TRANNY FEST: CALL FOR ENTRIES 
Visual Artists
Francesca Alaimo
(Rome 03/12/1970) works with video art and digital photography.
Between March and May 2007 she has presented her latest artwork in Medellin, Colombia: the exhibition ‘Soy’ at the Body Art Gallery and the video ‘Geologias’, specifically created for ‘El Dia de la Tierra’ festival in Medellin, also shown at Another Roadside Attraction Gallery in London. Her video, Geologie, will also be showing at the Bacon Screen Project on May 3rd in London.
In December 2006 she took part to ‘The Postcard Show’ at Surface Gallery in Nottingham. In November 2006 she won the first prize in the ‘In Picture’ photo competition in the UK national newspaper magazine Guardian Weekend and the third prize in ’Thin City Station of the Future’ competition, organised by Transport for London. Her body of work ‘Sono’ was shown in Rome at Agave gallery from 1 to 19 June 2007.
She lives and works in London. www.francescaalaimo.com
Jose Maro Alvarado
I am an artist working in SF and living in Sonoma County. I do sculpture, drawing, painting and lithography. I have been working and showing for the last twenty years.
I was born in Texas and I come from a migrant farmworker background. I graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara with a degree in Fine Arts with emphasis in Painting and Printmaking and received a teaching credential from CSU San Francisco.
I have worked for the AIDS Health Project in San Francisco for over ten years and that experience spilled over into my artwork for several years with exhibitions like, Silent Echoes, Against the Tide and Shattered Continuity. I received an award from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation to assist me with my project, The Inner Structure of Circumstance.
I am currently working on an idea/project called Probable Memory, inspired by dreams and several books I have been reading around the topics of memory, history and metaphysics. Probable Memory, is about events that might or might not have happened but are now perceived differently through time.
In lithography I have been doing what I call Gum Paintings on Aluminum and Lithographic ink; abstract figurative with textures and text. In sculpture I have been doing Idea Constructions using body castings in plaster and found and fabricated objects.
Valerie Amédée
A woman first, a trans person second. And it is only an incidental detail that I was born male.
A complete misfit who is only rarely seen for the whole person she is. Different everywhere she goes. Whose heart pumps lava, not blood, and whose body is full of warmth and love yet who’s never found a mate.
A woman who is full of surprises and irreverence. Who will gladly fuck you so long as you have papers – but don’t even bother asking unless you like stovetop cappuccino. Because sex isn’t complete without cappuccino and cuddling on your fire escape until noon the next day.
Sid Branch
I am 55 years old, a Seattle native and currently live in NYC. I transitioned in 2001. My creativity, emotions and politics are best expressed through painting, mixed media, photography, theater, prose and on occasion, spoken word. I am in the process of writing my memoir – which makes my present sense better understood.
Carol Nelson Ceres
Carol Nelson Ceres received her education at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Her BFA major focused in painting and drawing; her minor degree included film and art history. She was gratefully mentored by many diverse talents, such as: Frank Piatek in Painting, Dawn Weidemann in Film, Nam June Paik in Video and Rachel Rosenthal in Performance Art. She has shown work in Chicago and San Francisco.
In Ceres’ work, thick lines are used to define weight, movement and dimension. In the figurative series, “Self Unraveling”, lines become tools with which the figures can modify and transform themselves. The series is a triad, entitled sequentially as “Dawn”, “Midday” and “Dusk”. Historically, these titles have been used throughout mythology and art to symbolize the different stages of life (Childhood, Adulthood and Old Age, respectively). In this series, they symbolize different stages of an internal journey that is ultimately transcendental.
As individual pieces,”Midday” portrays conceptualizing self transformation and, in “Dusk”, the figure symbolizes liberation and self-transcendence.
Bobby Cheung
Bobby Cheung is a mixed-media and digital artist born in Hong Kong. He moved to San Francisco at the age of 10. He holds a B.S. in industrial technology, Magna Cum Laude from San Francisco State University. He has served as a Fresh Meat in the Gallery curator since 2005. www.mingster007.com
Miles Conrad
Miles Conrad lives and works in Tucson, AZ and is currently enrolled at San Francisco Art Institute’s Low residency Summer MFA Program. His work is shown regionally and nationally and has been featured in publications such as the Tucson Weekly, Arizona Daily Star, the Tucson Home Magazine, as well as KUAT Channel 6 Television. His work is represented in numerous private collections and in the permanent collection at Tucson Museum of Art. He teaches encaustic painting and 3D techniques in workshops across the county and from his studio in Tucson.
