Look How Far We’ve Come
A Queer Art Show in the Sky
Anthony White
HOT AS HELL, 2018
32 inches in diameter,
PLA on Panel
On loan courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery
Artist statement: Anthony White’s creative practice explores the components of nostalgia, childhood, young love, and memories that form his personality and build his artistic identity. He is influenced by the exponential growth of technology and the result it has on contemporary youth romance, taboo issues and social hierarchies; ones that live on opposite ends of familiarity.
Bio: Anthony White was born in 1994 in Santa Maria, a small town outside of Santa Barbara, California. He attended middle and high school, in Prescott Valley, AZ, a larger town of 30,000. Both places played different roles in his subcultural exposure and identity development though in Arizona the young White found an undertone of disapproval towards anything that wasn’t right-wing and stereotypically "normal." Prevailing societal roles and the predictable confines of gender and sexual identity politics fought against his confidence in presenting his true identity and expressing his genuine interests.
His working-middle class parents, Tyra, (an elementary school teacher) and Gilbert, (a lowrider car mechanic) were supportive and encouraged his farfetched and wild dreams----even gifting him a tattoo machine on his 15th birthday. His younger brother and sister, have been supportive as well. White grew up around his grandmother, who was a craft artist building benches and chairs with a vast collection of low-craft accouterments, which he believes was the initial influence toward his interest in pursuing an education at Cornish College of the Arts. He is the first in his family to complete four years of school and professional training.
Anthony White is now represented by Greg Kucera Gallery
Jessica Marie Mercy
Disposable Femme 1-4, 2017
Photography, Digital Art
18" x 18"
$300 each / $1,100 set
Artist statement: Within Disposable Femme Jessica Marie Mercy begins to dig in and unravel the feminine invisibility within her queer communities. By examining the delicate layer of pigment that dooms feminine presenting womxn and individuals to an eternal coming out, she hopes to challenge traditional visual stereotypes. Behind the endless hours of unpaid emotional labor, being mistaken for a heterosexual, suffering treatment as a temporary prize, and fighting to remain visible in our LGBTQIA spaces, lies the heart of Disposable Femme.
Bio: Jessica Marie Mercy, known for her obsession for queer spaces, social justice, and her aggressive LGBTQIA advocacy, is recognized for her exceptional abilities within the
medium of printmaking. Jessica Marie Mercy’s prints reflect her ability to spin a visual narrative while, simultaneously initiating dialogues. Mercy’s focus is creating work that immortalizes queer spaces while exploring safer spaces within her queer communities. She has brought printmaking in to all aspects of her life, including capturing moments from Seattle’s vibrant queer nightlife and professionally printing fabrics for a local small business, Bombsheller. With her Associates in Fine Arts from North Seattle College, Mercy has exhibited her work at the The Factory, the International Center for Photography, Sole Repair, Phantom Realms, the University of Wyoming, Magnuson Park Gallery, the Pratt Fine Arts Gallery, Gay City: Seattle’s LGBTQ Center, North Seattle College Gallery, and Alice Gallery in Georgetown WA. Jessica Marie Mercy has been the featured artist in the 5th issue of the Make Space Zine and has been highlighted in City Arts Magazine, the Stranger, the Seattle Times, and FIST.
Mercy was the recipient of the 2018-2019 Pratt Seattle Print Arts Partner Grant and is the artist in residence at Pratt Fine Arts Center. She won first prize at the City Arts Summer 2017 Seattle Art Walk Awards, for her piece “Pony”. Mercy has received several scholarships including: The John and Mary Ann Mangles Endowed Scholarship, Group Health Endowed Scholarship, and the Seattle Colleges Endowed Scholarship. Jessica has also created scholarships to further the accessibility of fine arts in the LGBTQIA community. Her obsession with community doesn’t stop with queers; Mercy is an active member of Seattle Print Arts, SGC International, and the North Seattle College Art Group. She currently works and resides in Seattle, WA.
Kade Marsili
Heads/Tails, 2019
Oil on panel
24” x 36”
$2,250
Artist statement: Included in this show is the piece entitled Head/Tails, a smaller work that follows a common theme of my work of a solo figure isolated in a created interior with warped perspective, fields of color, pattern, shadows, and plant life. Making use of formal and conceptual elements I create interiors, where dialogue happens between oneself and with one another. These interiors are personal, creating a connection between the figure and the viewer. Viewers recognize the interiors as comfortable and intimate places. I introduce conflicts through the use of body language, color, symbolism, and shadow. By deliberately placing the figure in a non-confrontational, passive pose, where eye contact is not established, I am alluding to a moment that this person is caught up in. This figure is experiencing something, and the viewer is being allowed access to study and empathize for these figures in this moment.
