1st Annual LGBTQIA+ Virtual Exhibition

September 12- October 4, 2020

Juried by Chuck & George

Paragon Salon

Paragon Salon Exhibiting Artists:

An Lusk / Chloe Scout Nix / Brooke Chaney / Gem You / Matthew Weimer / Bernardo Vallarino / Cher Musico / Jessi Jones / Remmie Johnson / Krista Chalkley

Jurors’ Statement: In this anxious time full of fear, hateful repression, exclusion, derision, malicious incompetence and death, it is refreshing and necessary to present a response. These young artists are boldly making statements of inclusion, acceptance and love in fierce opposition to trends of oppression. We are so honored to be the inaugural jurors of the 500X LGBTQIA+ Show. It is so very crucial to remember that the human spirit is one of love and freedom, and we are strong together. We have included in the Grand Salon a representation of this exciting spirit of diversity, and as difficult as it was in the Paragon Salon a condensed collection to speak for the mass. We have chosen Andrew Lusk to receive the prize and exhibition for the elegance and poetic beauty of his work that expresses why we would bother to live. The tide of acceptance comes in and out, changing the arrangement of the sand, but the beach remains.
-Chuck & George

To purchase an artwork, please email the500xgallery@gmail.com.

An Lusk (Solo Show Award + Honorarium)

An Lusk’s Artist Statement: With high intensity colour collages I often include eyes hiding behind flora and fauna, figures without color, abstract symbols, and blocks of color, to make spaces where viewers can consider relationships between the individual and loneliness, community and belonging, art and nature.

Seeking to normalize the male figure, another major theme within my work include the male gaze on the male figure. The male figure is often surrounded by vibrant colours evoking homoerotic sensuality.

Instagram: @anlusk

Chloe Scout Nix

Chloe Scout Nix’s Artist Statement: I am thinking about the body. I am thinking about the gaze of my subjects. I am thinking about the uncomfortable. I am thinking about the cowboy. I am mixing my love for the body and portraiture with my new ideas surrounding western wear and cowboys. boyCow is a series of photographs I created, and continue to create, that are inspired by my past and present relationship with cowboy culture. I grew up immersed in cowboy culture for most of my life living in Scurry TX on a horse ranch in the middle of nowhere. For many reasons my family and I left that lifestyle, and I am just now coming back and exploring it further. My photographs capture my new vision for the cowboy. The boyCow. I am making all the clothing for my shoot, altering toy and real props, and printing the masks that cover my models faces.

Brooke Chaney

Brooke Chaney’s Artist Statement: The following group of work is inspired by the physical and conceptual juxtaposition of COVID-19 and the BLM/civil rights movement of 2020.

Using the current political and social environment as a catalyst for the work, these sculptures represent the experiences and perceptions of a black female artist discovering and defending her blackness. Through the use of popular ready made materials, the sculptures are intended to arouse feelings of familiarity, humility, and empathy.

This series deals primarily with the topic of black sacrifice for white comfort and advancement. In doing that it also raises questions of superiority, race, relationships, and mental health.

Instagram: @madexmom

Website: www.madexmom.com

Gem You

Gem You’s Artist Statement: My work stems from trauma, human behavior, and relationships. Inspiration derives from personal experiences and taking from a variety of sources whether it's artists, pop-culture, music, etc. I try to be as raw as possible on the surface and allowing open conversation for deeper meaning. Allowing myself to be vulnerable helps me better understand myself and others.

Instagram: @thegemyou

Matthew Weimer

Matthew Weimer’s Artist Statement: As an artist who is part of the LGBTQ community, I want people to feel any aspect of their human emotions when they see my paintings. I want them to wonder what exactly the work is and how the figure’s interactions with their environment would feel emotionally, without giving them everything. By abstracting what I see or imagine, distorting and simplifying the mass and space of the subject in which it exists, and pushing the bounds of color, I twist reality to what I want it to be. I want the viewer to experience my paintings as they are in their entirety and hit them in the head, heart, and/or gut.  I use sexual tension and emotionally charged objects and situations to tell the viewer something and make them think. My recent work consists mainly of Pink Boys with the occasional other color Boys mixed in and sometimes tying it into some art historical references. I have grown to think of pink invoking sensuality of something forbidden in my work. In the Queer Homoeroticism world that they exist in, but they are proud to be that way. On the other hand, it is still a mystery to me.
In my work,  I like for there to be weirdness and humor added to them. The humor part mainly involves adding cigarettes and having things smoking when they wouldn’t be smoking something in the real world, whether it be a foot or some creature from my head. If I choose to include if I feel the piece needs it. The balance of weirdness and humor is delicate. It is needed to balance out the sexual tension in my paintings and separate them from the stereotypical gay art that originated with the work of Tom Finland and with the creation of Physique Pictorial in 1951. That way they are pushed to the Queer side of the Gay art spectrum. Queer art can still display a sexual situation, it is just how it is done. When I paint I don’t necessarily have a plan of what is going to happen, I just start doing it and figure it out along the way. It allows me to be relaxed in my studio and not just focus on one thing. As an artist like to make work when I want to make it and how much I want to make, because why limit yourself. No artist wants to be ordered by an  Isabella d'Este. We don’t live forever so make the things you make the way you want to. In the end, allow yourself to have an open mind, listen, and don’t create art In a box.