Tristan Crane
Tristan Crane is a writer and photographer from San Francisco. Tristan’s first published work was a 4-issue comic book series titled ‘How Loathsome’, which was nominated for a Glaad media award in 2004. His newest graphic novel ‘InVisible’ was released in Jan of 2009, and also deals with themes of gender identity and personal exploration. Tristan’s photography has appeared on gallery walls around the bay area, in New York, and in magazines including ‘Curve’, ‘The Advocate’, ‘Shojo Beat’, and ‘Other’. Currently Tristan is preparing to show more work, shooting a great deal of bondage photography along side countless pictures of his cat.
Simon Croft
I’m a trans-man living and working in London, England. I transitioned in my early 30’s and began making art at roughly the same time.
Progressing through several courses of study over a period of 8 years, I completed a BA in Fine Art (Kingston University, London, England) in 2006, winning the Waterstones prize for Best Studio Dissertation for “Skin Problems: Can Transgendered Art Move Beyond the Body?” in my final year.
I subsequently exhibited at Transfabulous 2006 (Oxford House, Bethnal Green), Art Out! (Novas Gallery, Camden) and took part in the ‘Trans Men’s Lives’ photographic project (Swiss Cottage). Pieces shown included objects, installations, video, photography and a large text wall piece.
In addition, I curated the 2007 Transfabulous film program and was selected to present an Artists Talk on the theme of Space and Transgendered Art, also at Transfabulous. Prior to getting involved in art, I spent 10 years working in commercial manufacturing following a degree in Engineering, and the influences of this previous career are often evident in my work.
Alongside my current practice, I work part time in the London voluntary sector, supporting a wide range of charities and other not-for-profit organisations.
Danyol
danyol was born in 1970 in Orange County, California just a stone’s throw away from Disneyland. Growing up he nourished himself on a steady diet of pop art, cubism, and sarcasm. danyol’s use of his own life and surroundings combine to form a dizzying combination of colors, patterns, and textures. These are then masked out by definitive figures and shapes, somehow bringing some definition to his chaos. While bright and smile inducing on initial viewing, look closely at the found objects collaged in the background; they leave hints as to the deeper meaning of the painting. Look at it from one angle and it is seemingly straight forward, but look from another angle in different lighting, and the painting becomes much more.
“It’s like Warhol having dinner with Tex Avery with light carnival music playing in the background.” homeless person outside my show.
Nova Darkstar
I believe in the Cosmic Wonders of Nature and of the Universe.
Sela Davis
Sela Davis is a metalsmith and technologist currently based in Rochester, NY. Her interests vary in many ways, but they include things such as gender, technology, artwork, and hand-made objects. She has recently been involved in large multi-projector works involving collage, poetry, animation, and digital music, in which she acted as audio engineer as well as a mentor to some of the animators. She has also helped to create a Panodome at RIT as well as worked extensively with FTIR multitouch technology. Sela is also an active member of Computer Science House at RIT and has helped to organize two BarCamps in the Rochester area. She considers herself well-balanced, overstressed, and finds her life utterly hilarious in a number of ways.
Miss Day
Miss Day is a multimedia, trans-feminist artist. She is interested in art as a form of communication and as a means for social change. Sometimes this means making beautiful art with subversive content. Other times this means being honest with strangers, even though honest vulnerability can be terrifying.
Born and raised in Boston, Miss Day immigrated to Portland, Oregon in 2001 and graduated from Oregon College of Art & Craft in the spring of 2007. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York and works as an artist assistant as well as a service provider to queer homeless youth.
Laurie Toby Edison
I have been a photographer since 1989. In 1994 I published Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes, a black & white fine art photography book. My photographs have been exhibited in New York City, Tokyo, Kyoto, Toronto Boston, London, and San Francisco. My second book Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes, was published in the fall of 2003. Familiar Men?s book opening exhibition was in the 301 Gallery at the San Francisco Queer Center in October of 2003. A retrospective of 100 of my photographs -”Meditations on the Body: Recent Work” was exhibited at the National Museum of Art in Osaka. In the last year, I have keynoted a teaching conference at Columbia and given colloquia at Wellesley and Vassar. I have recently returned from two months in Japan, photographing for Women of Japan, a suite of clothed portraits of the wide variety of women who live in Japan. www.laurietobyedison.com
I work collaboratively with the people I photograph. We are already in an intense relationship by the nature of the work; the act of portraiture, clothed or unclothed, is profound. We work together to choose the locale, the poses, the familiar items in the photographs. Photographer and commentator Tee Corinne has said that my work “is unique in focusing on the nude without eroticizing it.” Bodies are sensual, and that’s part of my work, but I am engaged with the whole person in his or her space.
