Amy Shelton (They/Them)
Amy Shelton is a nonbinary photographer currently living and working in Chicago, IL. Shelton holds a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art - Design & Media Arts from Northern Illinois University. Shelton produces work on a variety of subjects, including gender, sexuality, intimacy, and photographic history, with an emphasis on social issues/change.
Shelton has exhibited at Purple Window Gallery, DeKalb's Woman's Center, Gallery 215, and has been published in Forbes, M.A.A.B.P. Zine, Sixty Inches from Center, APOTH Creative, and Non-Magazine in the UK. Their current work explores the symbolism of resilience using foliage imagery in unexpected urban landscapes. Amy often employs a documentary-style approach to tell stories about larger social issues. Shelton is a member of the Purple Window Gallery Co-Op Board, where they serve on the curatorial committee, as well as a Board Member of Dispatch Gallery. Amy works as a freelance documentarian photographer for Rubberneck Gallery, Purple Window Gallery, and Cleaner Gallery, in addition to numerous artists throughout the Chicagoland area. Shelton currently holds a position as a commercial PoP photographer at Intersection out-of-home advertising.
Gender Fluid
For this project, I explore the validity of gender fluidity through portraiture, touching on the various expressions of gender roles in society. Painting with developer during the photographic development process, I emphasize the inability of control in containing a liquid as a metaphor for one’s gender identity. Gender fluid is a gender identity which refers to a gender which varies over time. A gender fluid person may at any time identify as male, female, neutrois, or any other non-binary identity, or some combination of identities.
Upon a cursory internet search of gender fluidity the results read: “gender fluidity is bullshit” and “gender fluidity isn’t real.”
As someone who identifies as genderfluid/ genderqueer, there is a confusing line of where society stops validating gender identities all together.
The gender identity of any person shouldn't need to be validated, but for people to deny it's existence is absurd.
Through this work, I want viewers to consider reaching into the grey area, and beyond the male/female binary.
Poem: Non-Binary 101
Work: GenderFluidRhythm#3
8.5 in x 11in Darkroom Print
Sami Mark
Sami Mark is an artist from the Chicago suburbs. A recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, they are interested in the beauty of small things. Their art practice is informed both by a background in painting, and a love of quilting soft objects.
Adult Baby Blanket
Adult Baby Blanket is a place to collect scraps from my original nearly 23 year old baby blanket made for me when I was born. This was the first quilt I ever completed and it has a very special place in my heart. Thinking about gendered colors, my own transness, and what a baby blanket made for my adult self as I currently understand myself now might look like. The striped fabrics are from the original bolt of fabric my grandma used while making the original blanket, and the scrap on the back is from the original blanket after a repair. This blanket reads as my own personal trans flag to me. About how I experience nonbinary identity as a boyish person, and how I often feel like I’m working through my boyhood for the first time as an adult
ASC (They/Them)
ASC (they/them) is an artist and arts educator working across object-making traditions in order to propose hybrid and humble alternatives to persisting hegemonic binaries, including sick vs. well, body vs. object, and feminine vs. masculine. Recent works imagine a contemporary abstract lexicon while reflecting their roots in southern DIY craft. Queerness, humor, herbalism, hospitality, and materialities of "invisible" disability are intrinsic to their work. ASC was a 2023 Artist-in-Residence with Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, NY, a recent 3Arts Illinois Relief Grant recipient, and a 2017-18 HATCH Artist-in-Residence with Chicago Artists Coalition. ASC represented Chicago in the South Bend Museum of Art’s Biennial 31 in 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include “Tender Pairs”, at Alma’s in Richmond, Virginia, “Soft Hardwares” at Monaco Gallery in St. Louis, and the commissioned installation “Aerial Parts” for Buddy Chicago at the Chicago Cultural Center. With roots in Virginia (unceded lands of the Powhatan Confederacy) and the Appalachian Mountains, they hold an MFA from the University of Chicago, and a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.
@anna__s__c
In the studio, I find humor in vulnerability by conflating perceived binaries: sick/well, natural/synthetic, and body/object. Aesthetically, I am invested in the potential of an abstract handmade gesture to cultivate curiosity, as I study Appalachian folk medicine, contemporary clinical herbalism, and navigate systems of pathology as a Neuroqueer human in the contemporary medical system in the U.S.