Instagram: @matthew.weimer.art

Bernardo Vallarino

Bernardo Vallarino’s Artist Statement: In my work, I explore themes of human suffering, violence, abuse of power, politics, control, and hypocrisy.  These topics are all part of a larger social commentary regarding the disposable way human life is treated. Around the world, individuals are seen and treated as disposable, expendable or undesirable especially in times of social unrest.   I describe this disregard for human lives by overlaying concepts regarding the perceived worth of “the others" with metaphors related to vermin; a common analogy used throughout history to strip others of their humanity.  In addition to this metaphorical association, insects and entomology also inspire elements of anonymity, plurality, scale, presentation, and identification.  With the somber content of my work, I intend to pay tribute to the victims, bring awareness to their suffering and the issues affecting them.  

Cher Musico

Cher Musico, Code Switching, Video, 2019, TBD

Cher Musico’s Artist Statement: Cher Musico (she/her/they) is a queer Filipinx-American interdisciplinary artist based in the DFW metroplex. Diagnosed with autism in their mid-30s, their creative practice has helped supplement their communication and in how they interpret and adapt within neuro-diversity. They’re influenced thru labor as a process, facets surrounding their everyday encounters, their Filipinx-American identity, experience, and memory, and also within their own experiences and observations within drag and LGBTQ culture, often seeking to find a sense of community and conversation in what they create. As an interdisciplinary artist with roots as a graphic designer and production artist, cross-examining materiality is an important part of her process. She is currently working as an MFA candidate at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX.

Instagram: @chermusicostudios

Website: www.chermusico.com

Jessi Jones

Jessi Jones, Be Easy Compilation, performance, 2019, 17:49

Jessi Jones’ Artist Statement: A foundation for Jones’ work is the documentation of performative actions that manifest pure expression of the body in a co-inhabited space. She extends a spiritual philosophy by allowing the space and all that occupies it, whether physical or on another supposed plane of existence, to constitute equal authority, to reclaim itself, and to offer support upon this collective, conscious existence. More inward, Jones’ personal circumstantial background of familial cycles and multi-generational trauma informs the vigorous and absurd postures she endures. Said poses not only give visual rendition to her path of healing, but they spotlight the animalistic nature of the body - as well as the other-realmly forms of consciousness she may or may not occupy outside of her identity as a person. These gestures ultimately challenge various confines subjected unto humans - particularly women of color and people of color assigned female at birth - and contribute repressed elements of curiosity, odd behavior, and destruction in the space around her.

Website: https://jessijonesart.wixsite.com/jess

Remmie Johnson

Remmie Johnson’s Artist Statement: As a queer disabled artist, my work looks at the accessibility to queer communities within the lower-to working class suburbs, specifically the ones in North Texas that I have grown up in. My paintings seek to call to the potential for creativity, learning, and community in a landscape that is dominated by inert civil spaces meant to be used solely for business or travel. Those who don’t fit into these neighborhood models are left to wander these spaces without freedom of expression and without the means to travel to where their niche communities may lie elsewhere. My paintings explore how the internet, for many oppressed groups, can be somebody’s only means to find camaraderie and gain knowledge about the world pertaining to their own experiences. I make collages that remind me of some of the first photoshop work I was exposed to online and created as a child, that feature my own photos of where I live with inspiring people who I’ve found through the internet, most of which are explicitly queer, and those who are not still embody a kind of expression that is queer in nature. My hope is for people to be able to see themselves existing in and utilizing the environments they live in, contradicting a suburban landscape that separates and hides us from one another.

