#going to a queer art exhibition today!

[llyfrenfys]

Okay - real talk : Update and how I've been

So I've felt very overwhelmed these past few months - mainly due to being preoccupied with keeping a roof over my head, putting food on the table and bills paid. I'm still very much preoccupied with all of these things. But slowly, good things are happening amongst the bad and I want to focus on those things.

Firstly, in early February three of my queer art pieces (pictured) were unveiled along with the works of 9 other artists in the Tir Cwiar exhibition in Elysium Gallery in Swansea, in collaboration with On Your Face Collective. It's something I'm immensely proud of and happy about - so many people came to the opening of the exhibition on the 7th and I met so many wonderful people on the night.

Secondly, I have been buoyed by connecting with other queer people in Ceredigion - especially at events like Friday's Aberration Cymru event and I've been buoyed by the support of my friends here in Aberystwyth. You know who you are reading this!

I've been through a lot - so much. So much I can't even begin to describe or explain. I've had losses, I've jumped through hoop after hoop. But I keep going. There's been setbacks aplenty - but I have no intention of putting down pen or paintbrush any time soon.

So, with that in mind - since November I officially became self-employed and declared myself as such to HMRC. Right now, Llyfr Enfys is my sole source of income. Which means, I'll be ramping up selling my prints, poetry and dissertation to help support myself as well as taking on freelance work where I am able.

I've been overwhelmed with the love and warmth of the response to my last post and can confirm as of today I have paid the last looming bill (for now). Thank you so, so much to everyone who has helped support me monetarily - I will be buying more stamps ASAP and then sending everything off to you all 💜

But from here on in - expect a lot more from Llyfr Enfys - solidarity forever and much love 💗

[toyourstations]

i posted this on bluesky first, but here it is as a block of text for easier reading

what if i wrote a moderately wanky thread or newsletter post about people talking about an indie art revolution and how if it happens it won't be online and there won't be evidence of it for years, it'll just be a vibe and it'll only happen if people talking about it actually go outside and make it

im just gonna do it yesterday Chase Carter of Rascal News posted an addition to their article about games journalism not being marketing, in which they called out that the audience the article targeted were not Rascal's audience. This is where I'll start. read the post I quoted here

Internet discourse is a practice of preaching to the choir, preaching to the pastor, and an exercise in futility in 90% of cases. You may be educating someone, but more likely you are just talking to people who already agree with you and may know more about the topic than you (this thread included)

The way the internet is shaped around common interests exaggerates this when it comes to indie art. You know who sees indie art online? other indie artists. In a small community this only gets more pronounced. People call this an echo chamber when they want to be rude. I think of it like art club.

everyone at art club has a buy in on making art, because they're an artist too. I'm a volunteer at my local art gallery. Every other volunteer assumes I am also a visual artist. Because art club exists in the offline spaces too. Most of the customers at a small town art market are also vendors.

But unlike my local art gallery where school kids can tour it and families bring their kids in for handful of minutes where they can make the children quiet after a 5 hour car journey, and adults waiting for a train after lunch can kill some time, the internet doesn't get tourists.

Or at least, most of the tourists are just visiting from a different art club. So when I saw a creator today talking about how all their colleagues (I'm not sure if at a day job or a creative job) are sick of mainstream slop and the time is ripe for weird indie art, I sort of winced.

Of course everyone at art club wants an indie revolution, that's their stuff! But it won't happen if we just post about it on social media, because nobody who is not in art club is going to show up to the rally. Here's another angle:

In uni I attended at least 3 AGMs for clubs that didn't meet quorum, because people assume that someone else will go and a meeting sounds boring. But without the club AGM, there's no queer disco, there's no art show, there's nobody handing out condoms at the event, there's no tea in the staff room

And it is these public and open spaces that get people interested and involved who are not already at the club. When the jock picks up a little condom packet (because free condoms!) from the queer club, he also gets info about preventing HIV.

When the kids get dragged into the art gallery in a weird small town populated entirely by weird small town artists, they see weird art that makes them ask questions. "Why do her boobs have to be out" "why is that hand holding an orb full of cash?"

If you have a table of free zines at a local market, at least one person will think about your weird art who usually doesn't think about weird art at all, or is from a completely different art club to yours, but has a friend or family member who your art reminds them of.

Today at the gallery I explained how valuable it is that she has kept her son's retro consoles in good condition to a jade carver. Our interests don't overlap much but I was there the first time she ever set up her work for exhibition and we had a lovely conversation!

If you want a weird and indie art revolution, it has to be offline. You cannot rely on art club to change the world without people who don't attend. Like I said, I know this thread is just an example of doing it all online, but it's also not the only thing I'm doing.

one more thing - if you are shy about your art with the people you share physical space with, stop that. You don't have to show your mum your most soul revealing poem or any porn at all, but you should start getting comfortable showing people what you're working on, or explaining your projects

I promise, even if you think your art is silly or doesn't matter, or isn't good enough to show off, someone is impressed by it. An old lady at the art gallery asked if I was going to have an exhibition and I laughed and showed her a gif of pixel art art fighting game santa I had been working on

and she started talking about how there SHOULD be an exhibition of digital art. She had no context for pixel art or fighting games but she saw an animated santa doing punches and kicks and was tickled pink. Audiences don't need to know what's going on they just need to have feelings about it

2 calls to action, if you want them:

know when and where your local markets are. Attend them, talk to the vendors.

show your art to someone in your physical vicinity. Draw on a thank you card or write a poem for a notice board if you want

If that's easy cakes for you, here's a harder one (and one I'm going to work on myself)

organise yourself a booth at a local market, or a piece in a local art show, or ask your local art gallery if they're accepting works for their gift shop. At the very least leave some zines somewhere.

People don't want to put in the work to become part of art club, and that's fine, you can still show them the art you make, and they might even love it, and sharing with people outside the club is the ONLY way a club turns into a movement. Otherwise you just become academics.

Link to my thread on bluesky

Link to my newsletter where I post more of my opinions once a week if I remember to write it

[kuiinncedes]

hehehe it’s like sort of giving aroace flag . barely 🤪

also i’m sad i don’t have the full rainbow lol but gonna tie my hair w these while rewatching heartstopper once again lmao 😌

:D

[queertranshappiness]

The last few days have been hard, news wise, for us. However, we still want to celebrate a bit of joy we had, because it's important:

There's an older transmasc nonbinary person who we met through a mentorship program, who we have meetings with occasionally to talk through things and get advice. He helped us today, and we want to tell you what he said (with some of our thoughts attached), incase it helps someone else tonight, or whenever you see this.

The world is cruel at the moment, and life is a bit shit. There's bad stuff everywhere. When life is like this, the important question to ask is 'how can I make things better in someone else's little world, and my little world?', and 'how can I do what's not done before?'. When you can't see the forest for the trees, it feels like it never ends. But it will end someday, and we've got to get through it. The only way we will is by taking action. Do fun stuff and support your friends. Write poetry and essays, tell your story to others. Coin new terms, flags and create new neopronoun sets that make you or others, even if it's just 1 person, feel heard. Tell someone they are loved today. Donate to organisations fighting the good fight. Find, create, and spread resources. Be as visible as you safely can, and please... don't give in to the people on reddit or twitter or wherever they are who tell you we are doomed, or that it is not worth fighting. That will get us nowhere. And if you do believe that... we understand why you feel that way, but even in your desire for a better world there is the chance of positive change. Don't dash that chance before you can take it. In his words: 'there is another world you haven't yet seen'.

So, despite it all, we've decided to launch a new project with our uni's trans society, which we are helping to run this year... and we're very excited about where it could go, if we can make it work. We might end up putting details here, someday. But we don't think we'd have had the courage to do that without talking to him.

Even on days like this... we still had some pretty cool stuff happen. We went out with our queerplatonic partner in person for the first time since the beginning of summer, and got to see an exhibition on one of our biggest special interests, which he may now be into. (/lh) We managed to pass a grading for our martial arts club, which was very cool. Why do we bring these up? Because even in days like this, in a dark world full of hateful politicians... our joy matters and is sacred.