New works feature sustainably grown herbs in non-toxic resin, handmade calcium alginate bio-plastic “thread”, intake forms paper clay and local stoneware bodies. This ongoing project includes experimental glazes with chemical formulations that include minerals found in medicinal plants and geology of the Appalachian Mountains, and the pharmaceutical industry. Elements recalling various timelines mingle in one piece- unfired ceramic, unlike rigid work from the kiln, is documented here to consider what it feels like to be in a state of both fragility and potential. For example, the precarity of thread made from edible bio-plastic, in a state of constantly shrinking and responding to humidity of its environment, interacts with instant camera film, and clay processed by hand proposes a state of transition and in-between that refuses to be solely an interim. The attached works are intimately scaled meditations on how unconventional pairings of synthetic and natural materials may catalyze intentional cross-disciplinary community.
-ASC
Symbiotic Vessel (Between My Thumb and Their Thallus) | 2023 | unfired
stoneware, Mount Guardian (unceded Munsee Lenape territory) stone and
Flavoparmelia carperata, instant film, alginate and calcium bio-plastic, spit | 28 x 12 x 7 inches
Trans-ecology Stretch | 2023 | stoneware, silicone, borosilicate glass | 16 x 14 x 5 inches
Appalachian Anecdote | 2023 | coal tar, stoneware, borosilicate glass, silicone | 16 x 5 x 2.5 inches
Rainn Jackson (They/Them-He/Him)
Rainn Jackson is queer, southern, interdisciplinary artist, and political organizer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Their work has been shown in various galleries and publications including Amos Eno gallery in Brooklyn, Gallery Sabine in Chicago, IL, the Contemporary Cress gallery in Chattanooga, the Apothecary gallery in Chattanooga, the Activist magazine, Chattanooga Zine Fest, Dalton Gallery in Atlanta, Dry Ice Gallery in Chattanooga, and Stove Works in Chattanooga.
Rainn Jackson’s art practice is a response to the oppressive, anti-queer, capitalist society they live in. Their art practice includes but is not limited to photography, video, collage, performance, and digital 3D art. Rainn's artistic research examines the connection between queerness, gothicism, and technology including the insidious traumas of living in a world dominated by cisgender, heterosexual, colonialist ideas, and their own refusal to assimilate. Rainn connects digital technology imagery to the transgender experience; they define technology broadly and consider taking man made hormones a form of cyborgism. Their work is heavily informed by personal experiences regarding these issues. Rainn feels that sharing personal history can help create solidarity with other queer people who similarly struggle while simultaneously making those who are cisgender and/or heterosexual better understand queer insidious trauma through discomfort. In Rainn’s recent work the cisheterosexual gaze on queer people is turned back onto cisheterosexual culture; an invention of the queer gaze. Themes including nudity, kink, psychedelia, and sacrilege are utilized in order to disturb some audience members, while providing comfort to others deemed sexual deviants.
Heathen Ritual
Director: Rainn Jackson
Featuring: Rainn Jackson, Bea Hurd, Archie Hale
2 minutes 58 seconds
Digital Video
2023
This video by Rainn Forrest explores their relationship with religion. Growing up queer in a southern baptist church, they realized a dissonance between the teachings of Christianity and how they were treated based on their gender and sexuality. Rainn began to research other religions and spiritualities, particularly those involving witchcraft. While experimenting with spell casting, rituals, and their connection to the earth, they found acceptance in what was taught to them as sin. In this video, they asked Bea Hurd to “un-baptize” them as a ritualized way of embracing themself shamelessly. The second part of the video "Becoming Heathen" is a ritual which demonstrates queer community, love among friends, and a rejection of cisheteronormative culture.
Ali El-Chaer (They/Them-He/Him)
Ali El-Chaer (they/he) is a Palestinian artist based in Nashville, TN. Their work focuses on colonization, land back, and conversations with the past as a means to improve the future.
@alielchaer_
“Pinkwashing” is a work about my experience as a trans Palestinian and receiving hate messages only entirely from Zionists about my queerness, every message ended with “you would die in the West Bank.” I wanted to work with the idea of countries like the US and Israel framing themselves as beckons for gay rights to cover up their colonialism and war crimes while also vilifying BIPOC.