My personal identity and struggles fall into my work, in way of the depiction of young, attractive, queer men, placed in these spaces that evoke an intimate softness, warmth, and tenderness. Breaking from common conceptions of masculinity, my paintings handle the male figure in a fragile caring manner. This concept of care is vitally important in my work. People crave care and affection from others, be this platonic or romantically, and people desire to care for others. The figures in these paintings feel as we do, have these needs as we do.
Bio: Kade Marsili (b.1995) is a Seattle-based figurative painter originally hailing from Kent, Ohio. After studying Painting at Kent State University, he received his BFA in 2018, and has since exhibited work in San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and New York City. His work features portraits of queer youth, composed comfortably into environments designed around them, and explores concepts of personal belonging and identity. Drawing inspiration from classical and contemporary portraiture, as well as fashion photography, and interior design, Marsili captures these realistic – yet stylized figures in fields in colors, surrounded by house plants, trendy furniture, and pattern.
Steven Miller
Venus, 2016
Archival Pigment Print,
12” x 16” print in frame
$400
Visions of Tara, 2016
Archival Pigment Print,
12” x 16” unframed,
$400
Artist statement: These photos belong to the larger body of work “Look Me in the Eyes and Tell Me I Don’t Know God,” a phrase I uttered under the influence to a cab driver in Las Vegas questioning how I could have a spiritual experience if not through Jesus. My aim is to explore the current state of queerness in context to the rigid hypermasculinity of contemporary American Christianity. I posit that there are many ways to reach the divine, and most of them don’t look anything like sitting in a church pew.
Bio: Steven Miller's art has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums, and his photographs are featured in the public collections of the Tacoma Art Museum, Northern Georgia College and State University, and Seattle's Public Art 4Culture, as well as numerous private collections.
His photographs have been published across Europe, Japan, and the United States, including articles in The Advocate, NY Arts Magazine, London Gay Times, White Crane, Seattle Times, The Stranger, City Arts Magazine, Seattle Weekly, as well as Milky, a monograph published by DECODE Books.
Sequoia Day O’Connell
Sofya in the Park, 2019
33” x 20”
Charcoal, neon colored pencil, ink, acrylic on watercolor paper
Sliding scale $350-450, QTPOC folks given priority for sliding scale.
Payment plans available.
Artist statement: As a part of a larger series entitled “Warm Spots,” Sofya in the Park, 2019 explores queer adult intimacy through a unique perspective of playful impermanence and warped space. The portrait is drawn with neon pencils and derived from iphone candids, and like each piece in the series indicates an emptiness and vulnerability simultaneously. With Sofya in the Park, the distance between viewer and subject grows the closer the viewer gets to the piece. There is a dichotomous closeness and mysteriousness in queer friendship, a desire to know someone deeply, with each layer of charcoal, paint, colored pencil, and ink reveals a bit of warmth hidden in plain sight. There is a nod to an Andrew Wyeth piece hidden here, melted into the all-too-familiar city silhouette of a crane and a boxy, half-built apartment complex. The roundness of time in relation to queer space, the flattening of queer and POC-dominant neighborhoods, the emptiness of a rainbow flag in a window peppered throughout the background. With this portrait, I hope to call forth a bit of powerful vulnerability--a little bit of warmth and belonging--in the midst of a deeply unsettling and uprooting time.
Bio: Sequoia Day O’Connell (they/them) is a Seattle curator and visual artist, as well as a birth and abortion doula. Sequoia curated The Veil and The Harvest shows as a curatorial intern for Bridge Productions in Seattle. They were also the organizer of the Blue Lady shows in Northampton, MA, inclusive art and performance shows that highlighted voices in the queer community, using artwork as a foundational element to build and strengthen community relationships. Intimacy is a common thread in their personal, curatorial, and professional work—their drawings and photography touch the personal and vulnerable boundaries between body and space, community and aloneness, while their work as a birth doula offers support to pregnant people and their families during a pivotal and vulnerable moment. They received a BA in Visual Arts from Hampshire College in 2015, and were an organizer with Lions Main Art Collective, as well as an organizer and on the Board of Directors at The Vera Project, 2008-2013.
