Four Great Queer Art Presales and Kickstarters Happening Now! (A Couple Ending Soon!)
There are FOUR amazing queer artists doing crowd funding to develop capital to finish their amazing projects! A couple are ending in just a few days so act soon!
I believe that supporting queer art is vital to survival. In a world where we don’t see ourselves represented in mainstream culture, where even if we do see an LGBT person probably they aren’t fat, a person of color, disabled, older and/or working class. And speaking of class, it can be really hard to fund your projects as an artist with limited means and without parents or relatives who can patron, or the skills and resources to write grants.
Femme on Femme, Art and Inspiration: A conversation with GAYmous!
I wrote about the awesomeness that is GAYmous a year ago, when they released their first video (Let’s Pretend We Don’t Have) Feelings. Since then, they’ve released a new self-titled EP and we’re blessed with their newest video, Femme on Femme!
If poppy new wave and contemporary radically inclusive queer politics had twin babies and they came out as a spandex clad fat genderqueer femme and an LHB (stands for Long Hair Butch), that’s GAYmous. GAYmous‘ sound is reminiscent of all of the magic I loved in the 80s. Do you like You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) by Dead or Alive? Or What Have I Done to Deserve This by Pet Shop Boys? Or Venus by Bananarama? You should give GAYmous a try!
Fun Home The Musical is Totally Awesome
I was offered press tickets to see a preview of Fun Home, the new Broadway musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home. Alison Bechdel is famous (to me and to every lesbian from the 90s, as the author of the famed comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.
I thought the musical was great. It was super tender and distilled the important parts of the book for me. It was brilliantly staged in the round, with furniture moving up from the floor and around through holes in the stage. It struggled to flesh out the mother’s character, who I thought had a bigger part in the book.
Mix Festival in NYC Now through November 17th
You know how sometimes you ask the Universe to make your life magical beyond your wildest dreams and you have an evening that is clearly the answer to that?
You know how sometimes the most incredibly transformative things are, by their very nature, completely temporary?
Last night I found myself awash in unexpected magic when I headed to the Mix Festival. I went to a panel discussion about Race and the Colonial Impulse (which was also amazing) and Mix was the official after party so I figured I’d head there and get free admission. I never realized Mix was free if you didn’t go to the screenings! You can just wander in an experience the Mix Factory and all of its glory.
Mix is in its 26th year! I kept sending up prayers of thanks to my queer ancestors for making this whole shebang possible and wonder how it has stayed so underground?
I walked into the venue and it was so enormous–it looks like nothing on the outside and inside there are countless huge art installations. My friend Rachael Shannon’s amazing Brestival Vestibules are there, a huge dinosaur bone looking thing, several lounges full of pillows, and rooms and rooms of interactive, light-filled, video incorporating work so vast that in four hours I barely scratched the surface.
Queer Artists Make Great Queer Gifts
“I call it the Comfort of Queer Family Wisdom and it’s for anyone who could use a little tender love and history because we are not alone.”
We can all use tender love! The calendar is beautiful and full of queer faces.
“This is all-out, gloves off, direct action TLC. These are the voices and role models that I sought out for comfort and strength. This is the calendar that I’d wished I’d had: full of family trees and loving words to remind you that you belong. A lot of the advice is also for facing racism.”