QUEER 2022

This exhibition, “QUEER: Celebrating Work by LGBTQIA Artists,” holds a dear place in my heart. As a queer artist, business owner and curator, I have a deep passion and feel a special responsibility to provide a platform for others to show their work. To submit artwork for an exhibition is not only a risk which carries with it the chance of rejection (a fear all too familiar for someone who is queer), but it is an exercise of intimate vulnerability. One’s work is direct access and exposure to what makes the artist tick, feeding their life, their mind and their soul. For a queer artist, it is this very public gaze that can be a beautifully validating experience as well as a potentially dangerous one. Again, this real risk that may result in pain or pleasure is a familiar gamble…a familiar “coming out” to the world and growing into ourselves. 

Much of this work has been created within the last two years, which has been a strangely isolated time. Many took this as an opportunity to reflect and look deeply into what it means to be happy - peaceful - connected - fulfilled - authentic…what it means to just “be.”  Art is, of course, transformative in many ways, and always will be for so many reasons, but I have found that through art, people can show the world who they really are…who they have always been...and, for them, what it means to “be.”

Join me in celebrating this collection of eclectic work, and the brave LGBTQIA artists who created it. 

 Queerly,
-Jen