The Shapes of Our Community Art Show
DNDA is excited to announce The Shapes of Our Community Art Show, featuring artworks from queer and LGBTQIA+ artists that conveys the shapes and emotions of community. Specifically, this art show aims to highlight queer and LGBTQIA+ artists and their evolving artistic experience in answering the following questions:
- How do you experience your community as a queer artist?
- How does your art interact with the queer community?
We are grateful for the participation from Maize A.V.n., Koji Kobuta, Caela Bailey, and Cebron “Kyle” Bradford III.
The Art Show is available for public viewing at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center’s Promenade Gallery. Artworks are available for purchase. The Art Show will run until November 30, 2022.
Maize A.V.n.
IG: amaizink_lIc
Maize believes their art comes from an ancient place, drawing from emotion and painting from unseen influences, they believe twists and turns of their designs are special artwork and symbols channeled from their ancestors.
“My wish is to take viewers on an uplifting, unique and healing-arts journey when they see the designs I create. My goal is to continue that positive process of the heart and mind through various applications of my designs. We create from our souls but there’s always another influence that guides us.”
Koji Kobuta
E-mail: kubotakoji@outlook.com
“In my work, surface, form, texture and color come together to create emotional statements. I use a pure colorist approach and linear perspective design. I paint in a variety of forms from stylized representational paintings to abstractions and hybrids. I challenge myself to achieve a total configuration where all the parts support the whole.”
“Being an emerging artist and a gay man, as anywhere else in our society I strongly feel that I’m a part of a minority group. But that doesn’t stop me from painting. Quite to the contrary it causes me to draw more inspiration and encouragement from past gay artists. Based on my experience, a far greater proportion of the Seattle art community is LGBTQIA+ than people generally realize. I am proud to be part of such a progressive and open-minded culture. We are uniquely empowered to communicate the idea that it needs to be understood that not everybody is hetero and that no one decides what a person is really attracted to. There is no way to manipulate the true feelings of others or to instill in them the fear of being mentally clipped beings. Our art shows that being true to oneself is the only way.”
Caela Bailey
IG-@Caela.The.Gutter.Queen
Caela Bailey, also known as The Gutter Queen, is best known first for her performance art-she is a skilled vocalist, host, creator and magic maker, who believes art, like life, is meant to be expressed through us in any way we see fit.
“The place I have found the most potent lessons and deeper healing from the fears & impacts of homophobia, racism, classism and capitalism, is in nature. Nature gives to us all freely and equally, regardless of who we are or where we come from. Nature shows us that all colors, shapes, sizes, and literally any form of expression of being have a place in this incredibly vast and mysterious universe. We are shown that everything is imperfectly perfect and that diversity is the embodiment of god/source experiencing itself. That is how I feel about humanity. Witnessing the absolutely gloriously dripping beauty of the expanse of the human experience has made this life worth living in spite of the many disgusting ways greed and fear have tried to overtake us. Nature shows us that balance, cycles, reciprocation, relationships, seasons, life and death, all play their own important roles. My hope is that everyone is able to see that in themselves.”
Cebron “Kyle” Bradford III
Instagram: @cebreazypaints
Website: www.cebronkylebradford.com
Cebron “Kyle” Bradford IlI is a transplant to the PNW from the desert town of Bakersfield, CA. Artistically he’s found inspiration from nature and the brilliance of a good sunset on a beach, with a splash of a rebellious spirit. Since 5 years of age, he’s regularly gotten in trouble for touching art displays and “not following clear instructions”. Artistically it’s translated into creating tactile art breaking the traditional instructions of art being observed at a distance rather than experienced up-close. The texture in the paintings captures movement, entices with color, and invites touch to experience the raised ridges and dramatic landscapes created with each layer of paint.
There’s something rebellious about boldly laying the colors and letting people mentally blend and make the connections themselves. It’s a little like life, we all are going to have different colors (building blocks/ talents/ experiences) and those aren’t going to blend with the next person; but there’s beauty observing how these differences interact in close proximity.
Thank you 4Culture, ArtsWA, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture for supporting The Shapes of Community Art Show.