So please, no matter what, keep on fighting, in whatever ways you can. Keep on dreaming, keep hold of your desire for a better world. To the degree you can, hold onto hope, even if it's of the smallest thing getting better, whether that be queer-related or not.

Trans and queer elders are sacred. They are some of the community's best weapons for fighting this current hateful political bubble, and many of them have been through similar waves to the one we are currently in. Their wisdom and experiences can help us. They inspire us, show us a future where we can be happy, and pave the way for a better world. In the future, we will do the same for the next generation of queer and trans youth... but we have to be there to support them. So keep on going and take it day by day, so when the sun rises again, whenever that may be... you can help someone who was in the same situation as you in the past not have to fight quite so hard. Be an elder, not a martyr. That's how we'll fix things in this world.

[amuseoffyre]

The Art Gallery of Ontario caught me coming and going with two of their special exhibits today.

First there was the 'Making her Mark' exhibit, featuring 240 pieces of art by female artists between 1400-1860. It included all kinds of media including lacework, illuminated gospels, painting, silver smithing, porcelain, scientific illustrations for text books, engravings, sewing and even music by female composers from the period playing throughout. It's fantastically presented and I highly recommend it.

And then I stumbled on the second and almost burst into tears. It was a beautiful collection of the photographs from Casa Susanna and all the joyful gender nonconformity that the place allowed for trans women and gender nonconforming people in the 60s. I'm having such regrets that I didn't grab the huge hardback book that is available in the museum shop. It made my little queer heart sing, especially in the current climate. Huge beautiful portraits of Susanna and her friends having lovely times together, proudly and defiantly themselves. I think I need to order that book.

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi Cas! I kinda needed a bit of advice so this is going to be a long rant

So last year there was a new girl at our school. I had just gotten over a crush, someone who I knew wouldn't like me back so I was pretty bored because what else can a queer teen girl do instead of fantasising about other girls. So when I saw her for the first time, she was reading a book. I thought she was new but I wasnt sure so I had to reconfirm. The next period turns out, she ended up in one of my language classes where she had to introduce herself.

Well, long story short (idk if ill survive) my best friend managed to make us sit together in another common class and that was the start of our friendship (i pined after her the WHOLE summer break because i was too shy to talk to her despite being an extrovert). We started texting and stuff So I established that i liked her and told her um one day before my besties birthday (pretty soon im excited) andddddddd guess whatttttttttttt. she rejected me. WEEEE

but one day in September i went to her art exhibition with my mom and our moms got to talking and i was still mad in love despite being rejected but anyway a day after that in school we had a small assembly about the lgbtqia+ community and how its okay to like girls, being in an all girls school so after that she texted me saying that she liked me and i FREAKED because i was so EXCITED welp. um. even tho she liked meeeeeeee we ended up in a situationship because she didnt wanna date and i was confused but didnt wanna force her

now my bestie has a theory which I directly quoted:

I think as a new girl, she wanted to make friends. And her best friend's nice, fine, whatever, but have you noticed that she rarely talks to your girlfriend once she's with her friends? Even your girlfriend must have. The point is, you were nice, kind, friendly. You wanted to be "friends" or so she first thought. It was a good friendship, and then you confessed. Our theory was that she didn't say that she liked you back then was because she didn't. Then you might've accidentally gone and done the thing where you avoid people, especially because you felt that you had ruined everything. So she confessed to not lose you. And then you ended up dating after whyever she didn't want to date was sorted out. She knew that you'd always treat her right and then she tried so it would be like a relationship. Then once you said you loved her, romantically, she knew you were going to be around. And then she eventually stopped trying. I think that she got attached to you at some point in time, and that's when the whole thing with the constant "I miss you"s started. The original basis of the theory was something we had discussed before, not you and me, but yeah, and I just elaborated with whatever information I've learnt today.

anyway most of my close friends disapproved of the relationship because she never reciprocated their efforts to get to know each other because both parties were going to be major parts of my life and never seemed to speak to me when they were around but i was blind and stupid and didnt listen to them and actually ended up ditching people to hangout with wonderful gf who said ok to dating 2 days after my bday

anyway so recently i been feeling like i wanna break up with her? so obv first person i go to is my best friend bc she's is the platonic loml and then she helps and we forget about it. mind you we're mid exams rn and like a few days ago i have had the nagging feeling i wanna breakup with her. bestie. my best friend makes me list out reasons and gets trauma dumped on.

basically I feel like we never have real conversations or communicate properly and it's always just kind of baby talk? even when it's serious, so like. yeah and then sometimes when i'm talking about my interests, she just goes "ew" and doesn't listen? and I help her when she fights with her best friend, but when I fight with mine she just replies "oh" and nothing else.

and the thing is we have very different schedules, but she always expects me to compromise on mine for hers like she stays up and I wake up early but she calls me late at night when i'm sleeping because "she missed me"??? she did this once on the day before a test and she knew that I wanted to get up early to revise. not to mention, she once also called my mom a psycho. yeah, so all of that and the fact that she never gave me gifts for our six month anniversary while I made her several boquets of paper flowers and shit I thought that maybe she didn't think we were doing that but I didn't get anything afterwards either. it's the same with gifts in general. and she doesn't really match my wild side or wants to do cliche coupley things that I want to do and I don't want to force her but I also really want to do them?

anyway i kinda got some shit going on in my life? and i kinda told gf that i may be emotionally unavailable but we'll talk about this after midterms. thing is. i may have told gf i wanna be friends but i dont actually now idk how to do damage control? But in my best friend's opinion it will just make shit more complicated and hurt both our feelings

idk what to do. everyone around me has biased opinions, so, yeah

Hi! <3

Okay, here's the thing. You're listening to everyone's opinion right now but your own. What do YOU want? Whatever you want, like really want, you need to decide that. And then you need to nicely tell your (ex)gf that. Because forcing your feelings for other peoples' benefit will only result in other people being hurt.

If you want to be with this girl, you need to communicate your feelings about her not being available enough. if you want space, you need to tell her that, too.

Either way, decide what YOU want, you know? Stop listening to others <3

naming you paper flower anon

[your-gay-grandma]

Hi grandma ♡ first off, I just want to say thank you for being here. I don't really have either of my biological grandmothers anymore, and I never got to come out to either of them, so having you here is comforting, in a way. I hope you're having a lovely pride month.

Today I learned how to use a new feature on my drawing app! It makes taking the background out of pictures *much* easier, which means I can make even more edits and art easily!

I also finally remade an old pin. The first piece of pride merch I made myself (in secret) was a pin made out of hot glue and nail polish and it had the word "Ace" on a galaxy background. Today, now that I'm out and have learned new art mediums, I was able to remake it in uv resin, and it looks so pretty, and I love how the change from simple, easy to work with, quick-and-messy to more complex, detailed, and professional looking illustrates how I was in the closet compared to how I am now that I can be out.

It also feels kind of empowering, which is nice because lately with the news I've been feeling pretty anxious and unsure, because although I live in a pretty safe state, not everyone does, and I fear for the rest of our community and for the future of the US (and the world). So having something that represents being unapologetic is nice.

Lastly, it's officially six years since I got my asexual pride ring that I wear basically 24/7, and I feel really proud of who I've become and I'm really happy about who I've been able to meet because of being part of the queer community. I wish the ace and aro communities were more accepted and welcomed in online pride spaces, but the experiences I've had in real life have been nothing but wonderful.