Krista Chalkley

Krista Chalkley’s Artist Statement: For each distinct interest, desire, relationship, and moment of our lives, there exists an avenue for a different reality. Personality is built upon a foundation of these combinations of predetermined and self-selected influences that make up a lifetime. Every person, every life, every experience of the world is vastly different; and yet we are able to reconcile, relate, and show compassion. Since childhood, I have been aware that my experience of the world was not universal. This resulted in my interest in the complexity of the individual­– one who is continuously evolving to maintain true authenticity and belonging. Through use of printmaking, textiles, and mixed media, I explore these infinite facets of identity and how it develops through experience, expression, and relation to others.  Influenced by the collage medium’s potential to present the multiplicity of truth and perspective within a single plane, my work reflects the complexity of people and of life. Layering fabrics like the layers in a CMYK print, I assemble colors on top of each other to intermix and create a full color image. The use of transparent media and my intentional, exposed evidence of process within the works are tributes to sincerity. The materials’ ephemeral qualities resemble the innate ambiguity and fragility that exists in humanness, and their tactility incites our own yearning for touch. Through my work, I honor individuality and depict a world that I wish to see– full of tender empathy and with its heart on its sleeve.

Instagram: @bonepyramid

Website: www.kristachalkley.com

THE GRAND SALON

The Grand Salon Exhibiting Artists:

Adair Stephens / Anna Galluzzi / Brooks Oliver / Danielle Ellis / Dorothy Yoakam / Dre Burciaga / Elicia Fraga / Ginger Cochran / Erica Kalish / Enrique Nevarez / Heather Levy-Dick / Hope Ly / Iva Kinnaird / Jenna Richards / James Behan / Joshua Moran / Kiara Daniels / Miguel Salgado / Max Marshall / Lane Banks / Natalie Kreidler / Oliver Freeston / Phillip Frye / Purujit Chatterjee / Richard D. Curtin / Romulo Martinez / Ron Geibel / Steven Hector Gonzalez / Seth Tarango / Stuart Hausmann / Victoria Brill / Xandr Arquin / Grace Otten

Adair Stephens

Adair Stephens’ Artist Statement: Since completing my MFA in 2012, I have mostly focused on painting and drawing, as well as translating those skills into thread painting on my sewing machine. I use a quilting technique known as free-motion stitching in order to create a highly textured patch-like surface. With my imagery, I reference a wide array of popular fictional stories and mythological archetypes in both direct and oblique ways. I am slowly building a loose narrative that brings together these various characters in an alternate reality called the Apocryphoria.

Instagram: @adairstephens

Website: https://www.adairstephens.com/

Anna Galluzzi

Anna Galluzzi’s Artist Statement: Doodling has been a long time practice of mine, and functions as a way to cope with my worsening anxiety. I find that my perception of reality is usually clouded by anxious thoughts and it is through producing hand-made work that I obtain mental clarity.
The non-objective shapes and patterns in the paintings are taken from the doodles I have been scribbling for years. Vivid colors are implemented in the work to create visual interest as well as to generate an overall bright mood. I use my anxiety as fuel to generate pieces that are a semblance to what I wish I felt like. I want to surround myself with bright, cheerful paintings to outweigh the sorrow and self-doubt I feel inside.

Instagram: @annagalluzzi

Website: www.agalluzziart.com

Brooks Oliver

Brooks Oliver’s Artist Statement: The ambition of my work is to reimagine and reinterpret the familiar functional vessel.  By isolating, altering, and exploiting the necessary components of a vessel, I attempt to provide new visions of utilitarian ceramic wares.

My work inherently blurs the boundaries between craft, design, industry, and technology as I am inspired by the charged grey areas between these binaries.  By marrying the production techniques of CAD software and rapid prototyping technologies with the creation techniques of the hand, a unique dialog can be formed between the digital and clay that ultimately influences both ways of making.

Instagram: @brooksoliver

Website: www.brooksboliver.com

Danielle Ellis

Danielle Ellis’ Artist Statement: Danielle Ellis is an Oak Cliff native always ready to share her love of the arts with everyone at a moment’s notice be it painting live or holding workshops. Her art education came from her parents, summer workshops at the South Dallas Cultural Center, attending Booker T. Washington High School of the Performing and Visual Arts and later The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Her mission since a young age has been to bring the Arts to the people. ‘No one should be or feel excluded from experiencing the Arts. I want everyone to have original pieces in their homes. It’s something very special in that experience. Everyone should feel that love.’ As a mother, art education at every age became her purpose not just for her special needs daughter, but for everyone. ‘Art is necessary. It’s what make us human. It’s what gives us culture, tradition and connection. Even if it’s just a toddler choosing stickers, I want them to feel that joy. I want them to feel that pride and ownership of creating something unique with their own two hands.’
Danielle Ellis has taught art to all ages in the DFW Metroplex, showing each one that they to can create something unique, shining their light in the world. She continues to use her art in activism. This commitment further goes into her initiative, Mermaids Bring Water, providing clean water to communities in need.

