Tag Archives: self isolation art

More remote drawing, from Berlin performer livestreams!

self portrait during quarantine livestream by Suzanne Forbes March 26 2020

I was excited to draw the folx of Berlin’s legendary immersive hedonsim party, Bad Bruises!

First, there was some waiting. We are most of us new to Twitch, to streaming, to a lot of the tech involved. I made this drawing of me sitting and waiting for the stream to start, for the chat to load, for the connection to reset… My mom-in-law coined the term remote drawings for these, and it sometimes feels very remote. But sometimes very close.

And then suddenly, NANA SCHEWITZ!!!

Nana Schewitz livestreams for Bad Bruises remote drawn by Suzanne Forbes March 26 2020With the never-more-topical message, “Don’t fuck your Nana!”

I actually have no idea why that’s Nana’s tagline, but it’s a great, simple message.

Don’t fuck your Nana, or your Gramps, or your immuno-compromised roommate by bringing them germs.

To the left of Nana is her co-host, the wonderful multidisciplinary artist Anne Marina Fidler, known as Miss Poppycox!

Lovely Julietta la Doll of Bad Bruises had a ssaucy video.

Billie Rae livestreams for Bad Bruises remote drawn by Suzanne Forbes March 26 2020Billie Rae and Alex livestreamed all night with delicious interludes of videos of performers.

I had no idea balloons were a fetish thing, somehow. I can’t keep up with everything you know!

There is a thing called “Looning”, and there was also a performance of “Looning”!

 

Mica livestreams for Bad Bruises remote drawn by Suzanne Forbes March 26 2020I learned about it in the livestream chat. The chats during streams are sooo fun!!!

This very handsome fellow to the right is named Mica. I don’t know him but I liked his guitar and his cute doggo who totally doggobombed his stream.

I’ve been hearing from Patrons and fans that you enjoy these silly livestream drawings, so I’ll keep making them to help support Berlin performers!

You can help support the producers and performers of Bad Bruises, who like everyone in Berlin’s nightlife have lost all their income, here.

As always, I am able to document Queer, Kinky, Sex Work Berlin and release the art free to all because of the monthly financial support of my beloved Patreon Patrons.

You can help, for just a dollar/Euro a month.

Drawings from the Halfway House: Portraits from the earliest days of my sobriety.

Sue at Fellowship Mar 9 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesThe first thing I started drawing, when I arrived at Fellowship House in St. Paul, was the people around me.

This portrait of a woman named Sue in the living room of “The House” was drawn on March 9, 1989, so I had only been sober 41 days, and only at Fellowship a few days. Newly sober, I was still completely determined to be a comic artist, and wanted to get back to practicing. Sue reminded a lot of my teenage bestie GIlly.

Michael at Fellowship April 11 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesMy beloved friend Michael. Michael and I shared a connecting bathroom in the last month we were in the house, as “Senior Peers”.

He was a marvelous professional Broadway singer and dancer; we went to Alvin Ailey together. I loved to hear him bustling in the bathroom, making fabulous. He was so handsome, and posed so well! I think I drew those kinda ’80s design elements of the circles to reference the stage. His T-cell count was ok when I was last in touch with him, so I very much hope he made it to the next generation of treatments.

Scott at Fellowship June 27 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesThis is Scott.

I don’t think I slept with him, but it looks like I would have liked to?

A lot of the guys at the house wore those preppy Hamptons shoes. Dockers maybe?

George at Fellowship May 14 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesGeorge was such a preppy. May 14, 1989.

Most of these are photocopies; we had a copy machine in the office at the halfway house, so I could make copies and the subjects kept the originals.

Fell on the Beach at Fellowship May 7 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesFell was also a preppy, but like a Bad Preppy?

He was the renegade scion of some rich Florida family. I was like, if they didn’t want you to be fucked up, they should not have named you “Fell”. May 7, 1989.

Rebeckah.

A ferocious, feisty girl from Queens, drawn April 7, 1989. She was so young, not even twenty.

Tom at Fellowship May 28 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesTom, a New Yorker who I got along well with. May 28, 1989.

My heart aches, to think that most of these people are probably dead. The relapse rate was incredibly high.

Robert at Fellowship June 3 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesRobert, who was a lovely kind man. June 3, 1989.

Julia at Fellowship May 7 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesJulia, my friend and roommate, who I called “Jewel”.

She was lying on the hill behind the house (which was the old Schmidt brewery owners’ mansion) in the early Spring sun. People used to come lounge on the “Beach” as we called it and wait for me to draw them.

Me and Julia at Fellowship April 7 1989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesI also did a drawing of Julia and I in the room we shared.

Being a single mom and a working-class lady, she was orderly and had her shit together, despite the whole alcoholic thing. So she found my sloppiness and chaos astounding. However, this was a day when we’d both gotten packages from home (thank you Mom!!!) and so the mess was truly a remarkable thing to witness.

Ray at Fellowship March 191989 by Rachel Ketchum aka Suzanne ForbesThis is Ray.

He was a kind, haunted, deeply depressed man; he killed himself not too long after I made this drawing. This is a photocopy; I gave the original of the drawing to his family, who were glad to have a picture from the last year of his life.

A lot of people I knew in treatment killed themselves even in the first year.

A lot of them relapsed. A lot of them had HIV or AIDS. And hepatitis. The odds for recovery from chemical dependency are very, very poor. I know I’ve been incredibly lucky, and I’ve been living on borrowed time since I was 22. But I’d like to keep living, and working, anyway!

So I am on total self-isolation, with my husband, and expect to remain so indefinitely. For months, possibly. If I have to stay inside for a year to survive this, I will totally fucking do it.

I’ve been doing fine without alcohol and heroin since 1989, surely I can manage a year without outside!

Only one of these portraits had ever been photographed; no modern media record of the rest existed – if we had a fire or flood they would just be gone forever. And of course, I am the only person who knows when they were made and why, the story of the people in the pictures.

As a highly-vulnerable person with asthma and auto immune illness, it seems more important than ever to document my life’s work. Not morbid, just pragmatic!

I am so grateful to my Patrons on Patreon, whose monthly financial support makes it possible for me to take time to document my art archives.