-Ali El-Chaer
Sarah Foley (They/Them)
Sarah Foley is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Illinois. They received their Bachelors of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and primarily focus in comics, animation, and painting. By intertwining fantastical elements with reality they aim to create authentic and comforting visual narratives that explore human emotion and the importance of the natural world
Throughout my life I’ve struggled to accept my aromantic and asexual identities and the loneliness and feelings of otherness that have come with them. I created Unbound to explore the unique personal freedom and enriched self-love journey that comes with being queer in this way and to celebrate the unique perspective of love that A-spec identities provide to the LGBTQIA+ community. My goal with th e piece is to make other A-spec individuals feel seen and understand that these identities are not the absence of love but a broad and rich perception of it that is actively helping to redefine its meaning.
Unbound
18" x 24"
Acrylic on Canvas
-Sarah Foley
Ralph Skunkie Davis (They/Them)
Ralph Skunkie Davis is a transdisiplinary transgender artist whose paintings & sculptures act as liberatory tools, complicating the perception of non normative bodies in space through biomimicry, divination, prosthesis, and body modification.
J.E Paeth
John Paeth is a Chicago-based artist whose work primarily explores the themes of transsexuality, relationships, religion, and the physical body. Through print techniques like etching, lithography, and risograph alongside digital work with comics and animation, he creates pieces that challenge societal norms in regards to queernesses position in faith and religion and preconceived notions about gender presentation. Using a bold and dynamic style, Paeth delves into the complex and often misunderstood world of gender identity and expression, highlighting the importance of acceptance and understanding in our relationships with others. Paeth desires to recontextualize conversations about faith and gender and place transness back into the narratives of creation, divinity, and angelic forms. John Paeth's work seeks to memorialize the beauty and complexity of the Transsexual experience.
“New-Age Lovers” is one piece out of a series of pieces centered around “Divine Transsexuality.” This piece sought to achieve what all of my work centers on displaying queerness, vulnerability, and love through figurative and symbolic works. My work exists as a counter-argument and a rejection of the belief of medicalized transness, the kind of depiction that only shows the pain, the anguish, and the most exploitative and worst parts of the transgender experience. Instead, I use my complicated relationship with religion and how it's shaped my understanding of my physical body, to depict transness as a rejection of the binary and support radical queer joy that both understands the struggle but does not exploit it and instead revels in being counter to the norm. I believe there's power in recontextualization and I seek to take the images and symbols from a faith that have often been interpreted in direct opposition to transness and instead seek to place transness and trans love back into a narrative of creation, divinity, and angelic forms. In a world where Transness is used to isolate I seek to show the warmth of community and the power of Transsexual love.
Lindsay Mercer
Lindsay Mercer is a tentmaker. Using textile and printmaking techniques, they build safe, quiet homes. Fabric is gathered from friends, dumpsters, and scrap piles and lovingly made into walls and windowsills. Reclaimed glass and oil-soaked paper become windows that filter light and obscure the outside world. Lindsay builds homes of empathy, both fragile and resilient.
Under My Wings consists of a tent and backpack. The tent is bright yellows and oranges. It is large and highly visible. The backpack is quiet, made from the lining of a curtain found in a forgotten cabin. The fabric is discolored by age and painted with the red clay that the old cabin was built on. Sheets of mica have been sewn into the fabric. They are translucent until light hits them. Then they transform from little windows into mirrors, reflecting the outside world back. This work is mobile and adaptable.
After drifting around the U.S. for the last 10 years, they have begun nesting in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Their work has recently been exhibited at the Floyd Center for the Arts in Floyd, VA and the Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum in South Berwick, ME. They have exhibited in galleries, museums, and unsanctioned outdoor locations around the U.S., with public engagement being a core part of their practice.
Dedicated to the art of oral histories and home building, Lindsay is in the continual process of learning what it means to be a country queer in the world today.
6 x 6 x 5 feet
Textiles, found materials
$2000
Lindsay Mercer is a tentmaker. Using textile and printmaking techniques, they build safe, quiet homes. After drifting around the U.S. for the last 10 years, they have begun nesting in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Their work has recently been exhibited at the Floyd Center for the Arts in Floyd, VA and the Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum in South Berwick, ME. They have exhibited in galleries, museums, and unsanctioned outdoor locations around the U.S., with public engagement being a core part of their practice.