Instagram: @brassfly_studio

Dorothy Yoakam

Dorothy Yoakam’s Artist Statement: It is my belief that the most successful art poses a question rather than an answer. What does queer mean and what does it have to do with the figure? By definition queer means strange, odd, different. It was used as a slur and insult against the lgbtq+ community until it was reclaimed and used as an umbrella term for anyone in the community. Queer within the community also stands for the emerging labels that follow, ergo lgbtq+. With my younger sibling being trans and gay, I found myself greatly inspired by his physical form. A body he created and defined on his own terms. His expression made me question my own form. Although I am a cis-gender woman, I found that identifying myself with the word queer to be insufficient. I am more than a gender and sexuality. How I create and define my body is beyond that label. I have short hair, tattoos, underarm hair, fake nails. I have been designing a self-identity for years that is different, that is odd, that is strange. I began to look at my form and the undeniable bone structure I have. I started studying my eyes, the shape of my nose, two things that are defined as feminine. These are all features I share with my brothers, one trans one cis. I was struck with the beauty and gender defying markers we share together. One brother with an oval pelvic inlet, one brother with “pretty features and a delicate nose”. We share genetics that define our forms but differ due to personal chooses that define our identities. This series is meant to highlight those, question my thoughts and explore what it means to have an identity of your own. This body of work, these questions I have, they are for all audiences. What does it mean to be queer, different, strange and odd? And does it really matter?

Instagram: @_dottie_frank_visual_arts

Dre Burciaga

Dre Burciaga’s Artist Statement: I am Dre Burciaga, a 19-year-old gay Latina Artist born and raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. My journey with art began in 2013 during my first year of high school. Growing up in what most would consider an underprivileged minority-dominated area, I received a public education with little to no funding in the Arts. Having had a late start I continued taking every art-related opportunity sent my way, this lead me to pursue a Fine Arts education. Now as a senior at the University of North Texas in Denton, I am on track to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art Painting and Drawing in April of 2021. Furthering my education through the exploration of art is what has allowed me to fall into myself. I believe the pursuit of art is a continual conviction of expression. My primary subject matter is figurative oil paintings. As an artist, I strive to illuminate the imperfections of humanity as these imperfections are what I find beauty in. A recurring theme in my artwork is the celebration of culture. The expression, diversification, and the uniqueness of not only the Latin American culture but all cultures allows me to explore ways that represent and embody a persons cultural significance. The creative process inspires me to see beyond the conventional and societal bindings of thought and behavior, pushing these boundaries in my artwork. I see myself graduating with the knowledge and skill to be able to establish repertoire in the greater global art community. Success to me will be measured by the impact my art makes.

Instagram: @Beatsbydr.drea

Website: https://dreburciaga.com

Elicia Fraga

Elicia Fraga’s Artist Statement: Elicia Fraga was born in Irving, Texas in 1998. She has recently received a BFA in Studio Arts in the spring of 2020 with a focus in Photography. Elicia’s work focuses on identity, body image, and self-concept. She utilizes photography, video, and new media to explore these different concepts. Her work explores the concepts of identity, embodiment, and self-concept. She uses self-portraiture to express herself through her own gaze. Fraga sees self-portrait work as the opportunity to represent a different type of body within art. It is rare to see Latina, Queer, Fat bodies in art. She dissects herself in ways that are mundane, and complex. From sharing her bedroom and all within it, to expressing her connection to the natural world.

Instagram: @emogurlelicia

Website: https://www.eliciafraga.com/

Ginger Cochran

Ginger Cochran’s Artist Statement: Fresh. Romantic. Uplifting. Those are only three of the many ways my paintings have been described. It’s this that I strive to have my artwork embody…. a feeling or story that someone cherishes in their own part of this life. A dear relationship with a loved one, a dream, or even a memory. But how to do I describe my paintings? A creative journey. A small snap shot into my personal expedition. But through this, I want viewers to create their own stories and journeys. To ponder what each piece brings to them on a personal level. My fiber works; however, speak a different language. That of sustainability. Smarter living and art practices. Using second-hand or found materials can prove difficult for painting, so I began to experiment with found objects, vintage/second-hand fibers and the art of assemblage for my sculpture. Three words to describe my sculpture? Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. As I employ many sustainable living practices in my home, adopting a sustainable art practice, such as fiber sculpture, was very exciting and full-filling to me.