Are you looking forward to anything this pride? Do you have any new projects you're working on? I'd love to hear about them! I hope you have a wonderful evening, and a wonderful pride month. Thank you, grandma ♡

oh my dearest, this is the sweetest message and i appreciate your kind words and hearing about your art and what is happening for you more than you could ever know.

i am so proud of you and who you are! you sound like a wonderful person and artist with much light to share with the world and our community! how lucky we are to have you.

in excellent and hopeful news, some harmful legislation has not been passed in the US which is a great relief for our community. i know things can be quite frightening at the moment but i’m trying to see the hope when it comes.

this pride, i am so fortunate to have a very very wonderful girlfriend! we had a delightful celebration picnic this week and are planning ways to celebrate our love and community. my library is hosting a local queer history exhibit i am very excited to investigate. i’ve many artistic projects on the go at the moment! i just finished up production week on a show i am currently working on which was thrilling and wonderful. i’ve recently got a rather large commission i’m very excited to get started on also. today though, i am enjoying the sun on the balcony with tea and an excellent book.

my exceptional friend, i am wishing you the happiest and safest of pride months! thank you for your joyous update and please do keep me in the loop! sending you all my love 💛

[mcrtyrdomsarchived]

;; GABRIEL LEONE — AS TOLD.

[ justice smith, nonbinary, he/they ] - was that gabriel 'gabe' leone i saw by the lighthouse today? i heard that the twenty seven year old who has been in nightrest for twenty years and works as a bartender at deadlights / tattoo apprentice at deadly inks has a reputation of being animated, but also foolhardy. they reside in fog gate & people in town usually associate them with waking up in a body as heavy as the dead, emotions always on the verge of spilling over; laughing before the punch lands, and the belief that every encounter you have will be the last. let’s hope the killer doesn’t go after them next. [ james, 24, they/them, est, n/a ]

MENTIONS OF TERMINAL ILLNESS, DIVORCE, DRUGS, DEPRESSION, DEATH MENTION,  WOUND INFECTION, VAGUE NSFW, SMOKING BEYOND THIS POINT.

profile.

full name: gabriel ‘gabe’ leone.

birthday: october 31st, 1995.

astrology: scorpio sun, scorpio moon, gemini ascending.

sexuality: queer.

currently listening to: sextape by deftones.

current mood: desperate 🥺

current location: [[[cannot be found]]]

last tweet: pleasepleaseplease let me tattoo the sexy rat please this is a HOMAGE to my HOME.

PINTEREST.

history.

grows up in the jersey suburbs with their mom and dad for the first seven years of his life. his mother sonia’s an art student-turned-struggling artist who splits her time between nj and nyc for whichever side gig she can pick up, and his father’s an old punk turned chef with a severe vendetta against bobby flay.

when money’s tight and there’s no sitter to turn to during the summer, gabe accompanies their parents into the city. occasionally the stars align and sonia picks up a waitressing shift at the restaurant his father works at, allowing gabe to sit in a tucked away booth and scribble away. sometimes his dad’s old friends stop by the diner, letting gabe color inside the lines of their tattoos as his mom finishes up for the day.

TERMINAL ILLNESS; when gabe’s seven, sonia gets a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work with an illustrator she’s long admired and once mentored under; he’s terminal, losing control of his hands, and needs someone to finish what he no longer can. the pay isn’t the most lucrative, but the experience alone is enough for sonia to accept the offer. the only catch being that they have to relocate to nightrest, massachusetts, where her old mentor resides.

around the same time, gabe’s dad gets promoted at the restaurant he’s been cooking at - he’s got it in good with the owners, could very well own the business himself if he keeps up the way he has. he loves his job, loves the restaurant and the bustle of the city. he wants to move them up to nyc.

DIVORCE; gabe doesn’t really understand why it happens, he’s seven and doesn’t really know where massachusetts is - they already take the train between new jersey and new york, why couldn’t they take the train from new york to massachusetts? if their parents love each other, why do they have to go separate ways? no amount of explaining could make gabe understand; and next thing he knows, his mom’s driving with him up to nightrest.

it’s tough settling in at first; gabe misses their dad and the city, and his dad’s cooking, and taking the train every other weekend between the two states - and his dad’s cooking, again. but it’s not all so bad; even though they reside in nightrest - the town is still drenched in halloween, like a constant celebration of gabe’s birthday. and he’s not completely alone; their dad’s old walkman left in their possession and the promise of visiting whenever he can.

days turn into years, and gabe’s older now, a teenager; he still visits the city every summer and crashes on his dad’s couch when he’s not out exploring the city or making out with a random boy from the hardcore show they’ve just attended.

MINOR DEATH MENTION; sonia remarries, eventually - and it’s like, good. it’s really good. they met during one of sonia’s local art exhibitions, her career finally taking off after her mentor’s passing. his name’s bill, or greg - maybe craig. he makes sonia laugh like gabe’s dad did, and has a son around gabe’s age. it’s good. life is good for them.

DRUG MENTION; it’s difficult for gabe to adjust to the marriage, and the addition of a step-brother. he’s not used to family being anything other than sonia, or his dad. his friends are like a family to them, but that’s different. it just feels different. their step-brother doesn’t play dnd, or care for marching band in the way that gabe oddly does - doesn’t listen to hardcore, or appreciate horror movies despite living in nightrest. fuck, he doesn’t even smoke weed. not even a little.

gabe’s not home as often - they’re off doing better things, like smoking in someone else’s basement and trying hard to start a band that never really takes off. they do free piercings at parties in cramped bathrooms; it’s how they’ve gotten several of their own. stick and pokes on someone’s grandfather’s old leather couch, drinking shitty beer from the only gas station that doesn’t check ids just outside of town.

they don’t mean to distance themselves from their family - it just sort of happens. the only child complex; the inability to share, and minor feelings of incompetency whenever his step-brother gets praised for his ever-growing list of achievements, while gabe’s stuck with the same routine of try hard, fail, mope, then pick themself up again just to do it all over again.

eventually they graduate high school (barely but surely) and enroll in the community college - most of their friends head off to better colleges in better states for better opportunities while gabe stays in the same place. they could go back to the city - but it’s expensive, and well - fuck - gabe doesn’t know. it’s hard to go anywhere once you feel stuck.

DEPRESSION, DEATH MENTION; they start taking anti-depressants sometime after dropping out of college, unsure of what they want to actually do with their life. gabe hits a couple low-points, but eventually takes up a job as a piercer at a tattoo shop down in salem and gets an apartment for dangerously cheap in fog gate after the previous tenant passed unexpectedly in the home.

INFECTION, VAGUE NSFW; gabe tells this one customer like a thousand times the proper aftercare for a fresh piercing, especially one done in a particularly...sensitive area - not to go swimming, wash with a saline solution, etc. etc. does the douchebag listen? no. has the audacity to go to a beach party - swim in the fucking water - then comes back saying that gabe’s fucked up the piercing, that it’s all infected - that he’ll sue. gabe knows damn well they didn’t fuck up the piercing - but it’s their word against his, and eventually gabe’s forced to quit as a piercer just to appease the guy.

present day and gabe’s currently a bartender at deadlights - just managed to get an apprenticeship at deadly inks after following the artists around the shop like a lost puppy - sad eyes and all. now if only they’ll let him tattoo on people. they’ve always liked drawing - the talent not quite as natural to gabe as it is to their mom, but years of practicing american traditional instead of writing chemistry notes has finally paid off.

traits.

has a serial case of being Too Friendly. they just love to talk. they’re not very good with long silences and will end up making some sort of noise to compensate anyways, so might as well let them ramble on about whatever. charismatic but still a little awkward at times.

