Leaping Goddess is Black Uterus's best friend. Where is she now?
Remember, way back when, in 2005 I think it was, Leaping Goddess was
horrified to learn that somebody was trying to shut her down! Yep!
That's right! Close her down. "Cease and desist" as it was said, in a
2005 letter sent to Leaping Goddess by one Janna L. Sylvest,
"A LAW CORPORATION", calling herself
"the in-house legal counsel for Womyns'Ware Inc."
in Vancouver, BC, Canada. You are, the letter
writer alleged, "confusingly similar" to another apparent "goddess".
Sylvest even went so far as to allege Leaping Goddess was "imitating" something which was the exclusive property of "Womyn's Ware". Leaping Goddess looked in the mirror (again), for she does like to
admire her great graphic beauty, and found no resemblance there to the
loosely-defined, more graphically-embryonic form of the other "goddess". Leaping Goddess doesn't "imitate"! She's an original, through and through. Here's some "news" about Leaping Goddess's struggle for survival, from an East Vancouver newspaper:
...the list of "unacceptable uses" to which The Courier refers above are such things as Leaping Goddess appearing on a t-shirt, a coffee mug or a fridge magnet, and many other "novelty" items. But what
really got to Leaping Goddess was the gall of Sylvest's demand that her (Leaping Goddess's)
beautiful picture be removed from the personal art porfolio website of
her creator, artist and illustrator Dorrie Ratzlaff, of which Leaping
Goddess is the artist's ORIGINAL work of graphic design (here look at
Dorrie's online portfolio under the heading "Design" and you will see Leaping
Goddess there: http://www.dorrieratzlaff.com/portfolio.html)!
Oh, you see, Leaping Goddess was not a person of great financial means at that time (nor is she now!) so she was somewhat taken aback that a seemingly "woman friendly" entity would put her in a position of having to dip into her meagre "woman" pension in order to defend her "right to exist". Nevertheless, Leaping Goddess persevered, hired herself a lawyer, and proved the Sylvest person wrong, when it was demonstrated that ideas can't be copyrighted (copywritten?). Ha! Even later it was discovered in a related correspondence that the Womyn's Ware "goddess" had actually just been using the vulnerability of Leaping Goddess to establish a proof of having defended her (WW's) pictorial turf. "Woman Friendly" indeed!
No, Leaping Goddess was not to be suppressed so easily. One thing she has gotten herself up to in the meantime, is to have herself tattooed on the right shoulder of artist Dorrie Ratzlaff. Here's a picture:
This lovely tattoo was created collaboratively with the excellent tattoo artist Monique of Sooke Ink on Vancouver Island
Leaping Goddess continues to put herself out there on t-shirts, coffee cups, stash boxes and other trinkets and gewgaws, here's some more links to pretty things, joining with "East Van Lips" under the rubric of "Dorrie's Far Out Artistic T-shirts":
...and, since the other "goddess" said "no images on fridge magnets", here's Leaping Goddess's selection of design variations for fridge magnets:
Oh, yes...you CAN get a Leaping Goddess on a fridge magnet, even still!
and, of course, the ever artistic "keepsake box", a really classy Christmas gift!
So, you will be pleased and relieved to hear that Leaping Goddess is alive and well, living for the time being on Galiano Island, planning trips to New York City, and has traversed the hypotenuse of Canada from Vancouver Island to Baffin Island!