Erica Kalish

Erica Kalish’s Artist Statement: Since the beginning of my academic study of the figurative arts, I have been met with aggression from those who believe that the nude figure is pornographic or a pejorative subject. I understand that these feelings are due to cultural influences and familial upbringing, and that the meaning of these symbols change over time. In contrast, my experiences concerning the human body have been exceptionally positive.
In my youth, I studied the human body through the lens of a healthcare provider. Studying subjects such as human anatomy and its physiology, microbiology, pathology and eventually specializing in cardiology as an EKG technician (with several years of experience as a CNA), I fell in love with the study of our biology.
One vital epiphany that I had while working in the healthcare system is that regardless of who the patient is, I am there to care for them. That is- no matter the experiences, or status or wealth of the individual- when someone is confined to a bed in their worst moments, I will provide every person with the same compassion. This idea has become a part of my ethic as an artist and treatment of the figure visually.
I want for my audience to appreciate the figures and their eccentricities because they are humans expressing humanity. I want for my art to show the human body in a (dare I say primitive) way that is free from societal ideals. I have no patience for the audience who is unable to process the beauty that we all have and create as a result of being human.

Instagram: @ericakalish.art

Website: http://ericakalish.art

Enrique Nevarez

Enrique Nevarez’s Artist Statement: I use my own life experiences to start conversations about the female figure, whether direct and autobiographical or collaged through visual influences around me, narrative is built on my own contemplations on the roles of women in my circle and society at large.

Instagram: @enrique_zeraven

Heather Levy-Dick

Heather Levy~Dick’s Artist Statement: Van Gogh is attributed with saying Art is to console those broken by life. I agree and  add how it consoles the creator as well as the observer. I'm inspired by philosophy, nature, bright colors and things with wings. Also, I'm taller in France.

Hope Ly

Hope Ly’s Artist Statement: Thien-Huong “Hope” Ly (b. 1971) is a Vietnamese artist specializing in traditional Southeast Asian silk paintings, as well as oil paintings and sculptures. After 25 years she worked in a creative field overseas as a graphic designer and an art educator, Ly now resides in Dallas, Texas. Art-making allows her to build a bridge that connects others who don’t speak the same language. Her work focuses on her Southeast Asian identity, cultures, and society, including landscapes, women of Vietnam, freedom of expression.

Instagram: @hopely.artist

Iva Kinnaird

Iva Kinnaird’s Artist Statement: Bio from Tinder: Looking for dates or friends. I’m interested in contemporary art, gardening, house renovation, and horse-race politics. I like swimming, singing in my car, going to movies, v-ball, walking in cemeteries, sneaking onto construction sites, and driving around Texas to see art. I have a snarky/ dry sense of humor and I like similarity mean people. Love dogs, but don’t have one. I’m bi-romantic but on the demi/graysexual scale, so I’m not especially flirty or physical (at the beginning of relationships especially).

Instagram: @odd_dead_eggs

Jenna Richards

Jenna Richards’ Artist Statement: I string together the ramblings of my brain, self-discoveries and reflections. I am processing my own thoughts and feelings, starting with what’s on my mind. I create project-based assemblage, of physical objects and experience.

Instagram: @jennaleighrichards

Website: http://www.jennaleighrichards.com/

James Behan

James Behan’s Artist Statement: My current work focuses on the image of the male nude; the context of these nudes grounded in the men’s photo magazines such as “Men” from the 1980’s, 1990’s and early 2000’s. Pictorial antecedents include 19th century daguerreotype images of male friendships and mid 20th century male physique and wrestling magazines. Materials include marker, latex remnants, oil enamel, acrylic, pompoms, transparencies, shower curtains, spray paint, wood door fragments and staples. Titles are taken from Doris Day / Rock Hudson films and songs. My work exists to communicate and celebrate gay presence within a dominant culture that seeks to deny gay presence, such as the repressive “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy which existed from December 21, 1993 until September 20, 2011. This work represents my efforts to document the evolving understanding of gay men in western culture and the male nude in western art.

Instagram: @jbehan06

Website: http://www.behanworks.com/

Joshua Moran

Joshua Moran’s Artist Statement: Contemporary artist working in DFW, I focus on work revolving around the struggles of mental health and lately work how out pandemic seems to heighten the struggles.  

Instagram: @joshuamichaelmoran

Website: https://joshuamichaelmoran.wixsite.com/artpage

Kiara Daniels

Kiara Daniels’ Artist Statement: Relationships are important to everyone but they are especially important to queer people as friendships may be the closest they come to a family after they become their real selves. These relationships can be incredibly complex and my work reflects that. Using color, texture, and line I explore these ideas visually to give the audience a place to find solace and see themselves in, to know most importantly they are not alone. 