DRUGS, DEATH MENTION; had a bad acid trip sometime last year that messed with his psyche a bit, had him thinking he was dead and a ghost for like. hours. worried they’re gonna like crack their back the wrong way one day and go on another bad trip.

tries so much to be like. Positive. Think Positive. sometimes they get into a bad rut and it takes them a couple of days (more like weeks) to fully snap out of it, but they really do try.

very affectionate with all his friends and gets lonely if they’re left alone for too long. separation anxiety</3. really likes being around others. loves parties. like gabe can cope if they’re on their own but they’re almost a little catlike in the sense like. they need alone time when they need it but when they need people time they Need it.

so endlessly loyal unless a friend’s done some truly fucked shit. but other than that gabe’s a ride or die.

he’s short. gabe’s like, 5′6″ at the very most. but what they lack in height they make up for in heart<3

just. fully covered in tattoos. started with stick and pokes and those cheap little tattoo guns from amazon when they were a teenager, all the way to their current big age with like. actual professionally done tattoos. there’s like very little skin that hasn’t been tattooed at this point.

has knuckle tattoos but they literally just say KNUC KLES.

was a Band Kid. was in marching band. and u know what? he fucking loved it. tried to start his own band as a teenager but it never took off and now he just plays guitar as a hobby.

has. a lip ring, a nose ring, and an eyebrow bar.

grew up interacting with the diy punk scene in nyc when he would go in the summertime, and their music taste reflects that almost exclusively. perpetually stuck in the early 2000s even though he was like 10.

has a rly old iphone like they don’t make the chargers for it anymore kind of old but he’s just not willing to upgrade it. doesn’t know how it’s still running. but he doesn’t have iphone kind of money.

99% sure they have adhd but were never tested or medicated for it. explains a lot of executive dysfunction but gabe does Not want to think about their problems like, ever. will avoid problems involving himself, like, interpersonally, but if one of their friends starts acting weird or distant then gabe will instantly be like. whats up? you good? why are u ignoring me? :/

has modeled nude for figure drawing classes before because they r proud of their body goddammit.

sometimes, occasionally, crosses that boundary between friendship and like. situationship. likes affection and pleasure but most of their relationships are short-term because they also live fast die young or whatever. what i’m trying to say is that gabe has been around the block more than a few times.

SMOKING; will never give up cigarettes for vaping!! never!!

huge nerd; plays dnd, loves high fantasy. loves halloween. big horror enthusiast.

doesn’t sleep well at all and is usually running on only a few hours. like at most 5 hours.

OH. THEY’RE VEGAN. passionate about like. Big Meat and animal cruelty and the environment and sustainability. all their leather is secondhand, they mostly thrift. just like their dad they also cook<3 mostly trying new vegan recipes that they then make their friends try.

they try their best to stay neat but sometimes<3 it just doesn’t stay that way. their apartment accumulates mess but then gabe will dedicate like an entire day or two to deep cleaning. it’s actually very therapeutic idk.

relationships.

long term friends!! people who’ve known them since they moved, or since high school, etc. people that gabe would die for without a second thought.

like a best best friend. the bestest of friends. the one person gabe cannot imagine life without.

first loves, second loves, thirds, forths, etc. spanning from high school to current day. i imagine most of their relationships are like. puppy love or honeymoon phases and then it fizzles out or gabe gets a little Too Much for the other to handle. most of them would be with masculine-presenting people i’d imagine

hook-ups of christmas past, present, n future. just fun, no thoughts or feelings which is hard because gabe falls in love just a little bit with like every person they meet<3

i love antagonistic relationships. people who hate gabe. gabe who hates people. they’re surprisingly spiteful and not a forgive n forget type of person. holds grudges like a motherfucker sometimes. maybe a brawl or two. it’d be funny if every once in a while they exchange hate texts just reminding each other how much they dislike the other.

i also love pining and unrequited feelings<3

apartment neighbors, i think gabe lives alone but he’s very neighborly (and is broke and out of ingredients and will ask for two slices of bread or a cup of sugar). but he’ll also leave fresh baked vegan goods outside your door<3

bar friends! drinking friends! dnd friends! artist friends!

friends to enemies or enemies to friends. got into physical fights in high school but now you’re like begrudgingly becoming friends now that you’re older<3

or maybe ur drifting away!

omg. the guy who tried to sue gabe for the dick piercing mishap.

but im down fr like literally anything gabe is Versatile and i love any sort of connection.

[anxiouslyfred]

Fleer

Summary: On a day hanging out in town, Janus Remus and Virgil get harrassed by the same person multiple times. Eventually Janus decides to give them some new thoughts.

Authors Notes: The prompt I wrote myself for today was "Janus needs to fleer in a story, and leave with a geck too" According to An Emotion Dictionary a Fleer is "To mock; to smile snidely" and to geck is "to scoff: to flounce off" I did what I could to describe the action enough to be understood while writing but guessed actually including them in my notes would be helpful.

Warnings: Homophobia and Harrassment

/\/\

Speaking their mind was normal to Janus. They would do so at will, quite randomly, and usually do their best to ensure nobody around them knew if it was their true opinion or one echoed in order to gain something.

Today Janus didn't mind if their friends understood what they truly meant. What they cared about was if the asshole who'd kept running into them, insulting and threatening them felt insulted.

He'd started the first time they passed, noticing the rainbow sash that Remus had insisted on wearing, yelling a slur, but nothing more as their group headed into a shop. Janus hadn't cared then; Remus was laughing it off, and saying that he'd pass the compliments on to his brother when Roman demanded the sash was returned.

Then, after Virgil had caught up to them and insisted on dragging them into the music store; the jerk was there again. He'd followed them around the store, loudly declaring that he'd never listen to gay bands, and was making a list of who to avoid.

Remus had responded by that, going around the store to get all the most popular artists latest CD's, following the nods Janus made whenever the guy muttered about some specific artist would never support or be liked by the gays. They were fairly sure the guy would have to completely change his music taste if he really were to stop listening to every artist Remus brought a CD of that day, also that the likelihood of the card Remus was using to pay actually being his was lower than 0%.

After that shop they'd deliberately waited until the git had left and headed in the opposite direction, now without any distinct goals for their afternoon in mind they could go wherever they wanted.

Unfortunately, apparently the same angry moron turned up when they decided to indulge in some of histories horrors at the museum, and this time Janus had had enough.

“Yeah, come to hear about how dead you all should be.” The guy yelled over at them as soon as they moved into the art gallery that had been there for years, just rearranged over the time.

Janus fleered, back straightened, and eyes judging. “Actually we're learning about how much better the world is because of trans people. Perhaps you could do with paying attention to the exhibits here.” They stated, gesturing vaguely to the room before this.

“Yeah right. You a blight on humanity-” The guy attempted to counter, but they didn't let him.

“Who are part of the community responsible for computers as they are today. Completely responsible for numerous works of classic literature, and indubitably better citizens than a hate-filled, useless, layabout who hasn't done anything with this day and doubtless many more beyond criticising strangers.” The sneer widened on their face, and a glance at Virgil made them realise how empty their gaze must be. He always stepped further back if their gaze was too harsh.

The asshole was gaping, clearly trying to formulate another insult. “Don't stress yourself. I know you only have slurs in that brain of yours, nothing original worth hearing at all. Now we've got to carry on to learn about the queer influences on Theatre. I've heard there's some unmissable revelations about Shakespeare in the exhibit.” They turned with a flounce.

Janus tugged Remus and Virgil off with them. “Honestly, even the harassment nowadays is mediocre.” They mocked.

