thai food in texas

November 6th, 2005

elisa durrette, annette lawrence, me, and sharon bridgforth
Originally uploaded by Alison Bechdel.

On Thursday and Friday I was back in Texas for a seminar at the University of North Texas called “Developing Multicultural Leaders: Women who are Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and their Allies.” For some reason, the words “leadership” and “multicultural” make my mind go blank, but I had a good time and met lots of nice people.

Thursday evening I did a slide show about my cartoons, and the poet/performance artist Sharon Bridgforth read from her work. She was rather awe-inspiring. I had read some of her stuff before, but in performance it took on a whole other dimension. There was an interesting conversation with the audience afterward, about how Sharon and I both work with words, but in Sharon’s case there’s the additional medium of sound, and in my case, of visuals. This was facilitated by UNT art professor Annette Lawrence.

I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder about fine art, which is too complicated to go into here, but I think meeting Annette may have finally disabused me of this attitude. She talked about her art in an unpretentious, matter-of-fact, yet passionate way that was riveting. She does monumental installations–with string!

After the presentation, I went out for Thai food with Sharon, Annette, and their writer/business consultant/young-genius friend Elisa Durrette. God, that was fun. A person could get attached to this crazy outside-the-basement lifestyle.