Instagram: @kiara.daniels.art

Miguel Salgado

Miguel Salgado’s Artist Statement: Beneath the complex arrangements of objects and their individual meanings, my still-life images highlight the gifts of life through elements of sustenance shared by nature. At the same time, these natural elements are paired with domestic household objects to reinforce ideas of humanity and its relationship with Earth, through the lens of reciprocity. Through my understanding of the Greek word Xenos and its ambiguous definitions–guest, stranger, foreigner– I consider the ideas of Xenia playing a role in my still-life photographs. Xenia (stemmed from the word Xenos), was the sacred rule of hospitality in ancient Greece and referred to the relationship between guest and host. A host provides nourishment and a healthy domain for the guest. In return, the guest reciprocates kindness by neither harming nor burdening the host. Ultimately, the rule of Xenia proposes an essential act of kindness towards one another. With this in mind, I believe the rule of Xenia applies to our relationship with ourselves and the environment. When one nourishes themselves with benevolence they pass along their goodwill to another being, gracefully. Extending this tone of reciprocity to ourselves (guests) and nature (host) is the basis of my work.

Instagram: @salgadeaux

Website: www.miguelasalgado.com

Max Marshall

Max Marshall’s Artist Statement: Our brains are wired to to recognize patterns. Through this mechanism we set up expectations and reaffirm our reality. My work is an observation of the conscious and subconscious ways in which these patterns manifest themselves in daily life, often through banal and seemingly absurd behaviors and occurrences. Intersecting themes ranging from the personal, the domestic and the coincidental to the societal, the public and and the designed are curated into physical  representations through sculpture, photography and installation. 

Instagram: @max_marshall_studio

Lane Banks

Lane Banks’ Artist Statement: My work is insistently abstract, mathematical, conceptual in origin and geometric in appearance.  It does not derive from perception, but is entirely constructed from numerical rhythms and proportions; it is concept made visible, a thought construction. The content of the work resides partly within the work itself and partly in the viewer’s apprehension of the mathematical structure that is made visible through geometry and not disguised by other subject matter. The industrial color palette is limited to black, various grays, white, and metallics, further distancing the work from observed colors in natural forms.  These hues enforce the inherent geometry and are less likely to reference imagery or subject matter outside the concerns of the work.  Silver, for example, due to its reflective properties, does not allow the eye to penetrate past its surface into spatial or illusionistic depth, but rather catches light and casts it back into the viewer’s space.  The hues lend themselves to multiple readings in the relational context of the work; completely separate works placed in close proximity can visually unite across space. Despite the fact that purely abstract art was invented nearly one hundred years ago, many viewers are still resistant to it, still wedded to the notion that art must derive from nature and must contain some vestige of appearance.  Even though many of the ideas embodied in my work are not new, they are still challenging to many who believe that art should serve only the eye and not the mind. The brushwork of the paintings is as flat and anonymous as possible, increasing the distance from the artist’s hand toward objectivity and universality. The work operates in the gulf between the direct experience of the work and the expectations established by the use of geometry.  Geometry is inherently presumed to be pure, absolute, and stable, always yielding a predictable outcome. These works show that the use of geometry can result in multiple, unique solutions incorporating variety in a single system.  The supposed certainty and absolute purity of geometry is ironically used to create ambiguity and shifting interpretations.  Geometry is used to indicate that the work is a conception and invention of the intellect, rather than a depiction of optical vision and the making of images of objects that can be seen in the physical world.  Geometry therefore removes the idea that the work of art is the subjective expression of the artist's feelings or emotions, and replaces that notion with the idea that the work of art is a rational product of a concept that objectively generates the work.

Website: www.lanebanksart@blogspot.com

Natalie Kreidler

Natalie Kreidler’s Artist Statement: I found a true love in oil paint because of the way I feel it is able to breathe life into whatever I am painting and see it almost as a type of 2D sculpting; where I get to make my worlds that much more tangible. I'm inspired by the ways others choose to move through the world and process much of my experience with life through the lense of how others deal with similar experiences. Since coming out and finding my home in the queer community, as well as becoming more deeply involved in social justice, I am also inspired by the incredible strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and the way people choose to all come together to bond and act as one, protecting and uplifting each other in ways more powerful and filling than any kind of love. Thinking about this kind of chosen love and the identities and empathy that bond us all and compell us to give our all for strangers, I try to use very abstracted forms for a type of all encompassing warmth I have never been able to find the words to describe; one you only truly understand once you've experienced it. As I try to unravel what subconsciously bonds us with others in this way, I am very interested in playing with beginning paintings by blindly sketching what feels warm to me before giving definite form to what I am doing, using the architecture of what I have lain down as the bones for the rest of the piece.  I feel as though my emotional self is constantly in a state of flow and I try to communicate that flow in what I create. I want there to be a sense of warmth as well as home, but of a home you don't quite recognize, one you don't have all the answers for. I feel held most often when I am with my community whether it be strangers or friends, and when I am painting and try to create different representations of being held within the chaos of the world we are up against. This tension of being held in chaos, at home in unpredictable places, and love in adversity inspires me to try to find a type of true beauty through use of a classical medium in methods that tangle traditional styles with the beautiful types of abstract that I feel most accurately make up my reality.

