STATEMENT OF WORK

My work samples are from my narrative archival collage series The Personals. The pieces are made from my collection of LGBTQ+ ephemera and materials sourced from archives such as Chicago’s Gerber/Hart, the largest LGBTQ+ archive in the Midwest. The collages use images from LGBTQ+ newspapers and magazines, as well as found photos and textures, to recontextualize marginalized material from 1966 to 1981, the period between the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco and the emergence of HIV/AIDS. The pieces are inspired by contemporaneous found personal ads, some of which are reproduced in the compositions. 

In the era in which the series takes place, LGBTQ+ identity was becoming more visible, despite discrimination and violence. In the works, I primarily obscure faces to make the subjects anonymous, like the original writers of the personal ads themselves. I explore the push-pull between fear and uncertainty, acceptance and pleasure. The works are intended to fit together as a loose narrative wherein the anonymous authors of the personals become imagined protagonists. I explore how the times they lived in, and the media they consumed, shaped their psyches and hopes for connection in the pre-digital era.

In the shapes and patterns, I’m inspired by vernacular quilts, as well as by Bauhaus and Constructivist design. The tradition of trompe l'oeil painting and its illusion of depth informs the collages’ spatial approaches. I’m influenced by the vibrant history of print art direction and design, particularly the striking, idiosyncratic choices in many LGBTQ+ publications and erotica of the 1960s and 1970s. 

In my work, the overlooked visual history and voices of my LGBTQ+ community are vehicles to discover the intricacies of identity and intimacy.  As LGBTQ+ history, rights, and visibility are targeted anew by the current Presidential administration, my work centers and celebrates LGBTQ+ identity in an essential way. Additionally, my aim is for viewers to find the collages evocative, not only of the past but of their own inner life. I aim for all viewers, regardless of identification, to connect with the universal themes that I explore: the vulnerabilities inherent in defining one’s personal identity and the challenging search for intimacy and love. I continue to visit the Gerber/Hart Archive and create new works, endeavoring to reinvent forgotten pieces of LGBTQ+ visual history.