[cleverhottubmiracle]

On a summer evening last year, on a clifftop by Porthmeor Beach in Cornwall, southwest England, passers-by might have seen an artist in a tracksuit painting the sunset. Did people hassle him? “Obviously,” says Jake Grewal, the artist in question. “But in a really nice way. A dog would come up and sniff my cadmium paints. I’d be like, ‘Please take your dog away, it’s poisonous. I’m scared he’s going to die.’”It’s surprising to think of a young artist today standing at an easel en plein air like Monet. But the gorgeous results of Grewal’s work are currently on show at the prestigious Studio Voltaire in London. Made up of 11 paintings completed in the past year, the London-based artist’s new exhibition is called “Under the Same Sky.” The smaller landscapes were made in Cornwall; Grewal had a monthlong residency at Porthmeor studios, where artists including Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson once painted. “I could hear the sound of the ocean while I was in the studio,” Grewal remembers. “The residency came at a time when I had just turned 30, just had a breakup, and then I went to the bottom end of the country to be on my own. It allowed me to paint outside, and to experience those emotions in an organic way.”The other big influence was Grewal’s first trip to India, which also took place last year. Previously, he would get irritated when people attributed the haziness of his landscapes, and their remarkable use of color, to his Indian heritage on his father’s side (his mother is Welsh). “But when I got there, I understood where people were coming from, because there are strange colors there that you wouldn’t normally see next to one another. And there is this haze everywhere.”Jake Grewal, Nurturing Waters, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Although Trustlands, a long landscape in the show, is inspired by a photograph Grewal took in Goa, none of the beaches, rocks, or seascapes he paints are taken directly from life: they are composites of places he’s been, or scenes from his imagination. Often, the paintings contain naked male figures with their faces turned from the viewer, half-hidden in nature or clambering over rocks, as in the almost 19-footlong canvas The Cycle of Erosion. Those figures are self-portraits of a kind, but they also suggest enquiry, sexuality, and hope. “I wanted the show to be about freedom, openness, a memory of warmth, and a kind of contentment,” he says.Grewal’s dreamy and confident paintings have won the artist an ardent following. The director Luca Guadagnino commissioned him to paint a work to use as a poster for his film Queer; before that, Grewal’s 2022 charcoal drawing The Sentimentality of Nature was acquired by Hepworth Wakefield, a renowned British museum, after he won the inaugural J.W. Anderson Collections Fund. The artist has a remarkable grasp of color, which he says is innate, and while he loves to immerse himself in art history, he is also keen to give himself technical challenges—for instance, by making charcoal look like paint and vice-versa.Usually, he’s at his studio in east London from 11 AM to 6 PM. It takes him about three months to make a large painting, and he focuses on three to five canvases at a time. While he works, he listens to NPR’s Tiny Desk series, or to lectures by artists he admires like Peter Doig or Marlene Dumas. “Sometimes you can feel as if the only thing that matters is the show you’re making,” he says. “To think about other people’s perspectives on art and making can be quite liberating.”Photo by Joyce NGPhoto by Joyce NGGrewal was brought up in London and was inspired at school by an art teacher who taught him about J.M.W. Turner, Howard Hodgkin, and Barbara Hepworth. In 2013, he left for Brighton University, on the English south coast, to study fine art. “I was trying to do this thing where I was marrying drawing and painting,” he says. He became disillusioned, however, when he realized that to get a good grade, he was better off doing what the course required rather than genuinely experimenting.After graduating in 2018, he had two paintings in a group show that were damaged in a fire. The insurance payout meant that he could afford to take a course at London’s Royal Drawing School, and those two years set him on the track he’s on today. The only problem was that in order to save money he had to live with his parents, which made him feel, he says, as though “my life was on hold, and I couldn’t develop personally.” Potential boyfriends would be put off by the fact that he hadn’t left home; a sense of yearning for the unobtainable is still discernible in his pictures, although, he says, “I’ve definitely had my fill since.”Covid meant that he also had to stay in his parents’ house throughout lockdown, but that turned out to be another transformative period. “I discovered Kundalini yoga, which is quite spiritual, all about breath work,” Grewal says. “Doing a repetitive practice that was open and freeing, at a time when everything felt so restrictive and closed in, filled me with this audacious ease. I would go out and draw in the park every day.” Since the art world had shut down, there was no pressure on Grewal to launch his career. He thinks that having this break was crucial: “Things need a kind of gestation period.”Jake Grewal Trustlands, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery.After lockdown, Grewal started selling his work on Instagram, and then in 2020 took part in the influential graduate show New Contemporaries, which, along with a show the following year at Jhaveri Contemporary in India with Prem Sahib and Sunil Gupta, “brought a more serious engagement” with his practice. He acquired representation by the gallery Thomas Dane, and last year participated in an exhibition at Pallant House, in Chichester, Sussex, alongside well-known “neo-romantic” artists. “I was looking at the darker elements of being a queer person, and of the landscape, and that’s something the British neo-romantics capture quite well.”Grewal says that his work expresses some of the angst, as well as the joy, he feels as a queer person of color. “There’s a sense of othering that’s inherent to the queer experience,” he says. “Also, for me, I have felt a displacement because of my identity. There’s a question of whether, or where, you fit in.” In the new show, Grewal also experiments with a new kind of mysticism, which he attributes to his aunt. “She’s quite woo-woo and into Native American ways of thinking,” he says. “And apparently there’s this kind of spiritual veil, and when you’re by the coast, that’s where the veil is thinnest, and you can easily access other dimensions. So, I was thinking about that too.” Source link

[norajworld]

On a summer evening last year, on a clifftop by Porthmeor Beach in Cornwall, southwest England, passers-by might have seen an artist in a tracksuit painting the sunset. Did people hassle him? “Obviously,” says Jake Grewal, the artist in question. “But in a really nice way. A dog would come up and sniff my cadmium paints. I’d be like, ‘Please take your dog away, it’s poisonous. I’m scared he’s going to die.’”It’s surprising to think of a young artist today standing at an easel en plein air like Monet. But the gorgeous results of Grewal’s work are currently on show at the prestigious Studio Voltaire in London. Made up of 11 paintings completed in the past year, the London-based artist’s new exhibition is called “Under the Same Sky.” The smaller landscapes were made in Cornwall; Grewal had a monthlong residency at Porthmeor studios, where artists including Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson once painted. “I could hear the sound of the ocean while I was in the studio,” Grewal remembers. “The residency came at a time when I had just turned 30, just had a breakup, and then I went to the bottom end of the country to be on my own. It allowed me to paint outside, and to experience those emotions in an organic way.”The other big influence was Grewal’s first trip to India, which also took place last year. Previously, he would get irritated when people attributed the haziness of his landscapes, and their remarkable use of color, to his Indian heritage on his father’s side (his mother is Welsh). “But when I got there, I understood where people were coming from, because there are strange colors there that you wouldn’t normally see next to one another. And there is this haze everywhere.”Jake Grewal, Nurturing Waters, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Although Trustlands, a long landscape in the show, is inspired by a photograph Grewal took in Goa, none of the beaches, rocks, or seascapes he paints are taken directly from life: they are composites of places he’s been, or scenes from his imagination. Often, the paintings contain naked male figures with their faces turned from the viewer, half-hidden in nature or clambering over rocks, as in the almost 19-footlong canvas The Cycle of Erosion. Those figures are self-portraits of a kind, but they also suggest enquiry, sexuality, and hope. “I wanted the show to be about freedom, openness, a memory of warmth, and a kind of contentment,” he says.Grewal’s dreamy and confident paintings have won the artist an ardent following. The director Luca Guadagnino commissioned him to paint a work to use as a poster for his film Queer; before that, Grewal’s 2022 charcoal drawing The Sentimentality of Nature was acquired by Hepworth Wakefield, a renowned British museum, after he won the inaugural J.W. Anderson Collections Fund. The artist has a remarkable grasp of color, which he says is innate, and while he loves to immerse himself in art history, he is also keen to give himself technical challenges—for instance, by making charcoal look like paint and vice-versa.Usually, he’s at his studio in east London from 11 AM to 6 PM. It takes him about three months to make a large painting, and he focuses on three to five canvases at a time. While he works, he listens to NPR’s Tiny Desk series, or to lectures by artists he admires like Peter Doig or Marlene Dumas. “Sometimes you can feel as if the only thing that matters is the show you’re making,” he says. “To think about other people’s perspectives on art and making can be quite liberating.”Photo by Joyce NGPhoto by Joyce NGGrewal was brought up in London and was inspired at school by an art teacher who taught him about J.M.W. Turner, Howard Hodgkin, and Barbara Hepworth. In 2013, he left for Brighton University, on the English south coast, to study fine art. “I was trying to do this thing where I was marrying drawing and painting,” he says. He became disillusioned, however, when he realized that to get a good grade, he was better off doing what the course required rather than genuinely experimenting.After graduating in 2018, he had two paintings in a group show that were damaged in a fire. The insurance payout meant that he could afford to take a course at London’s Royal Drawing School, and those two years set him on the track he’s on today. The only problem was that in order to save money he had to live with his parents, which made him feel, he says, as though “my life was on hold, and I couldn’t develop personally.” Potential boyfriends would be put off by the fact that he hadn’t left home; a sense of yearning for the unobtainable is still discernible in his pictures, although, he says, “I’ve definitely had my fill since.”Covid meant that he also had to stay in his parents’ house throughout lockdown, but that turned out to be another transformative period. “I discovered Kundalini yoga, which is quite spiritual, all about breath work,” Grewal says. “Doing a repetitive practice that was open and freeing, at a time when everything felt so restrictive and closed in, filled me with this audacious ease. I would go out and draw in the park every day.” Since the art world had shut down, there was no pressure on Grewal to launch his career. He thinks that having this break was crucial: “Things need a kind of gestation period.”Jake Grewal Trustlands, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery.After lockdown, Grewal started selling his work on Instagram, and then in 2020 took part in the influential graduate show New Contemporaries, which, along with a show the following year at Jhaveri Contemporary in India with Prem Sahib and Sunil Gupta, “brought a more serious engagement” with his practice. He acquired representation by the gallery Thomas Dane, and last year participated in an exhibition at Pallant House, in Chichester, Sussex, alongside well-known “neo-romantic” artists. “I was looking at the darker elements of being a queer person, and of the landscape, and that’s something the British neo-romantics capture quite well.”Grewal says that his work expresses some of the angst, as well as the joy, he feels as a queer person of color. “There’s a sense of othering that’s inherent to the queer experience,” he says. “Also, for me, I have felt a displacement because of my identity. There’s a question of whether, or where, you fit in.” In the new show, Grewal also experiments with a new kind of mysticism, which he attributes to his aunt. “She’s quite woo-woo and into Native American ways of thinking,” he says. “And apparently there’s this kind of spiritual veil, and when you’re by the coast, that’s where the veil is thinnest, and you can easily access other dimensions. So, I was thinking about that too.” Source link

