WHAT THE HELL IS LADYDRAWERS RACHEL

Okay so here is the explanation of a very large part of my current practice, aka WHAT THE HELL IS LADYDRAWERS RACHEL? Ladydrawers is a class offered at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago taught by Anne Elizabeth Moore who is awesome. The classes I took were two semesters ago and one at the off school campus at Ox-Bow over last summer. The first one focused on gathering data we looked at 12 of Comics top publishers and ran statistics on them covering their newest 30 titles as of April 2011. Things like how many books by women they were publishing, prices, and certain stats related to content. Like how many instances of violence, assault, and rape, or nudity both male and female, and how many female characters with NAMES and speaking parts there were in each comics. Needless to say our results were depressing. We decided to take these stats and make them in to postcards and send them out to all the major companies we reviewed as well as industry professionals and fellow comics artists.
This is my postcard that I sent out with a stat on female nudity in the comics we looked at. Also here's a comics beat article on us and the commments are truly a spectacular feat of ignorance and hate to behold. Read at your own risk.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/06/14/mystery-postcards-highlighting-comics-gender-issues-hit-mailboxes/

Then Anne took our stats and used them to make a series of comics with comic artists. Here are all of them in chronological order on TruthOut.org

http://www.truth-out.org/lady-drawers/1308413043
http://www.truth-out.org/comics-world-women-are-invisible-except-when-theyre-naked/1309876116
http://www.truth-out.org/no-great-women-comics-artists/1311001778
http://www.truth-out.org/why-have-there-been-no-great-woman-comics-artists-part-2/1312292657
http://www.truth-out.org/why-have-there-been-no-great-women-comics-artists/1313420504
http://www.truth-out.org/comics-publishers-who-are-they/1314629970
http://www.truth-out.org/graphic-evidence-inequality/1315924156
http://www.truth-out.org/manufacturer-suggested-retail-prices-suggest-comics-companies-think-womens-work-worth-less/131712851

All of the Ladydrawers work is available on Truth Out on the feed here.

http://www.truth-out.org/ladydrawers/1312312269

Another Ladydrawer and I named Abe did a Vocalo interview for ladydrawers found here,

http://www.truth-out.org/vocalo-feature-ladydrawers-feminist-comic-series-radio-segment/1312314155

The second class was at Ox Bow and we spent two weeks making comics about our stats in the woods culminating in the show "No Sleep Till Comics" and the published anthology "UnLadylike." But that wasn't the end of my work with Ladydrawers as Anne asked Nicole and I to look in to DC's New 52 and run Laydrawers stats on them which were very detailed and extensive. But some of which Anne used to make this comic,

http://www.truth-out.org/how-draw-comics-new-52-way-more-women-fridges/1323181363

Another thing Ladydrawers is excited to be holding the Adventure School for Ladies which will be going on this summer and will be using that class to make comics for C.A.K.E. in June.

http://adventureshoolforladies.wordpress.com/

And you can download "Unladylike" the graphic novel we made at Ox-Bow here. It's limited in actual print number but digitally you are more than welcome to download it.

http://www.scribd.com/Ladydrawers/d/85414532-Unladylike

This is just the bare bones of the project and what the group is trying to do, which is basically document and bring awareness to all the gender inequalities and job discrimination that goes on in comics whether it's accidental or on purpose. If you have any questions feel free to drop me a line or to email Anne.