Julian Peña
Black John Doe, 2018
Acrylic paint on canvas
48" x 36"
$1,000
Artist statement: This is a portrait of an unknown African-American man holding a cat in this blurred/pixelated image. Almost iconographic and enigmatic, one must wonder who this person is and what has happened to him.
Bio: Julian Peña (°1985, Okinawa, Japan) is a visual artist and studied at the University of Washington School of Art. He first realized he is an artist when he often times escaped the realities of life by drawing anime-inspired characters and illustrating storyboards. Living in Japan during his childhood, he was bullied due to his mixed race at a private school his mother worked hard to fund. His mother often took him to a sento, a Japanese public bathhouse. The sento became the root of childhood memories that continues to influence his works. He escaped to the sento, then escaped into his drawings, and finally escaping to the United States of America with his mother to start a new life. His works are informed by values taken from what it means to be mixed race as a 1.5-generation citizen, and our almost dystopian society. He is strongly influenced by his background as a LGBTQ person of color in contemporary America
His passion for color relationships, meticulous studio art techniques, and arresting varieties of textures dominate his work. These passions greatly concoct his many eccentric narratives he conceives from this world. Peña’s works provide commentary on the complexities of cultural assimilation. All of these elements create a utopian body of work, for anyone can escape into.
Peña is largely involved with the local art community and beyond. He has earned six scholarships, was voted best artist in South Sound Magazine’s Best of South Sound contest for two consecutive years (2012/2013), participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, produced various art-related events, and commissions. Julian Pena currently lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
Jordan Christianson
Drag Droppings, 2019
Eco-felt, cotton, silk, polyester, nylon, vinyl, acrylic, rhinestone, blood, sweat, tears, E6000
Any Size
$750
Artist statement: Being out my whole life, I never thought I’d live to see such a huge degree of acceptance - and gentrification - of queer culture. Especially in the art of drag.
Drag has raced out of back bars into a multi-national, multi-million dollar industry supporting both queer and straight dollars. As a gay, independent artist, living in this increasingly polarized country, in an increasingly cost-prohibitive city, I have been fortunate enough to catch a ride.
Over the years, I have birthed many costumes and cast them out upon stages the world over; Every remnant here is a memory, a chapter from a story of literal blood, sweat, and tears.
To me, it’s a reminder that if you believe, you can achieve; it just takes a lot of Creativity, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent.
Bio: JORDAN CHRISTIANSON is a Pacific Northwest native, multidisciplinary Creative, and Couturier to a diverse entertainment and design community. Jordan’s work, and labels Jonquil & Mr Black and PINK HALLOWEEN, have been featured internationally in museums and galleries, on stages, pages, and screens.
jonquilandblack.com / IG @jonquilandblack
pinkhalloween.net / IG @pinkhalloween_official
Casey Curran
Coral, 2019
Brass, Duralar, wood
30” x 20” x 12”
$1,900
Artist statement: I find myself drawn to the foundation of things, to the root of their cause, or the long cycle of their existence. It’s become a fascination that lies between the very vast and the very small. A yearning to see a system writ into the structure of things, compounding every nuanced surface, every thought and idea. A simple piece of humanity laying somewhere between stars and bones, summoning the great and small triumphs of our innumerable endeavors.
Focusing primarily in sculpture, but not limited to any specific medium, I create kinetic environments with an internal logic and history often propelled by a simple hand crank. I invite the viewer to become a part of the work through participation, animating a tableau of flora and fauna that bloom or flutter to life when activated. When conceiving my pieces I center on a hidden narrative and begin to assign visual elements that aline with the concept of the piece, often utilizing ornate structures and simple construction methods to further highlight my interests in foundation and form. In the process of creating I look for patterns in nature and symmetry in ecosystems. I look for how innovation shapes itself into our ever expanding systems of complexity and knowledge. I create work that attempts to straddle the concepts of chaos, pattern, and emergence. These are the pillars I search for, the thoughtful hands that hold my metaphors.