[ellajme0]

On a summer evening last year, on a clifftop by Porthmeor Beach in Cornwall, southwest England, passers-by might have seen an artist in a tracksuit painting the sunset. Did people hassle him? “Obviously,” says Jake Grewal, the artist in question. “But in a really nice way. A dog would come up and sniff my cadmium paints. I’d be like, ‘Please take your dog away, it’s poisonous. I’m scared he’s going to die.’”It’s surprising to think of a young artist today standing at an easel en plein air like Monet. But the gorgeous results of Grewal’s work are currently on show at the prestigious Studio Voltaire in London. Made up of 11 paintings completed in the past year, the London-based artist’s new exhibition is called “Under the Same Sky.” The smaller landscapes were made in Cornwall; Grewal had a monthlong residency at Porthmeor studios, where artists including Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson once painted. “I could hear the sound of the ocean while I was in the studio,” Grewal remembers. “The residency came at a time when I had just turned 30, just had a breakup, and then I went to the bottom end of the country to be on my own. It allowed me to paint outside, and to experience those emotions in an organic way.”The other big influence was Grewal’s first trip to India, which also took place last year. Previously, he would get irritated when people attributed the haziness of his landscapes, and their remarkable use of color, to his Indian heritage on his father’s side (his mother is Welsh). “But when I got there, I understood where people were coming from, because there are strange colors there that you wouldn’t normally see next to one another. And there is this haze everywhere.”Jake Grewal, Nurturing Waters, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Although Trustlands, a long landscape in the show, is inspired by a photograph Grewal took in Goa, none of the beaches, rocks, or seascapes he paints are taken directly from life: they are composites of places he’s been, or scenes from his imagination. Often, the paintings contain naked male figures with their faces turned from the viewer, half-hidden in nature or clambering over rocks, as in the almost 19-footlong canvas The Cycle of Erosion. Those figures are self-portraits of a kind, but they also suggest enquiry, sexuality, and hope. “I wanted the show to be about freedom, openness, a memory of warmth, and a kind of contentment,” he says.Grewal’s dreamy and confident paintings have won the artist an ardent following. The director Luca Guadagnino commissioned him to paint a work to use as a poster for his film Queer; before that, Grewal’s 2022 charcoal drawing The Sentimentality of Nature was acquired by Hepworth Wakefield, a renowned British museum, after he won the inaugural J.W. Anderson Collections Fund. The artist has a remarkable grasp of color, which he says is innate, and while he loves to immerse himself in art history, he is also keen to give himself technical challenges—for instance, by making charcoal look like paint and vice-versa.Usually, he’s at his studio in east London from 11 AM to 6 PM. It takes him about three months to make a large painting, and he focuses on three to five canvases at a time. While he works, he listens to NPR’s Tiny Desk series, or to lectures by artists he admires like Peter Doig or Marlene Dumas. “Sometimes you can feel as if the only thing that matters is the show you’re making,” he says. “To think about other people’s perspectives on art and making can be quite liberating.”Photo by Joyce NGPhoto by Joyce NGGrewal was brought up in London and was inspired at school by an art teacher who taught him about J.M.W. Turner, Howard Hodgkin, and Barbara Hepworth. In 2013, he left for Brighton University, on the English south coast, to study fine art. “I was trying to do this thing where I was marrying drawing and painting,” he says. He became disillusioned, however, when he realized that to get a good grade, he was better off doing what the course required rather than genuinely experimenting.After graduating in 2018, he had two paintings in a group show that were damaged in a fire. The insurance payout meant that he could afford to take a course at London’s Royal Drawing School, and those two years set him on the track he’s on today. The only problem was that in order to save money he had to live with his parents, which made him feel, he says, as though “my life was on hold, and I couldn’t develop personally.” Potential boyfriends would be put off by the fact that he hadn’t left home; a sense of yearning for the unobtainable is still discernible in his pictures, although, he says, “I’ve definitely had my fill since.”Covid meant that he also had to stay in his parents’ house throughout lockdown, but that turned out to be another transformative period. “I discovered Kundalini yoga, which is quite spiritual, all about breath work,” Grewal says. “Doing a repetitive practice that was open and freeing, at a time when everything felt so restrictive and closed in, filled me with this audacious ease. I would go out and draw in the park every day.” Since the art world had shut down, there was no pressure on Grewal to launch his career. He thinks that having this break was crucial: “Things need a kind of gestation period.”Jake Grewal Trustlands, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery.After lockdown, Grewal started selling his work on Instagram, and then in 2020 took part in the influential graduate show New Contemporaries, which, along with a show the following year at Jhaveri Contemporary in India with Prem Sahib and Sunil Gupta, “brought a more serious engagement” with his practice. He acquired representation by the gallery Thomas Dane, and last year participated in an exhibition at Pallant House, in Chichester, Sussex, alongside well-known “neo-romantic” artists. “I was looking at the darker elements of being a queer person, and of the landscape, and that’s something the British neo-romantics capture quite well.”Grewal says that his work expresses some of the angst, as well as the joy, he feels as a queer person of color. “There’s a sense of othering that’s inherent to the queer experience,” he says. “Also, for me, I have felt a displacement because of my identity. There’s a question of whether, or where, you fit in.” In the new show, Grewal also experiments with a new kind of mysticism, which he attributes to his aunt. “She’s quite woo-woo and into Native American ways of thinking,” he says. “And apparently there’s this kind of spiritual veil, and when you’re by the coast, that’s where the veil is thinnest, and you can easily access other dimensions. So, I was thinking about that too.” Source link

[chilimili212]