I have been a member of the Gay & Lesbian History Project, Queer Nation, and other Queer activist groups. I have two daughters and have lived and worked in San Francisco since 1980.
Gabriel R. Felix
My (new) name is Gabriel R. Felix (Gabe). I’ve been expressing my creativity through painting and sculpture for 4 years now. My journey as a self-taught artist began in Taos New Mexico, and I’ve continued here in Santa Rosa where I live and work as an Environmental Health Specialist. I’m 45 and have been in transition for about one year. As I continue to create, I hope to be aware of how the events, emotions and ‘change’ of transition influence my art.
Ari Lev Fornari (and Deb Schneider)
deb & ari are neighbors. they share a community garden plot where ari planted the veggies & deb planted the herbs, making this their second co-production. they can be found riding their bikes, attending organizing meetings, processing, processing, processing, and eating pot cookies.
eddie gesso
eddie gesso is a trans-identified interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Oakland, CA. He moved to the Bay area in 2003, from Seattle, to pursue his BFA at California College of the Arts (and Crafts). eddie’s artistic practice and writing is informed by queer and transgender theory. This body of work investigates inbetweenness-the border space.
Maya Gonzalez
I am a biracial genderqueer femme freak. I have been making art for 20 years and am largely self-taught. My fine art and my children’s book illustrations have been shown nationally and locally. My fine art has been included in many books about women and chicana/o art and I am on the cover of Contemporary Chicana/o Art, considered to be the bible of the chicana/o art movement. I have illustrated 17 multicultural children’s books and won numerous honors and awards.
Currently, I am completing work supported by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission to install high quality art prints of my work in local agencies that serve the queer and people of color communities dealing with trauma and profound healing experiences. I am also self-publishing a series of coloring books for gender-variant and queer children and strong chicana girls as well as a series of coloring books for grown ups of my art and queer erotica. I have lectured and taught for the last 13 years about the power of art and am creating a teachers’ packet to bring self-empowering creativity into the classroom.
Dalles Goosen
Dalles Goosen is a trans-identified person at Corcoran prison. Dalles’ artwork was loaned to Fresh Meat Productions by TIP (Trans/Gender Variant in Prison).
Asher Lauren Hartman
Asher Lauren Hartman is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on the exploration of the self in relation to Western histories and ideologies. His work has been exhibited widely at venues including The Whitney Biennial 2008 (as part of Charles Long’s film collective Curious Notch), Images 2009 (April), Recontres International (Paris and Berlin), the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila, and solo shows in Los Angeles at Track 16, LACE, Highways Performance Space, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Sea and Space Explorations, and New Image Art in Los Angeles. He co-founded and co-directed Crazy Space, a performance and exhibition space in Santa Monica and has curated many other projects. Hartman is a graduate of UCLA and Cal Arts and has taught at UC Riverside, Otis College of Art and Design and Moorpark College.
Eva Hayward(MA, PhD)
Eva Hayward is a guest researcher in the Center for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden, and an assistant professor in the Department of Cinematic Arts, University of New Mexico. She has lectured and published widely on animal studies, experimental film, and embodiment. Her recently published essays, “Lessons From A Starfish: Prefixial Flesh and Transspeciated Selves” and “Spider City Self,” explore intimacy, transsexuality, and animality. In addition, she is collaborating with Nina Fonoroff on an experimental film (16mm) entitled Ursule, which examines the failure of representation in relation to transgender transitioning. The film is accompanied by an essay, “‘Your Camera Is Making My Life Difficult’: Notes on a Troubled Collaboration,” which studies the relationship between a filmmaker and her transgender subject.
Rory Hejtmanek
Hello. My name is Rory Hejtmanek. I am a documentary photographer attending the Academy of Art University. I am a pre-op transguy. I have lived in the Bay area and El Paso, Texas throughout my life. Currently I am living in the Mission district, loving the sunshine. www.roryphotography.com
Wolf Israel
Born in 1949 Houston Texas. Saw at first steps that boundaries were for crossing. Transitioned FTM mid 1990s.