Instagram: @ugh_natalie

Oliver Freeston

Oliver Freeston’s Artist Statement: From classical ballet dancer to contemporary painter, I am currently focusing on portraiture using oils and acrylics on linen and canvas.  While traveling the world as a dancer, I became fascinated with people and the stories of how our paths crossed. The subjects I paint are often those whom I’ve met along my journey from England to Texas. With each portrait, my goal is to transform the canvas into a window peering into the life of the subject and to capture the emotion of that moment in time. Portraits lend an important insight to our history and my mission is to transport the viewer through time to share just a fragment of the subject’s experience in that instant.

Instagram: @oliverfreeston

Phillip Frye

Phillip Frye’s Artist Statement: Having been raised in a religious congregation, my intimate gouache paintings pace through the cyclical, inner dialogue of spiritual ceremonies. These processionary figures demonstrate a practiced decorum of spirituality while navigating the continuous doubt, death and regrowth of seeking acceptance and closure from God and His flock. Drawing inspiration from Charlotte Salomon and illuminated manuscripts, my works are surreal diaries of self-questioning and personal experiences. 

Instagram: @phillipedwardfrye

Purujit Chatterjee

Purujit Chatterjee’s Artist Statement: Mythology provides a lens through which to explore inexplicable cultural elements as contemporary extensions of timeless truths. These metaphorical characters ground my emotional experience as a gay artist in our present America, where the unprecedented is the new norm, in stories passed down for centuries. My oil paintings utilize older art styles in concert with queer models and our progressive experiences to connect modernity’s dream-like distortion and fragmentation to a former, viscerally understandable experience. In a contemporary society in which the experience of the unique is othered and silenced, my vision intends to voice cultural anxiety and extract meaning from this disorienting and surreal reality, offering solace in our current post-truth mythos.

Richard D. Curtin

Richard D. Curtin’s Artist Statement: Portraits challenge and extend conventional concepts. A portrait is usually considered to be an artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant in order to display the likeness, personality and are important to document the time and culture. I paint portraits of athletes, cowboys, actors, female impersonators, and heroes who have influenced and inspired me and with whom I hold in high regard. Having been mentored by leaders in a community that was ravaged by the AIDS pandemic, I learned about activism, “family,” compassion and most of all, how Art can heal our souls. To heal my broken heart in the 1990’s, I painted a series of portraits, “Men and Women on the Moon,” of people with HIV and AIDS.  Today, like Lucian Freud, I continue to paint the people who are close to me, that inspire me and demonstrate that same character, compassion and sprit toward our community and citizenship and I celebrate their uniqueness and personal beauty applying the influence of David Hockney’s color palette. A lot like Velasquez portraits told a story of wealth, costume, prominence, my portraits will communicate a story of what is happening today: drag queens have infiltrated our mainstream society.  Once only found in the gay bars, Drag Queens are now front and center in our lives.  My portraits communicate and will convey to a future audience a time in history where cowboys easily walk along side of drag queens and drag queens walk among the stars, but will also communicate those people have helped and inspired me to walk my own truth and my own journey towards art.  These people live in me and each brushstroke in which I have painted them with love and gratitude—always with A Reverent Heart.

Instagram: @ednajeandallas

Website: www.richarddcurtin.com

Romulo Martinez

Romulo Martinez’s Artist Statement: The artist’s mind is organic, reacts and works based on the constant experiences that build his being. The moments lived with their respective spaces and elements, generate feelings and moods that lead him to look for concepts, sparks that give rise to the momentum of creation with the desire to tell stories that sensitize those who hear and observe. My work and person, at this moment, are located in an instant of that tireless search of wanting to do something different and distinctive in terms of color representation to not repeat a story already told, instead, tell and exhibit a new story based on unconventional and unpublished techniques. In my artistic journey, I have been a faithful follower of color, which, with the impulse to deepen the potential of it, has led me in a fascinating way to study the iridescent effects that show and reflect the colors of the rainbow in natural and industrial elements present in our environment and societies, to represent them with the challenge and ingenuity that the proposals merit. With a personal photographic experiment in my workshop, this aesthetic investigation began, which, when witnessing through the contemplative observation of color radiation inside an aqueous body after the decomposition of light, germinated in me the interest in investigate the color through light and the materialization of the intangible phenomenon, leading me to communicate what has been observed through various techniques, tools and materials that evoke and reproduce those variables, such as colors with their shades and approximations from one color to another, the wateriness with the organicity, brightness and the volume in expansion, and the light with transparency in colorless spaces to potentiate its chromatic values, all expressed in abstract and figurative contexts, nourished by the different elements that make up the worldview of the physical, geographical and cultural spaces that I inhabit, in order to provide viewers with a sensory visual experience, an experience that awakens an aesthetic delight reflected individually and collectively through the contemplation of colors and volumes.

