Painting & Illustration

Illustrations by Arlo Blackthorn under the moniker "ZF"

[Blood & Honey]

This body of large format gouache and watercolor illustrations take on a particular conversation about body and identity. Blood and Honey explore my relationship to my body, physical and mental disability, queerness and sexuality, and how they all tie into a sense of attempting to escape the feeling of “not belonging”. With the use of malachite, blood, honey, and sticky fruit of the gods I explore the feeling of alienation. Divining a queer soul that lusts guilty through the feelings of lacking ‘usefulness’ as a body and how best one can try to defy that notion. Through the use of gold and strong symbolic imagery I try to elevate these concepts to a state of holiness. I will belong, I will love, I will continue to flourish through blood and honey, I will not apologies for my own power as a vessel of life.

"Loving You Was Like Pulling Teeth" Ink, Silver, Marker, Pencil on Paper, 30"x24", 2016

Fibers

Exoskeleton: You Cannot Return to the Dirt

“Exoskeleton”explores through the medium of textile art the complexity of holding nostalgia for a time that holds much pain; to lay bare the feeling of growing up queer and disabled, in a body that has never been yours. Like freshly shed skin, I expose the complexities of false memories and the never ending need to change, to escape. I mix textile collage of fabrics from clothing owned by family members, owned by me, things I can never put on my body again because of the weight of the thing I experienced seeped in that cloth. I combine this with bead work and embroidery to outline the cocoon of memories, such as lovingly stitching my childhood room’s wall paper, or hand beading the emotions of memories. I meld my mind and body, the feel of a cicada nymph's too tight exoskeleton that must be shed to move on. I try to express the feelings of crawling from the dirt that you knew as home to grow and change into something new, something you must be. A struggling attempt to reclaim my mind and body as my own, to break from my past, to be new like a fresh cicada in the morning dew. Through a colorful explosion I share the notion that pain is not always best expressed by darkness, but rather with the bright color of a child's memory.

Title - "Struck by Lighting"

Medium - Glass Beads and Muslin on Reclaimed Silk Sleep Shirt

Size - Approximately 2’x2" - US Women's Small

Year - 2023

Title - "Nymph"

Medium - Glass Beads and Muslin on Reclaimed Rayon Shirt

Size - Approximately 2’6”x2’6” - US Women's Small

Year - 2024

Title - "Evil Eye for an Evil Eye"

Medium - Vintage glass beads, embroidery floss, pva glue, polyester thread on cotton blend fabric.

Size - Varied (between 3"x3" and 6"x10" approximately)

Year - 2024

Other Fibers

"Let me Peacock For You" mixed media textile garment, 2024 | Exhibited in "Heavenly Bodies, Divine Minds", Queer Arts Featured, San Francisco, CA, 2024

“The Weight of Sentimental Greed” Mixed media textile garment, 2023 | Exhibited in "Kaleidoscope", The Academy SF, San Francisco, CA, 2023 | "Exoskeleton: You Cannot Return to the Dirt", ATA Window Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2024

“Night Light,” Embroidery Floss and Glass Beads on Hand Dyed Muslin, 22” x 17”, 2023-2024 | Featured in Exoskeleton: You Cannot Return to the Dirt, ATA Window Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2024