Marlene Hoeber
Marlene Hoeber has been messing with the way things work since she was a little boy. She has worked as a welder, a blacksmith, a messenger, a jeweler, a machinist, a dildo maker (the first to solicit design input directly from FTMs), a motorcycle mechanic, and a laboratory manager. She was a founding member of the first college campus based SM organization. Her current projects include a group of forged love letters from Lee Krasner to Jackson Pollock and a planned series of handmade kitchen knives.
Marlene lives in Oakland, where she has enjoyed being a private collaborator on a wide variety of projects with various artists and craftspeople over the years. While she generally avoids any sort of public recognition for her input in to others’ work, The Hyena Report is a project close to her heart and Fresh Meat is an audience of her peers. She blogs occasionally at Body Impolitic, www.laurietobyedison.com/discuss/
Jackadandy
Jackadandy is a California native who has lived in the Mojave Desert since 1992. Recent exhibitions have included Art Queen in Joshua Tree, Femina Potens/Fresh Meat in San Francisco, and the Hi-Desert Nature Museum in Yucca Valley. In 2008 Jack helped create the Wonder Valley Homestead Cabin Festival and is currently featured in an audio tour of the historic Small-Tract Homestead movement, a project of Kim Stringfellow and the California Council of the Humanities Stories Initiative. Jack has done many years of organizing on Mojave community and environmental issues and maintains several related Internet sites, as well as a personal website at jackadandy.net
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
My visual art investigates the Chinese philosophical principles of Yin and Yang, as well as personal commentary on community. The work indirectly reflects my physical and emotional life as an African American FTM. Paintings from the “Ripple Marks” series are meditative and inspired by minimalist sensibilities; abstract brushstrokes knock up against each other as in water or sand pushed by the wind. We all leave marks on people. We never really know what kind of impact simple actions or words can have on the most intimate of our partners, or passing strangers.
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson received a BA in Fine Arts, Magna Cum Laude from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and did graduate work at the University of Arizona, Tucson in Sculpture. Several odd jobs later, and with a severe case of missing the ocean, Stacy returned to California. He later received an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. After a successful career as a corporate financial planning and analysis director and a twenty-year break, he has returned to making art with renewed energy and focus. Stacy is also a writer; he is an MFA Creative Writing candidate at San Francisco State University.
Debra Kate
Debra Kate is an American performance/multi-media artist living in Berlin whose work concentrates on issues surrounding self-identification and the dynamics of social or group norms.
Using the stage name “Miss Debra Kate,” she performs regularly in Berlin as a “bio-queen” (female drag queen) in a variety of stage roles and scenarios. She also photographs herself and fellow performers, both on stage and off, documenting the elaborate transformation process from civilian to drag queen/king and back. In addition, she takes drag into the street and documents the results.
Debra Kate’s playful color photographs of the contemporary drag community in Berlin are a humanistic, behind the scenes portrayal of a vibrant counterculture. They challenge notions of identity and cultural expectations in the art and lives of the transgender community. The multi layered questioning of sexual identity and social categories resulting from “a biological woman performing as a man performing as a woman” forms the conceptual underpinning of her work. Since she is participating as a performer as well as a photographer, and is often the subject of her own photographs, Debra Kate also provides an unusually intimate view of the glamorous and not so glamorous everyday life of the transgender individual. www.DebraKate.com
Dorian Katz
Dorian Katz is a visual artist who draws no line between the innocent and truly perverse in her work. Recent projects handle adult themes through childlike tropes. Dorian is a cis woman whose gender presentation is fairly consistent, although she has been known to switch from species to species. She has been painting as her pony alter ego named Poppers for two years.
Dorian has had solo art shows at MicroClimate Project Space, GlamaRama, and the Jon Sims Center. She has participated in group shows at Stormy Leather, the San Francisco LGBT Center, Balazo 18, Spaces, Kearny Street Workshop and Live Worms. She was a founding member of the dyke erotica collective, Dirty Ink. Her illustrations and writing have been included in The Human Pony, Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, Other, Instant City, Clamor magazine and Morbid Curiosity magazine (1997-2007). She will be in “GIRL TALK: A Trans + Cis Woman Dialogue” on June 17th and has a solo exhibition at Luscious Garage in San Francisco this August. Dorian begins the MFA program in Art Practice this fall at Stanford University. www.doriankatz.com
Zohar Weiman Kelman
I was born in West Jerusalem in 1982. I completed a BA in Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Hebrew University and am currently working towards a PhD in comparative literature at UC Berkeley. I began doing drag in Poland, and have used my drag king persona to explore issues of Jewish masculinity, Eastern-European history and the politics of occupation resistance, to name a few. I try to work with Yiddish language and culture in new ways, using my present queer art practice to connect to the past, but also to construct possible alternative futures. I have performed and shown my work in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Warsaw and Berlin.