Ron Geibel

Ron Geibel’s Artist Statement: I address the complex landscape among intimacy, pleasure, and authority as it concerns the opaque relationship between public and private desires that constitute queer identity.

Instagram: @rongeibel

Website: www.rongeibel.com

Steven Hector Gonzalez

Steven Hector Gonzalez’s Artist Statement: My creative practice is an exploration of self primarily through image-making and performance, both of which contribute to holding space for personal reflection on queer experiences. In negotiating queerness through a Latinx lens, I often look critically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure found within culturally influential spaces such as film, online social media platforms, and pornography. My current focus is placed on defining how the ideal is reified through these varying forms of media and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to examining how the perceived ideal figure is represented in media, I also look at how the queer Latinx body is frequently depicted in contrast. Through my multidisciplinary practice which includes, collage works, print media, video, and performance, I broadly locate my layered identity in close-proximity to themes of longing, resistance, and desire. 

Instagram: @bad.trade

Website: www.stevenhgonzalez.net

Seth Tarango

Seth Tarango’s Artist Statement: I started college as a botany major and this educational background continued to subconsciously influence my process and brainstorming for the majority of my pieces. As an artist I enjoy exploring unorthodox media and materials. This has translated into me creating pieces with soil, homemade vegetable dyes and using textured concrete buildings to create drawings. I feel that the artist's process can imbue artwork with a certain depth and memory of experiences that welcomes the viewer to share and relate with both the artist and the work of art.

Instagram: @sethtarango

Stuart Hausmann

Stuart Hausmann’s Artist Statement: The essence of my work captures fleeting moments of everyday life. Utilizing representational imagery, I throw in hints of abstraction to manipulate viewers’ sense of reality, and to suggest dream-like states of consciousness. The people, places, and things that I encounter in my day-to-day life all factor in to the imagery that I choose to depict in my drawings and paintings.

Instagram: @stuhausmann

Website: www.stuarthausmann.com

Victoria Brill

Victoria Brill’s Artist Statement: By employing the human figure with traditional painting techniques and exploratory studies, my work sets out to investigate the complexity of relationships, the levels of self-awareness, and the ambiguity of existence.

From an early age, I have long sat and day-dreamed about the subjective nature of reality. Each question leading to a new set of curiosities. While battling not only our shared experiences, I have always been at odds with myself. Who am I? Why am I? What is what I’m experiencing? Do others feel this too? Through my work I have found a conduit for these endless lines of questioning. Creating introspective compositions, I look to find universal continuities, but more importantly ripples in our collective experience of the ‘real’. My paintings often reach sizes larger than life-size, pressing you to confront these ideas with your whole body.

I believe that through continuous explorations of our inner selves, exposing of misconceptions, and evolving our greater understandings of our shared consciousness, we can create a more empathic existence.

Xandr Arquin

Xandr Arquin’s Artist Statement: Xandr Arquin crafts images based on the erotic and subliminal symbols that define countercultures in order to normalize cultures that are often challenging to normative cultures. Through this exploration, surrealist qualities are captured in documentary style to root the viewer's reality in the images so that a familiarity is established. 

Instagram: @callmexandr

Grace Otten

Grace Otten’s Artist Statement: anything i create involves a committed process that is deeply reliant on sustained and authentic self reflection. i cogitate the impacts i have on the systems that run our reality. the micro levels of oppression are just as important as the macro and as someone who carries both privileged and marginalized identities, i must recognize and act upon areas of improvement for both myself and my community. being a non-binary dyke is such an important part of my identity, that is so radically beautiful and fulfilling for me, but i refuse to ignore the privileges i receive for being white under the systems of white supremacy.

the result of this contemplation is my artwork. i primarily use printmaking, drawing, and painting processes to produce both two dimensional and three dimensional pieces. i depict parts of my physical form to serve as the content while the context explores the introspection and extrospection of ourselves and society. the use of my mutilated body parts coupled with bold color palettes and a kitschy, humorous tone make the works approachable and draws the viewer in to take part in their own course of inquisition.

Instagram: @futchcowboyart

Website: www.futchcowboy.com