artwork – roz macLean

This month an illustration of mine is featured in Shameless‘ New Media Issue. an “independent Canadian voice for smart, strong, sassy young women and trans youth,” I wish this magazine was around when I was a teen (instead I got really weird ideas about how my eyebrows should look and developed an obsession with attaining Fetish perfume from YM.)

The article, Online Cooking Videos: Tasty But Faulty, by Chelsea Philipps-Carr explores the upsides and downsides of learning to cook online. In it Chelsea describes the white (as in Caucasian ) hands in Buzzfeed’s Instagram Tasty videos that speed through recipes that are often derived from non Western cultures.

I recently had the good fortune of visiting Nootka Elementary School for an author visit with art workshops to follow. I was also able to include an introduction to media literacy in the presentation, which was followed by some fantastic discussion with students! It was so fun to hang out with these kids, read The Body Book, and make artwork about their favourite things to do in their bodies.

I love this activity because it shifts the emphasis on how our bodies look to how it feels to be in them, from a perspective of judgment to one of gratitude. It also culminates in a beautiful gallery of diverse bodies to decorate the class with!

Below I included some photos of the artwork in process. These images contain so much joy and imagination. I love helping kids to visualize their bodies in a positive way.