Dedicated to the art of oral histories and home building, Lindsay is in the continual process of learning what it means to be a country queer in the world today
Lucy Carranza
Lucy Carranza, born and raised in El Paso, Texas, draws inspiration from the landscapes that have shaped her perspective and the challenges that have molded her identity. As a transgender woman, her art becomes a reflection of not only her personal journey but also a mirror of the broader struggles of resilience and self-discovery.
At the heart of her creative process lies a belief in art’s universal language that transcends borders. She channels her encounters with transphobia, including navigating her parents’ attempt at conversion therapy, into visual narratives that resonate beyond the personal, advocating for understanding and change.
As a specialist in photo and digital media, Lucy wields these mediums to tell stories that capture the essence of her experiences. However, her artistic vision transcends these bounds. Her work draws strength from a profound connection to her Latinx heritage, embracing the beauty of nature and her love for travel. Photography, film, fiber arts, woodwork, and metalwork intertwine in her creations, amplifying the impact of her message. This fusion allows her to evoke emotions and invite contemplation, transcending mere words.
Altar Para La Tierra
"Altar para la Tierra" is an immersive installation that centers around an Ofrenda-inspired altar. It transcends traditional art boundaries, blending infrared photography, found objects, and hand-crafted elements. Visitors can interact with this transformative space, exploring the profound impacts of climate change and histories of injustice through materials sourced from various locations. It bridges art and activism, inviting viewers on a visceral journey of environmental contemplation. The altar, surrounded by repurposed materials, serves as a symbol of our interconnectedness with the Earth. This installation challenges us to take responsibility for our planet's future.
My artistic process involves gathering materials from various locations throughout the Houston area, including Baytown, Freeport, Pearland, Sugarland, West Columbia, and Alvin. By incorporating these materials, I aim to establish a tangible sense of place and context within my artwork. Each location possesses distinct characteristics reflected in the materials I collect, whether it's the industrial remnants from Baytown, the sandy beach elements from Freeport, or the animal bones from rural Alvin.
In the context of my work, infrared photography serves as a gateway to explore the potential of this technique in revealing the concealed impacts of climate change without having to use insanely expensive cameras or having to modify my own by changing the sensor. Infrared Light (IR) and Near-Infrared Light (NIR) are segments of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum that extend past the range of what the human eye can see. Near-infrared light (NIR) is the portion of the spectrum that's closest to what we can see. It's as if you're on a continuum, and NIR is right next to the well-lit territory of visible light. NIR typically encompasses wavelengths from 800 to 2,500 nanometers (nm), making it almost visible but not quite. Moving further along this spectrum, you enter the realm of Infrared Radiation (IR). This is where the road becomes much darker, and our eyes lose the ability to detect any details. IR wavelengths extend from about 700 nanometers (nm) to 1 millimeter (mm). It's like venturing into a zone of darkness, where the familiar colors of the rainbow disappear from view.***
To add to this message of sustainability, I use a combination of reused containers, including glass, plastic, and metal, refilling them with my own repurposed wax that I have collected over the years. By doing so, I reduce waste and bring attention to the importance of reusing materials.
The candles on the Ofrenda are an essential component of my work, and I use them to draw attention to the need for greater environmental consciousness. To further this message, I print on the glass containers to mimic the look of prayer candles but with a focus on the more archival process of what the Houston area has experienced in regard to pollution and climate change.
My woodworking practices are an integral part of my artistic journey, weaving a narrative of transformation and renewal. The process involves crafting a 6x4 table as a cornerstone for my altar, mending second-hand picture frames, repurposing discarded boxes, and handcrafting unique carvings and containers from scrap or reclaimed wood. This art form encapsulates the essence of resilience, taking materials often discarded and breathing new life into them.
The substantial 6x4 table, constructed with carefully selected lumber, stands as a sturdy foundation for my altar, a symbol of support and connection with the Earth. Repairing second-hand picture frames not only gives new life to forgotten memories but also mirrors the idea of restoration and healing. Crafting containers from scrap wood offers a second chance to materials that might otherwise have been discarded, mirroring the concept of renewal and the potential for transformation.