Mixed Breed 7 - a mixed media analog collage

Mixed Breed 7
© Natalie Schorr 2023

This is the seventh piece in my Mixed Breed series. I enjoy doing these with all the different parts, because we all are just a mixture of backgrounds, and that’s cool.

The small private university where I work is all about diversity and wokeness, to the point where I’m always walking on eggshells for fear of using the wrong pronoun and being ostracized for it. I’m trying to avoid pronouns altogether now.

My coworkers complain that no one understands all their identities. I get that, but it is a bit of a mine field. I try hard to respect all the ways they show up. They think they’re perfectly respectful, but at the same time they all seem to think that since I’m a Boomer that I must surely have been at Woodstock.

I was 8 when Woodstock happened. And we couldn’t ALL have been there.

I don’t get my panties in a wad over the error. My identity just wishes these fellow persons would not get the undergarments that these fellow persons may or may not wear in a condensed form when my identity misuses zir or perself.

Goodness knows I’m trying.

Mixed Breed 6 - Moving in a New Direction

I feel like it’s time to push this series a little further beyond just racial and gender identities, which is where we get Mixed Breed 6 with its wet dog head.

That’s one of the valuable things - for me at least - about working through a series. It allows me to start with an idea and push it to see where it will go.

The figure is less human in this one, and the accompanying animal form is partially made from a marshmallow Peep chick. This piece also features several linocut prints like the previous mixed breed.

Let’s break down the parts. The head started with a linocut of Frida Kahlo’s head, over which I put a photo of a wet dog’s head from a book that is all photos of wet dogs. I can’t quite imagine pitching that to a publisher, but OK.

The sunglasses came from a hip hop magazine, and the slacks along with the eye and mouth of the pet are from an early 1970s Playboy. The only time I’ve ever used a Xerox in a collage is here with the marshmallow Peep. There is typography from many sources along with colored pencil and acrylic dots.

And yellow. A challenging color bridge between the scary reds and the calming greens. Go figure.

Mixed Breed 5 - Collage in Black and White

Mixed Breed 5
© Natalie Schorr 2023

Following the discomfort of my previous Mixed Breed piece, I decided to step back a bit and work in some very minimal colors.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. It just sort of happened that way but I decided not to add anything bright.

I used to draw 12 hours a day, 6 days a week when I was working in motion pictures and television. Granted, it was drafting, but that’s back when we still did everything with pencils on paper. A very different time. But I still connect on an emotional level with the feeling of black and white with the occasional coffee ring. This piece evokes that time for me.

Also, this piece uses a lot of linocut elements, much more than I have used in a single piece for awhile. There’s a level of comfort in that, too.

Mixed Breed 4 - Uncomfortable Colors

For whatever reason, this piece is out of my comfort zone. I love the circles and dots, but all the bright colors kind of make me uneasy.

Mixed Breed 4
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I am interested in why I create pieces that I am ultimately uneasy with. Is it that the piece didn’t turn out as planned? That can’t be it since I’m not much of a planner. I have a vague idea where I’m going, but not exactly a plan and I more often than not I end up somewhere else in the process.

Since I love circles and dots, it would seem like I’d love this one, but no. I think it has to do with the colors.

I freely admit to being drawn to blues and greens; that’s my comfort zone. Reds and oranges are OK in small amounts, but I have trouble being in a red room for very long as it makes me really uneasy.

This piece has lots of reds and oranges, so much so that I ended up toning down the aura with a variety of purples, which made me feel somewhat less uncomfortable. I think it’s good to venture out from my comfort zone and explore, as it allows me to grow in certain ways. I’ll try not to run back to the safety of blues and greens too quickly.

Mixed Breed 3 - Multiple Identities

Mixed Breed 3
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I’m kind of fond of this piece, maybe because it feels like all the different identities come together in a really cohesive way even as the body seems to be a tumbling cascade of blocks and flowers.

The head, blocks, flowers, and one of the hands is from a library of linocuts I have made over the years that I use again and again. It makes the pieces feel related even though each part is an individual print and inherently unique.

Sort of like all of us.

Her aura is blue. I don’t consciously see auras, but I do use them in a great deal of my work so the possibility exists that I’m aware of them on an unconscious level. They seem to be expanding in my recent work, whereas they were very slight and color shifting in my earlier pieces, so maybe there’s something there.

Or not. Hard to say.

In any case, she seems confident and at peace with her many identities, as we all should be.

Mixed Breed 2 - a Taste of Old Cuba

Mixed Breed 2
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I can’t quite explain ( what a surprise) why this piece feels like old Cuba to me. Vaguely romantic, shabby, spicy, and chic all come together for me. You may have another idea.

I’m good with that.

I’ve never been to Cuba, nor have I done a very comprehensive dive into Cuban food, but what I’ve seen and tasted has been wonderful and complex, a blending of Spanish, African, and Caribbean flavors cooked long and slow.

That’s kind of what I wanted here. Exotic, spicy, and unhurried, both woman and dog. A tangy mixture of identities.

Mixed Breed - a New Series

Mixed Breed 1
© Natalie Schorr 2022

Like most artists, I have a day job. I started working last August at a nearby university, and it’s been an eye opening experience. To say that higher ed has changed since I finished my MFA in 1986 would be an understatement at best.

While it was always the case for me, as a theatre major, to be around people with different identities, now we have to take classes and seminars and lunch-and-learns about how to recognize, celebrate, address, and pronoun everybody. Seems like if we were just respectful and embraced each other’s differences that would be good, but now it seems no matter what anyone does, they can be called out for offending someone somehow.

Some days it’s exhausting.

But I do like the concept that we all have multiple identities, and that no one (except maybe my mother) fits exactly into a neatly labeled box. It kind of relieves me of a nagging sense of failure for not fitting a particularly prescribed list of socially acceptable attributes, which change over time and experience anyway.

So this series, Mixed Breeds, isn’t about dogs. It’s about people, and how we each show up in the world in all out identities. It’s a concept that far easier for me than when to use which pronouns.