#0019: What’s Been Goin’ On, March 2025

Hey y’all! Sorry this is a bit late; I’ve been fairly swamped as of the past month, and haven’t gotten to sit down and write much.

However, I did still want to try to make a habit of putting up the Monthly Update, where I take the time to sit and talk with y’all a bit about photos I’ve taken, pictures I’ve drawn, and things I’ve been up to this past month.

And, while I have been a bit too busy to write, the things I have been busy with have been fairly fruitful and rewarding, and of the things I can talk about at this time there’s a lot of interesting things to talk about.

So, without further ado, here’s the March edition of….

Things I’ve Been Up To

Photos I’ve Taken

• I was up in Chicago at the end of this past month, getting rained on somethin’ fierce during Trans Up Front’s Trans Day Of Visibility rally. You can read all about it over on Assigned, and you can see my favorite photo from the day over on the right there.

I haven’t been able to take too much else in the way of photos this month, sadly… the leaves and buds and flowers have been taking their sweet time blooming, the baby ducklings haven’t been born just yet, and I’ve been glued down to my studio chair most of the month.

Hopefully that’ll change, flowers will bloom, and I’ll have more time and more pretty pictures for you all come next check-in, but in the meantime, here’s more info on what I’ve been up to while I’ve been stuck sippin’ coffee on my draftsman’s stool.

Pictures I’ve Drawn

• I’ve been primarily focusing on commission work, blasting out a few different pieces for clients. It’s been a while since I’ve had client commissions open for public access–normally I tend to stick explicitly to professional work and publication-ready pieces–but I’ve been having a blast drawing folks’ requests and crafting original pen-and-ink works they can put on their wall.

• Clippings is back once again, but we’ve got a bit of a different formula going forward. Rather than focusing on trans folk and trans rights in the news, I’ll be zeroing in on queer history, showcasing trans folk who made an impact on our lives and talking about how we got to where we are now. I’ve decided to call these new columns “Clippings Scrapbooks”, to separate them from the normal Clippings columns.
  
  This past month, we dove into the history of the US passport system, and how a gender marker ended up on there in the first place. You can also check out February’s installment here, if you happened to miss it.

What’s Up Next

Commissions (Formally) Re-Open May 15th

You read it here first! After my first set of five slots got booked before I even formally opened them, I’m giving myself a bit of a window to get things in order before I open them back up again.

With that stated, I’ll be formally re-opening for single-piece commissions again May 15th. If you know me well enough to have my direct line (i.e., Discord, Signal, or my work phone), you’re welcome to slide in now , and if you don’t but you have a larger project you think I’d be interested in that might take up more time than a single piece, feel free to email me.

I make no promises as to availability and will be committing to nothing publicly until the 15th. However, given how quickly they filled up last time…have your ideas ready, and once the 15th hits, feel free to reach out so we can make something happen together!

Original Art On The BLACKWORK Store!

The BLACKWORK store is back open! I’ve put a whole bunch of older zines, as well as the full run of Tabula Rosetta, up for anyone to grab and enjoy. I’ll only be putting these out in limited quantities at this moment–ten copies of each issue of Tabula Rosetta, five copies of each zine. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

I’m also breaking with my usual policy of “I do not sell my originals, only donate them to museums” to offer a limited number of original art pages on the site, starting this Friday. Although I would love to keep donating my originals to museums, thanks to the current administration’s insistence upon defunding literally every institution that even resembles a cultural one (and thanks to me currently being broke as a joke and needing money to move to my next digs), I’m not sure that’s the most stable option.

My pain is your gain, however, and at the end of this week I’ll have five pieces of original art, including pieces from Clippings, The Grizzly: Private Eye, and my recent adaptation of Thirteen At Table up on blackwork.org. I have no idea if they’ll go quickly or slowly, but I’d strongly prefer they go quickly so I have cash to move, and once I have cash to move I might change my mind and take the remaining pieces down anyways. So, if you’d like a rare opportunity to own a piece of sequential art from yours truly, check in Friday morning and snag what you can.

…and yeah, we’re affected by the tariffs too

Annoyingly, thanks to the ahem current administration (again) and their trade policies, I’m having to wait on shipping to anywhere that isn’t the US for now. I don’t think it’s fair to double the price of your purchase to account for shipping and tariffs, but like most businesses that’s what I’m staring down the barrel of at the moment, and unlike most businesses I’m selling challenging queer literature that I’m genuinely worried Customs might fuck with due to the nature of my work.

All tyrants–be them the smallest of schoolyard bullies or the smallest of schoolyard bullies who somehow stumbled and grifted their way into the Presidency–fall in time, and hopefully this will all pass sooner rather than later and I’ll still be around to see it when it does. Until then, them’s the breaks.

With that stated, if you live outside of the US and want to locally distribute my work in your country, email me. I’m very much open to distribution deals at this time, and honestly if you can prove to me that you have a printer and a plan to get these into the world there’s solid odds I might just send you the print files and tell you to have fun.

New Cinderella Suicide Demo

Finally, the ghost that was once Ophelia Drowning is still chugging along. I’ve nearly completed programming on the first track for a full demo, and after that I’m going to put together two more originals and quite possibly a cover and drop it.

I don’t want to make any promises as to when it’ll come out (or which cover will be on the record, although I do have at least one particular track that is most likely going to win out), but if you’d like to hear an early version of one of the tracks, you can check it out here.

And that’s about the long and short of what I’ve been up to this past month…er, month and fifteen days.

Hopefully I’ll be caught up with everything sooner rather than later and I can release the April recap in the first week of May instead of the start of the third. Regardless, until then, I hope you all have lovely days and enchanting nights.

You’re amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Have a good one.

–piper <3