On a summer evening last year, on a clifftop by Porthmeor Beach in Cornwall, southwest England, passers-by might have seen an artist in a tracksuit painting the sunset. Did people hassle him? “Obviously,” says Jake Grewal, the artist in question. “But in a really nice way. A dog would come up and sniff my cadmium paints. I’d be like, ‘Please take your dog away, it’s poisonous. I’m scared he’s going to die.’”It’s surprising to think of a young artist today standing at an easel en plein air like Monet. But the gorgeous results of Grewal’s work are currently on show at the prestigious Studio Voltaire in London. Made up of 11 paintings completed in the past year, the London-based artist’s new exhibition is called “Under the Same Sky.” The smaller landscapes were made in Cornwall; Grewal had a monthlong residency at Porthmeor studios, where artists including Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson once painted. “I could hear the sound of the ocean while I was in the studio,” Grewal remembers. “The residency came at a time when I had just turned 30, just had a breakup, and then I went to the bottom end of the country to be on my own. It allowed me to paint outside, and to experience those emotions in an organic way.”The other big influence was Grewal’s first trip to India, which also took place last year. Previously, he would get irritated when people attributed the haziness of his landscapes, and their remarkable use of color, to his Indian heritage on his father’s side (his mother is Welsh). “But when I got there, I understood where people were coming from, because there are strange colors there that you wouldn’t normally see next to one another. And there is this haze everywhere.”Jake Grewal, Nurturing Waters, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Although Trustlands, a long landscape in the show, is inspired by a photograph Grewal took in Goa, none of the beaches, rocks, or seascapes he paints are taken directly from life: they are composites of places he’s been, or scenes from his imagination. Often, the paintings contain naked male figures with their faces turned from the viewer, half-hidden in nature or clambering over rocks, as in the almost 19-footlong canvas The Cycle of Erosion. Those figures are self-portraits of a kind, but they also suggest enquiry, sexuality, and hope. “I wanted the show to be about freedom, openness, a memory of warmth, and a kind of contentment,” he says.Grewal’s dreamy and confident paintings have won the artist an ardent following. The director Luca Guadagnino commissioned him to paint a work to use as a poster for his film Queer; before that, Grewal’s 2022 charcoal drawing The Sentimentality of Nature was acquired by Hepworth Wakefield, a renowned British museum, after he won the inaugural J.W. Anderson Collections Fund. The artist has a remarkable grasp of color, which he says is innate, and while he loves to immerse himself in art history, he is also keen to give himself technical challenges—for instance, by making charcoal look like paint and vice-versa.Usually, he’s at his studio in east London from 11 AM to 6 PM. It takes him about three months to make a large painting, and he focuses on three to five canvases at a time. While he works, he listens to NPR’s Tiny Desk series, or to lectures by artists he admires like Peter Doig or Marlene Dumas. “Sometimes you can feel as if the only thing that matters is the show you’re making,” he says. “To think about other people’s perspectives on art and making can be quite liberating.”Photo by Joyce NGPhoto by Joyce NGGrewal was brought up in London and was inspired at school by an art teacher who taught him about J.M.W. Turner, Howard Hodgkin, and Barbara Hepworth. In 2013, he left for Brighton University, on the English south coast, to study fine art. “I was trying to do this thing where I was marrying drawing and painting,” he says. He became disillusioned, however, when he realized that to get a good grade, he was better off doing what the course required rather than genuinely experimenting.After graduating in 2018, he had two paintings in a group show that were damaged in a fire. The insurance payout meant that he could afford to take a course at London’s Royal Drawing School, and those two years set him on the track he’s on today. The only problem was that in order to save money he had to live with his parents, which made him feel, he says, as though “my life was on hold, and I couldn’t develop personally.” Potential boyfriends would be put off by the fact that he hadn’t left home; a sense of yearning for the unobtainable is still discernible in his pictures, although, he says, “I’ve definitely had my fill since.”Covid meant that he also had to stay in his parents’ house throughout lockdown, but that turned out to be another transformative period. “I discovered Kundalini yoga, which is quite spiritual, all about breath work,” Grewal says. “Doing a repetitive practice that was open and freeing, at a time when everything felt so restrictive and closed in, filled me with this audacious ease. I would go out and draw in the park every day.” Since the art world had shut down, there was no pressure on Grewal to launch his career. He thinks that having this break was crucial: “Things need a kind of gestation period.”Jake Grewal Trustlands, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery.After lockdown, Grewal started selling his work on Instagram, and then in 2020 took part in the influential graduate show New Contemporaries, which, along with a show the following year at Jhaveri Contemporary in India with Prem Sahib and Sunil Gupta, “brought a more serious engagement” with his practice. He acquired representation by the gallery Thomas Dane, and last year participated in an exhibition at Pallant House, in Chichester, Sussex, alongside well-known “neo-romantic” artists. “I was looking at the darker elements of being a queer person, and of the landscape, and that’s something the British neo-romantics capture quite well.”Grewal says that his work expresses some of the angst, as well as the joy, he feels as a queer person of color. “There’s a sense of othering that’s inherent to the queer experience,” he says. “Also, for me, I have felt a displacement because of my identity. There’s a question of whether, or where, you fit in.” In the new show, Grewal also experiments with a new kind of mysticism, which he attributes to his aunt. “She’s quite woo-woo and into Native American ways of thinking,” he says. “And apparently there’s this kind of spiritual veil, and when you’re by the coast, that’s where the veil is thinnest, and you can easily access other dimensions. So, I was thinking about that too.” Source link

[oliviajoyice21]

On a summer evening last year, on a clifftop by Porthmeor Beach in Cornwall, southwest England, passers-by might have seen an artist in a tracksuit painting the sunset. Did people hassle him? “Obviously,” says Jake Grewal, the artist in question. “But in a really nice way. A dog would come up and sniff my cadmium paints. I’d be like, ‘Please take your dog away, it’s poisonous. I’m scared he’s going to die.’”It’s surprising to think of a young artist today standing at an easel en plein air like Monet. But the gorgeous results of Grewal’s work are currently on show at the prestigious Studio Voltaire in London. Made up of 11 paintings completed in the past year, the London-based artist’s new exhibition is called “Under the Same Sky.” The smaller landscapes were made in Cornwall; Grewal had a monthlong residency at Porthmeor studios, where artists including Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson once painted. “I could hear the sound of the ocean while I was in the studio,” Grewal remembers. “The residency came at a time when I had just turned 30, just had a breakup, and then I went to the bottom end of the country to be on my own. It allowed me to paint outside, and to experience those emotions in an organic way.”The other big influence was Grewal’s first trip to India, which also took place last year. Previously, he would get irritated when people attributed the haziness of his landscapes, and their remarkable use of color, to his Indian heritage on his father’s side (his mother is Welsh). “But when I got there, I understood where people were coming from, because there are strange colors there that you wouldn’t normally see next to one another. And there is this haze everywhere.”Jake Grewal, Nurturing Waters, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery. Although Trustlands, a long landscape in the show, is inspired by a photograph Grewal took in Goa, none of the beaches, rocks, or seascapes he paints are taken directly from life: they are composites of places he’s been, or scenes from his imagination. Often, the paintings contain naked male figures with their faces turned from the viewer, half-hidden in nature or clambering over rocks, as in the almost 19-footlong canvas The Cycle of Erosion. Those figures are self-portraits of a kind, but they also suggest enquiry, sexuality, and hope. “I wanted the show to be about freedom, openness, a memory of warmth, and a kind of contentment,” he says.Grewal’s dreamy and confident paintings have won the artist an ardent following. The director Luca Guadagnino commissioned him to paint a work to use as a poster for his film Queer; before that, Grewal’s 2022 charcoal drawing The Sentimentality of Nature was acquired by Hepworth Wakefield, a renowned British museum, after he won the inaugural J.W. Anderson Collections Fund. The artist has a remarkable grasp of color, which he says is innate, and while he loves to immerse himself in art history, he is also keen to give himself technical challenges—for instance, by making charcoal look like paint and vice-versa.Usually, he’s at his studio in east London from 11 AM to 6 PM. It takes him about three months to make a large painting, and he focuses on three to five canvases at a time. While he works, he listens to NPR’s Tiny Desk series, or to lectures by artists he admires like Peter Doig or Marlene Dumas. “Sometimes you can feel as if the only thing that matters is the show you’re making,” he says. “To think about other people’s perspectives on art and making can be quite liberating.”Photo by Joyce NGPhoto by Joyce NGGrewal was brought up in London and was inspired at school by an art teacher who taught him about J.M.W. Turner, Howard Hodgkin, and Barbara Hepworth. In 2013, he left for Brighton University, on the English south coast, to study fine art. “I was trying to do this thing where I was marrying drawing and painting,” he says. He became disillusioned, however, when he realized that to get a good grade, he was better off doing what the course required rather than genuinely experimenting.After graduating in 2018, he had two paintings in a group show that were damaged in a fire. The insurance payout meant that he could afford to take a course at London’s Royal Drawing School, and those two years set him on the track he’s on today. The only problem was that in order to save money he had to live with his parents, which made him feel, he says, as though “my life was on hold, and I couldn’t develop personally.” Potential boyfriends would be put off by the fact that he hadn’t left home; a sense of yearning for the unobtainable is still discernible in his pictures, although, he says, “I’ve definitely had my fill since.”Covid meant that he also had to stay in his parents’ house throughout lockdown, but that turned out to be another transformative period. “I discovered Kundalini yoga, which is quite spiritual, all about breath work,” Grewal says. “Doing a repetitive practice that was open and freeing, at a time when everything felt so restrictive and closed in, filled me with this audacious ease. I would go out and draw in the park every day.” Since the art world had shut down, there was no pressure on Grewal to launch his career. He thinks that having this break was crucial: “Things need a kind of gestation period.”Jake Grewal Trustlands, 2024.Photo by Ben Westoby, © Jake Grewal. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery.After lockdown, Grewal started selling his work on Instagram, and then in 2020 took part in the influential graduate show New Contemporaries, which, along with a show the following year at Jhaveri Contemporary in India with Prem Sahib and Sunil Gupta, “brought a more serious engagement” with his practice. He acquired representation by the gallery Thomas Dane, and last year participated in an exhibition at Pallant House, in Chichester, Sussex, alongside well-known “neo-romantic” artists. “I was looking at the darker elements of being a queer person, and of the landscape, and that’s something the British neo-romantics capture quite well.”Grewal says that his work expresses some of the angst, as well as the joy, he feels as a queer person of color. “There’s a sense of othering that’s inherent to the queer experience,” he says. “Also, for me, I have felt a displacement because of my identity. There’s a question of whether, or where, you fit in.” In the new show, Grewal also experiments with a new kind of mysticism, which he attributes to his aunt. “She’s quite woo-woo and into Native American ways of thinking,” he says. “And apparently there’s this kind of spiritual veil, and when you’re by the coast, that’s where the veil is thinnest, and you can easily access other dimensions. So, I was thinking about that too.” Source link

