 She is a writer, a painter, a book and video artist whose work is known for its stylistic rawness and emotional honesty And she was recently awarded the Tornazal Award from the Hedlund Center for the Arts. So please welcome Kate White It was kind of like the midlife crisis time of life but it wasn't the kind of midlife crisis where you've achieved your goals and You know, you've done the things you thought you wanted to do and then you wonder well, what's it all about? What does it all mean? It wasn't that kind of midlife crisis It was the kind of midlife crisis where I still hadn't really done anything Because I'd been busy wondering what does it all mean? So That's context for this and it's it's all graphic. It's all You know drawings with some text from my sketchbook. So what I'm gonna read to you actually is the about the authors There's one in each book. So I'm gonna read you ten about the authors Okay with some images Volume one always a little in love Image from the book. This will be our template for the rest of my presentation and about the author Kate White grew up in the woods Isolated from other children and culture She had mystical experiences with plants and animals Snipping scissors troubled her because she imagined that she was injuring microbes in the air White once accidentally stepped on a salamander that was under the plastic tarp covering the wood pile She discovered it with a white cartilage like material jutting out of the side of its head But it was still alive. She could tell by the light in its eye She put it in a box with some pedals off of a camellia bush the next day. It was gone She went through a phase where she was into Jesus after this and wrote this song Once I went to Bethlehem town and there I saw the new born king Then he went to heaven. I wish I could go with him There wasn't a chorus Volume two after that. It's only fun and winning about the author Kate White graduated from a small town high school in 1989 as valedictorian She gave a plagiarized speech about education and democracy Throughout her adolescence white sneaked out to snort crank with a 30 year old married redneck man They did it in the cab of his GMC Jimmy He smelled like sawdust and chainsaw smoke because he was a logger and he had still toe boots He said her speech was boring, which it was During the speech in the entire day and night of her graduation. She had a urinary tract infection UTI Which made her feel like she had to pee constantly which you would know if you've ever had one Some doctors called UTIs the honeymoon disease Because you get them from having frequent sexual intercourse White has never been married Volume three dream of the white bandit picture about the author Kate White went back to a coke dealers motel room alone with him one morning after being up all night smoking coke The madness of loony tunes played on the television set He fell asleep as he was trying to molest her which allowed for her get away She graduated college and read the dharma bums It was then that she decided to live in a van Shortly after white came to the end of a large rock of crystal meth She had been nursing for a year and moved to a cabin in the woods to try to write During the following eight odd years white would be troubled by many things There were some decent times with boyfriends who took care of her She also returned to chewing Copenhagen which facilitated her ability to focus White made little visible progress by societal standards Volume four the meat question About the author Kate White had a fantasy about a pair of light blue corduroy pants that would make her feel confident and complete and able to achieve her goals In 2002 she found these pants at Ross and moved to San Francisco She was unable to eat and maintain the fit of these pants, so she stopped eating Then she started eating again and ate a lot of fattening food starting with a ham and cheese croissant She never wore the pants again At this point white became very ill with unlived potential She prescribed herself Adderall and other things to try to get control of her time as it passed by her When she was a hundred and four pounds for two weeks. She said well, at least I have that Then she ate some food and that went away to volume 5 new sicknesses About the author White felt Kate White felt embarrassed ugly and fat around everyone until she met a very fat black and handsome man on the streets They enjoyed scrapping finding and selling scrap metal Staying up all night in small rooms with wall-to-wall carpeting and learning each other's language She lived with him until his drug use and her neediness became incompatible At this point she placed his mattress box spring and many inches screen TV into the front yard She was not careful in the way she handled these objects She also placed in the yard A wood box that said potatoes and onions made for storing those items at this point in time the police drove by slowly The man ran away and left his mattress and took the box because it had belonged to his mother who passed volume 6 fashion or confusion about the author Kate White went walking by herself into the mountains for six weeks to escape her unhealthy lifestyle a Fit young blonde French boy named Dorian crossed her path He had the complexion of the white person and a benetton ad He was going north she was going south They made out but did not have sex Dorian went to Oakland a month later to finish what he started White could not relate and made him sleep on a thermo rest in the other room The next day she asked him to go to a hostel The next day after that she moved the homeless drug addict She had tried to she had tried to escape from in the French boy Dorian said he didn't understand her volume 567 Slave to the image master of the real It is very contrasty Usually you can see that the hair is pink About the author minutes indicate whites 36 hour vision quest the panic set in To create order she made some goals for herself to run around her eight foot circle 50 times clockwise and 50 times counterclockwise and do 100 sit-ups She quickly failed to reach her goals At this point white felt dead inside for 30 hours more The great spirit seemed unavailable or missing so she cut herself with a stick to get a reaction nothing Then she said loudly just kill me or let me live nothing When the vision quest was over white wondered what all the drama was about volume 8 diagnosis About the author After being alone for two weeks Kate white fell in love with the mechanic who'd been smoking crack in a van in front Of her house for a very long time He rose to the occasion by having a spiritual transformation and losing all interest in Crack cocaine the most highly addictive form of the drug cocaine They went to the country for the weekend She asked him many times to listen to the dreams. She had the night before Particularly the one about seven dead babies He didn't pay attention because he didn't care about metaphors White felt extreme abandonment and invisibility Meanwhile the mechanic was connecting deeply with his soul in the presence of nature He tried to get her to try it volume 9 breakthrough painting About the author Kate white decided to be a painter and painted some pictures of cheerleaders At this time white experienced for the first time a person inside named white first named Kate She admired everything in life at this point such as trash at the dump grass and sky colors and mechanical things Then white tried to use painting to get ahead in the world and at this point she lost her touch She continued painting, but it wasn't the same But what else could she do at that point except try to get back to that one point? volume 10 life in general About the author for her 40th birthday white went into the woods to spend a few nights alone After it was too late to turn back. She saw that she forgot her sleeping bag The mylar emergency hypothermia blanket kept her alive and awake all through the night because they are very crinkly sounding She got an Oreo McFlurry on the way home to bury her feelings Whatever they were Even though half of the point of the camping trip was to stop eating for a minute and get some control over her destiny The other half of the point was to find herself before it was too late That's it Thank you, and please don't worry about me Things have gotten better