obsessive energy from anorexia and funneled it into an obsession with grades. I took as many honors and AP classes as I could and would breakdown if I received anything less than an A. I excelled in my academics, but had essentially found another extreme means of judging myself. I have slowly learned self love. I still trip up. Frequently. In this most recent flirtation with anorexia, I wasn’t alone. What snapped me out of it was seeing the concern from my friends. Now, as an adult, I am going to choose self acceptance over judgment. Slowly it gets better.

[gnomecentric]

My Weight on Jupiter is 326 Pounds

I bought the scale in a rush before my trip abroad. It was $19.99 and came in a slightly dusty box. The box showed a happy slim woman and was plastered in Weight Watchers slogans with too many exclamation points. I planned to use it to watch the weight of my luggage.

I stuffed my bags with art supplies and too many clothes. I weighed my suitcase. It was under the weight limit! Success. The scale sat on my bathroom floor.

I returned from Europe. I began a new teaching job. I painted at home. I hiked and played tennis. The scale still sat in my bathroom and curious, I would occasionally weigh myself. The number was higher than it had ever been—but I also loved my body and I felt good. I began making adjustments to my diet— cutting out sugar, cutting out grains, cutting down carbohydrates in general, incorporating meat. This began with paying attention to how different foods made my body feel, focusing on what made me feel good. Gradually, without really intending to or noticing it, I started too loose weight. Quite a bit of weight. People started to ask, “Have you lost weight? You look good!” Compliments, compliments, compliments. When I first bought the scale and took it out of that dusty Weight Watchers box I weighed 150. The next time I weighed myself, after being asked if I had lost weight by multiple people, I weighed 138. I started stepping on the scale first thing in the morning. 138-133. A trip home to Utah, no bread consumed, down to 30 carbs a day. I return, step on the scale, I’m down to 127. That number makes me feel high, I think, “What would 125 look like? 120? Could I get there? How can I get there?” If the number went up to 129, my heart would sink. If it slid back down, there’s that high again. All my pants were baggy and shirts too. I liked that.

Slowly, slowly, slowly—without even realizing it—my focus had changed. It shifted from how I felt to a number. A number to decrease.

When I was 11 I started starving myself. I discovered what calories were. I started going to the gym with my mom. I had been a fat kid(other kids told me as much) and I had always craved thinness. To be thin was to be desired, to be respected, seemed like a sure way to be happy. Counting calories became a game in my eleven year old brain. Stay under 300 calories a day and you win. Try to burn as many calories as possible on the treadmill—if you can get into a negative calorie count for the day, you really win.

I became thin. Really thin—ribs-poking-out-way-too-far-thin. My body developed a fine layer of hair in an attempt to insulate itself.

It took years for me to stop starving myself and much longer to be comfortable with, let alone like my body. But by 26, I really did feel I could say I loved my body.

Then I bought that damn scale. The anorexia demon in my brain rejoiced.

“Let’s just see,

What 125 looks like

Or 120? What if you could get under 120? “

I became anorexic as an eleven year old girl. I am now a 27 year old woman, and despite all of the work I have done to combat body dysmorphia, that eating disorder still lives inside of me.

So I am saying fuck you to this scale. Fuck you, anorexia demon. Get the hell out of here. I am more than a number. I don’t want to be terrified of gaining weight. I don’t want to be happy when my body is diminished or takes up less space. I don’t want to think about how I look. I don’t want to care about that stupid shit.

Here is what I am committed to caring about: my health. How my body actually feels. Who I am as a person. Becoming stronger. Being kind. Going on adventures, trying new things, dancing like an idiot because it is fun and it feels good.

A scale. It measures the amount of force—gravitational force— being exerted between the object being weighed and the planet earth. On another planet, or perhaps moon, with a different level of gravitational force, my weight would be wholly different than what it is here. On the moon I would be a mere 21 pounds. On Venus 117. On Jupiter I would be a hefty 326 pounds.

Weight. I’m done giving a shit about what I weigh. I don’t want my life to be defined by what I cut out, but instead by the positive things that I do: painting, writing, dancing, tennis. Eating things that make me feel good. Doing things that make me feel good.

[gnomecentric]

A beautiful silence on a cool day. The feeling of the sun on my face, the pleasant warmth that it brings. You can see the dust motes dancing in the air, illuminated by the sun rays. It is for moments like these that I am happy to still be alive. I could have chosen otherwise. My maternal grandmother swallowed a handful of pills when my mother was five. A high school friend of mine did the same and died at sixteen. My cousin shot herself at twenty-one. I have known the kind of pain that brought them to that point and feel lucky to have not tipped over that edge myself. Last night it rained, but this morning it was sunny and cool again. The sky is full of clouds made glorious after a rainstorm and I am filled with a sense of gratitude at the sight of them. I am happy to see these clouds today. I am happy to still be here.

[gnomecentric]

Evolution. Uncomfortable self portraits. . . . . . . . . #selfportrait #painting #art #acrylicpainting

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Paint-draw-paint-draw. . . . . . . . #art #painting #portrait #drawing #studiotime

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Funny little deets. . . . . . . #art #drawing #selfportrait #draweverydamnday

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Unexpected turns. Ooopppsss, guess that drawing layer was done in a watercolor pencil. . . . . . . . #art #drawing #painting #portrait #happyaccident #ohbobrosswhereartthou

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Party painting whoooooooo. Carnival abstraction. . . . . . . . #art #painting #artteacher #artlesson #abstraction

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Little bits of progress. On deeeee easel. . . . . . . . #art #drawing #ontheeasel #soontobeapainting

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Progress. WIP. Self-portrait. . . . . . . . #art #painting #acrylicpainting #feminist #feministart #selfportrait

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Dino-bird-mermaid-sea-serpent-thing. Making strange combo creatures for fun painting projects @littleartistlab . . . . . . . . #art #illustration #artteacher #artlesson #artforkids #crazycreatures #artoc #tustin #tustinart #littleartistlab

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Drawing with love. Drawing a fellow survivor and just focusing on her: on her story, on her kindness, on her eyes, on the unknowable depth of her that I can only ever hope to hint at in a drawing. This feels good, it feels right. I see you, even as this world rages towards a dark future-our seeing each other is a light. . . . . . . #art #drawing #feminist #feministart #survivor #survivorart #stoprapeeducate #consent #consentculture #ibelievesurvivors #fuckbetsydevos

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Little kids make the coolest stuff. @ccartcollective Often after teaching I feel super inspired to paint. There's something about that raw, five-year-old creativity. . . . . . #art #artteacher #kidsart #kidsarethecoolest

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Stranger in the mirror. Strange drawings for strange times. . . . . . . . . #art #painting #drawing #selfportrait #whatwhatwhat

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Frizzzzzzz. . . . . . . . #art #painting #selfportrait #eeee

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Another sketchbook cover-ball point pen and acrylic inks. Whoooot whooot. . . . . . . #art #sketchbook #diy #acrylic #acrylicink