[josephine-practicum]

My First Draft

Log for 11/11/2024

Today I worked from 10AM to 3PM. I spend half of the time working through potential leads, and the rest drafting my article. I didn't find a whole lot today, so hopefully I'm more successful tomorrow.

I spent most of my research time sorting through the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives. Despite being based in California, this repository has a few collections with Alabama content. Not a lot, but enough to fill out a decent number of cells in my spreadsheet.

Additionally, I sent an email to the Birmingham Museum of Art to find out if they have any Queer content in their archives. So far, I've identified an exhibit (although they refer to it as a collection) containing art from multiple Queer artists. The exhibit was showcased back in 2023, and so I inquired about any other Queer centered content they have behind the scenes.

I've also identified a new problem: institutions are blocking my messages because my email is foreign. This makes sense for Universities with institution-specific emails, and yet I find it strange that these emails didn't go through. What's the point of having a public facing archive if you can't contact them about it? Helpfully I can get some answers from Lawson during our last meeting.

As for my draft of my article, it's very rough. I only got about a page's worth of content. It's all just brain vomit for now, but I can see it becoming something legible soon. Here's the first paragraph I wrote:

The rest of the draft is full of random ramblings, but this at the very least conveys some sense of direction. Until tomorrow!

[sfacgalleries]

Part 2 - Go West: African American Lives and Westward Migration Performance from San Francisco Arts Commission on Vimeo.

Monday, August 12, 2024 | 8:00 p.m. Southeast Community Center, Alex Pitcher Pavilion and Amphitheater, 1550 Evans Ave, San Francisco

Join artist Trina Michelle Robinson for an artist talk (pt 1) followed by a special performance (pt 2) featuring her new video work Go West!

Projected onto the exterior of the Southeast Community Center’s amphitheater and accompanied by musician Christopher Lowell Clarke and dancer Audrey Johnson, Go West looks at the migration of Black people to California from not only the South, but also the East coast and Midwest. Using the large-scale projection as a metaphor for taking up space, this piece celebrates the drive felt by so many to travel far from home in search of new opportunities, adventure, and also to simply rest.

A conversation between Robinson and author, curator, and educator Jacqueline Francis will take place inside the Alex Pitcher Pavilion prior to the performance. Refreshments provided.

This program is organized in conjunction with Praxis of Local Knowledge, a group exhibition featuring four artists, including Robinson, creating work that explores their ancestral stories and grappling with these memories today. The exhibition is on view through Saturday, August 17, 2024 at the San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery.

Artist Bios Trina Michelle Robinson is a San Francisco based visual artist. Her work has been shown at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia, the San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery, Minnesota Street Project, and New York’s Wassaic Project and is currently included in the prestigious triennial Bay Area Now 9 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She had a solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), a Smithsonian Affiliate, as part of their Emerging Artist Program 2022-23. Robinson is a 2024 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist and her print series Ghost Prints of Loss is included in the book Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? published in 2023 by CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and Sternberg Press. She previously worked in print and digital media in production at companies such as The New York Times T Magazine, Vanity Fair and Slack before receiving her M.F.A. from California College of the Arts in 2022.

As a storyteller, she traveled the country telling the story of exploring her ancestry with The Moth Mainstage at Lincoln Center in New York, in addition to touring with them on stages in San Francisco, Portland, OR, Omaha, NE and Westport, CT. Her first story aired on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour in 2019 and her second in earlier this year. trinamrobinson.com

Christopher Lowell Clarke is a trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. Christopher's professional performance experience includes playing with the East Coast Jazz Festival Fish Middleton Rising Star Band in Baltimore, Carnival Cruise Lines Main Orchestra and Jazz Chair, the Johnny Nocturne Band at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Orvieto, Italy, his own quintet at the Fillmore Jazz Festival in San Francisco, and the Contemporary Music Orchestra at the Monterey Jazz Festival. He has also performed with Eddie Marshall and Holy Mischief, the Marcus Shelby Big Band, the Howard Wiley Quintet, and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra. Christopher currently serves as a teaching artist for SF Jazz/Oakland Public Conservatory After School Jazz Program, Oakland Public Conservatory, SF Jazz’s Jazz In Session Program, Oaktown Jazz Workshop, and the Lafayette Summer Jazz Camp. Christopher has released several albums, including The Swooper (Lifeforce Records 1018) and multiple albums with bassist Dewayne Oakley on Naki-Do Records. christopherlowellclarke.com

Audrey Johnson is a queer, Black, mixed-race dance artist and plant worker with roots from Detroit, Michigan/Anishinaabe land, currently based in Oakland, CA/Ohlone land. Audrey’s performance, choreographic, and teaching work experiments with improvisation and embodied time travel, in refusal of colonized time and space. She has shown performance work in the San Francisco Bay Area and Detroit, and has performed in the companies of artists Gerald Casel, Jennifer Harge, Biba Bell, Detour Dance, Stephanie Hewett, among others. As an educator, she has taught dance as embodied practice at community spaces, dance centers, and youth programs, and is a current faculty member with the LINES BFA Program through Dominican University. She holds a BFA in Dance from Wayne State University and was a co-founder of Collective Sweat Detroit. audreyjohnson.space