Bio: Casey Curran received his BFA in painting and sculpture from Cornish College of the arts in 2006. He’s completed several large scale public works in partnership with Skanska Architects, Mad Art Seattle, Facebook, Oculus Rift and Security Properties. In 2010 and 2013 Curran was awarded the NY Sculpture Space residency twice, and has received multiple awards in artistic merit since. In 2008 Curran become a key collaborator in the internationally recognized performance art group Saint Genet developing large scale interactive sets, which have been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in NY, The Kunsthalle Museum in Krems, Austria, the Luminato Festival in Toronto, Canada, and Frye Art Museum in Seattle, WA. Currently, Curran is developing a series of work focusing on our psychological relationship with nature.
Clyde Petersen
Our Forbidden Country, 2019
Printed Poster
24" x 36"
$200 Framed
This piece is part of The AMP: AIDS Memorial Pathway temporary art projects, AMPlify Memories. For info on The AMP and other temporary artwork: www.theamp.org
Profits from the sale of this piece will be donated to the People of Color Against AIDS Network.
Artist statement: Our Forbidden Country is the latest poster by Clyde Petersen, who often designs posters to wheat paste all over Seattle during the month of Pride. This poster features lyrics to a song by Clyde’s band, Your Heart Breaks. This piece is part of The AMP: AIDS Memorial Pathway temporary art projects, AMPlify Memories. For info on The AMP and other temporary artwork: www.theamp.org Find out more about Clyde at ClydePetersen.com
Bio: Clyde Petersen is a Seattle-based artist, working in film, animation, music, installation and fabulous spectacle. He is a proud member of the transgender and queer communities in Seattle. Clyde is the director of Torrey Pines, an autobiographical stop-motion animated feature film, which premiered in October 2016 and toured the world with a live score.
He travels the world with his punk band Your Heart Breaks and hosts the internet film series Boating with Clyde, in a small handmade boat in the Washington Park Arboretum. His work has been featured around the world in museums, galleries, and DIY venues.
Coco Spadoni
All Good Babies Party in Heaven, 2019
Ceramic
$110
You Gotta Unravel Before You Can Reassemble, 2019
Ceramics
$110
Spitting Angels, 2019
ceramics
$75
Artist statement: Spadoni’s work in this show is a celebration of the fluid, chaos, and unproductivity. They want the viewer to embrace, or even worship, the spaces that can be imagined when we let go of our worth assigned by the dominant society. The characters and places referenced in the landscape of these black clouds are a snapshot into a dream where indulgence, messy, and untamed continue to pave the way for our future liberation.
Bio: Spadoni makes ceramic work because it calls for the owner to have a deep intimacy with an art object- needing you to lick, taste off of, wash, and tuck back into your kitchen cabinet over and over. They use a library of abstracted symbols that reference the bodily to embrace dreams, the human experience of embarrassment and our own personal shortcomings, tributes to failed love, and re-imaginings of queerness.
Loren Othon
Night Swim, 2019
16” x 20”
Archival print
$200
Artist statement: I’m struck by the contrast between the surface of the ocean and the expansive stillness that often lies beneath. This image was made while swimming in the Pacific with my partner. The surf was rough and the waves high, but the space underneath was placid. The soft focus, diffuse light, and pockets of air exude calm, and reflect a moment of stillness and introspection beneath an otherwise turbulent environment.
Bio: Loren Othón is a Panamanian artist and performer based in Seattle. Rooted in her mixed-race, queer experience, Loren creates imagery that is intimate, relational, and expressionistic; exploring the notion of home, belonging, and our relationships to space and the environment.
Billy Bacarella
The Guardian of the Walls of Who's Dis, 2019
Majolica glaze on terra-cotta
$600
Bust of Minotaur, 2019
Risograph Print
11” x 17”
$200
Male Portrait with Lemon, 2019
Risograph Print
11” x 17”
$200
Artist statement: Bacarella's work is an exploration of definitions of masculinity and beauty from cultural hegemony and folklores. Pieces shown pull from narratives shared around the Mediterranean.
Bio: Billy Bacarella is currently based in Seattle. School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2011. Works in ceramic, digital and traditional drawing mediums. Has shown in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Miami.
Ralph Houser
Superboy, 2019
Collage
11” x 14”
$100
Nurture, 2019
Collage
11” x 14”
$100
Artist statement: These pieces were made in response to existing in their body as they approach top surgery. This is Ralph seeing their environment from their body again--their body as they have built it and created it. A body to be proud of and happy in.
