I founded Show Pony on Tumblr in 2013. The header read: “an opera singer who sometimes draws things on the way to places”, which is a good summary of my brain-flow. It was such a great outlet and catharsis for me — the effort of translating some of the very weird, trying, and sometimes absurd experiences of life as a forever-emerging soprano into single panel jokes and stick-figure conductors. When I started it, I still had that icky divorced feeling that I was supposed to have a public-facing, fat-loathing, portrait-collar-wearing opera singer version of myself, and a second, real self, who thinks and writes and makes fat art and wears lace bodysuits and short shorts and secretly posts cartoons on Tumblr. Fortunately, in no small part because I gave myself that semi-anonymous space to hone my voice and creatively think through my professional experiences, I’ve evolved way past that place — and I don’t know how I was every convinced that a sanitized version of myself would benefit my career.
The first iteration of Show Pony has now come to an end – Tumblr, which was once a gorgeous community for some of the most prolific and interesting consumers (and makers) of classical music — changed it’s guidelines for “community standards”, and so my sketches of museum statue nudes in Vienna, my (tasteless but perfectly executed, lol) cartoon jokes about skipping the hook-up with the tenor, and even my writing covering personal experience with sexual assault were all flagged as inappropriate and taken down. So, I decided to move.
Welcome to Show Pony 2.0. I’ll be posting cartoons from the archives as well as weekly prose, poetry, and brand new illustrations. It feels like the end of an era, and I was honestly quite sad to hit that delete button on Showpo.tumblr —but I have been wanting to have a space of my own for a while now where I can write at length and post any weird doodle that pops into my head. Thanks to those of you who are still here, reading & listening. Community makes this life 1000x better.