Bio: Ralph Houser (they/them) is an artist living on Duwamish and Puget Sound Salish land (Seattle). Their mixed media and collage work are an exploration of environments and bodies—both as constructions and as “natural” spaces. Ralph is one half of the band Dim Desires.Ralph has exhibited work at Cupcake Royale, The Factory and Gay City.
Markel Uri
Passer domesticus (dissected,) 2019
European house sparrow scan, insect pins, shadowbox
12” x 9”
$500
Artist statement: My work deals with impermanence, maintenance, and decay. I use organic materials to create pieces that are always in flux, highlighting and measuring time. Their creation is invested with care, reflected in the presence of the hand, the repetitive processes, and mundane rituals needed for them to emerge. Repetitive arrangements create a visual rhythm, evoking the cyclical nature of living: the heartbeats, breaths, and blood flow essential to life, and reflect my interest in feminine labor-- quiet, vital and overlooked. Accumulations create space to reflect on acts of emotional endurance and the fragility of what is built.
I am interested in the fluidity and complexities that exist within our histories. I explore this using my personal experience as a multiracial Yonsei, someone in the 4th generation away from Japan. As a mixed American, I exist in a space between cultures. Engaging with the simultaneous rift and connection felt to my heritage, I must often rely on my own interpretations of cultural traditions, even as the traditions shift with generational change. This process is shown with my pieces themselves, which, continuously build and, despite the time and labor devoted to them, decay to the point that only an echo remains.
These interests in time, cycles, and cultural interaction has spawned a fascination with invasive species. Through these lenses and processes, I have began exploring the nature of invasive species, their environmental impacts, and their links to humanity, globalization, and colonialism. With the increase of movement of humanity, more and more organisms have moved with them. As a result, invasive species have contributed to drastic shifts in the landscape itself, creating physical manifestations of history and narratives of the people that brought them.
Bio: Markel Uriu is an interdisciplinary artist based in Seattle, WA. Her work explores impermanence, maintenance, and the unseen. Drawing from her Japanese and Irish-American heritage, she is particularly interested in liminal spaces, and explores these concepts through, research, ephemeral botanical narratives, installations, and two-dimensional work. Her subjects of time, cycles, and cultural interchange have culminated in a fascination with invasive species. Her current work explores the nature of invasive species, their environmental impacts, and their links to humanity, colonialism, and globalization.
Markel received her BA from Whitman College in 2011. She is the recipient of various awards and residencies, most recently the 2018 Amazon Artist in Residence, and the 2016-2017 Artbridge Fellow at Pratt Fine Arts Center. She is a member of the Lion's Main Art Collective for Queer and Trans Artists, Seattle and SOIL Gallery, Seattle, and has shown throughout the United States.
Lamb
The Sleepwalker, 2019
Paint on board
24” x 36”
$900
Bio: Lamb is a Seattle-born & based visual artist, designer & tattooist. The images they make are flat, candy-colored, & often with repetitive patterns. Reoccurring themes in their work tend to fixate on explorations of gender, sexuality, or softness, leisure, humans interacting with the natural & supernatural worlds, the occult, the absurd.
Mary Anne Carter
It’s Not a Phase, 2019
Acrylic and fringe on canvas
$800
Artist statement: It’s Not a Phase delivers a bold slow motion eye roll as a playful reminder that queer identity is neither a fad, nor a phase but a revelation of self.
Bio: Whether Mary Anne Carter is hanging dozens of hand screen printed satin underwear on balloons for an installation of her own or cultivating opportunities for fellow artists as the co-curator of Seattle's most raucous gallery, Party Hat, art is at the foundation of all of Mary Anne Carter's work.
If you didn’t have the opportunity to gaze at her glitter-encrusted chest on the cover of City Arts’ February 2017 issue, you’ve likely spied her award-winning screen print “This Bitch Face Does Not Rest” adorning the chest (or handbag) of a passerby. Carter’s body of work is diverse—in the last year alone, she launched Jesus Mary Anne Joseph, her award-winning collection of screen printed apparel; performed in City Arts’ Genre Bender; erected a fake Taco Bell; illustrated a weekly column for Jetspace Magazine; screen printed a series of unique broadsides sold at the NY Art Book Fair; and debuted her work at the Bellevue Art Museum.
Outside of the studio, she teaches at Pratt Fine Arts Center; serves as a contributing editor for Gramma Poetry; and curates a popular market series that hosts over 150 artists annually.