Caldwell Linkerbelle
Caldwell Linkerbelle is a self-taught southern queer photographer with a fabulous dog named Malachi.
Anne Louise
i was born in new jersey so that must of had to do something with it. Then i loved abstract art and hieronymus bosch. i have store rooms of guigan, pollack, patchen and kline, whoever dripped and smeared i noted. my rift with being transgender cut it open, splits and patches make it whole with art.
Sassafras Lowrey
is a trans/genderqueer high femme with a complicated gender history and connection to gender radical community. Over the course of hir adult life ze has embodied many gender identities including that of a butch dyke, and an FTM. At one point ze made the decision to hormonally transition. Sassafras is a militant storyteller, writer, artist, and activist. Ze believe that everyone has a story to tell, and that the telling of those stories is essential in order to create social change. Sassafras works as a freelance writer for various local and national queer publications, and hir visual art has been showcased in conferences and galleries around the United States. Sassafras recently graduated with a bachelors degree with a focus on queer media studies, and storytelling of the oppressed, and is currently exploring graduate school programs. Ze is an accomplished queer zinester, and storyteller and was an original member of the spoken word performance group “The Language of Paradox” founded and directed by Kate Bornstein. Sassafras and hir partner have recently relocated from Portland Oregon to New York City with their two cats and Sassafras’ princess service dog. Sassafras can be reached via email at sassafras.lowrey@hotmail.com
Bo Luengsuraswat
Bo is a Bangkok native who has called the Bay Area home since 2003. He is currently a graduate student in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA, where his research involves examining the experiences of Asian American and Asian immigrant FTMs through artistic and cultural production. He is also a recent graduate of California College of Arts (and Crafts) with a background in cultural studies and studio practice. His work invites the audience to consider identity as a medium rather than a restrictive genre, pushing the limits of how identity is defined.
Bo recently wrote a review of Sean Dorsey’s latest performance, Uncovered: The Diary Project, for the Newsletter of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. His article can be found at www.csw.ucla.edu/Newsletter/Apr09/Apr09_luengsuraswat.pdf
Regina Maiden
Regina Maiden is a trans-identified person at Corcoran prison. Regina’s artwork was loaned to Fresh Meat Productions by TIP (Trans/Gender Variant in Prison).
Billie Mandel
Billie Mandel is a sculptor, curator and writer who lives in San Francisco. She works in ceramic, cast plaster and metals, mixed media and acrylic paint. Most of her works on canvas are also sculptural, done with sculpture tools and not paint brushes.
Billie’s work focuses on the relationships between the body and the senses, art and language. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the GLBT Historical Society, Studio Z Gallery, and CityArt Gallery, and will be at Femina Potens Gallery this August for a solo exhibition. Billie is also a published writer and editor, and is currently working on her first novel.
Billie has been a curator and participating artist for Fresh Meat in the Gallery, a transgender visual art exhibition, for the 2004 and 2005 National Queer Arts Festival.
Karen Massing
Long time Gender Variant Crossdresser and avid photographer who loves to mix his/her two favorite hobbies. I often attend as many CD-TG-LGBT events as possible as a means to have places to go while dressed. Then started taking the camera, lights, backgrounds and so on in an attempt to capture classic style portraiture highlighting the beauty, grace and pride in all the lifestyles in San Francisco. Hopefully one day it will become a nice photo book.
Aaron McElroy
Aaron McElroy grew up in Delaware, and likes to make all sorts of things, ranging from photo-transfer paintings to little gardens to recycled bicycles. In sixth grade, Aaron made a coat of arms out of felt that read “Never Bored!” Pretty much that sums it up. His artwork explores the visuality of uncommitted identity, the path and history of the ambivalent gaze, and flickering moments of collective memory. www.aaronmcel.com
John Miller
A junior at California College of the Arts, John Miller is pursuing a BA in visual studies; a program that offers a combination of critical studies and the application of that knowledge through visually analyzing works of art, architecture, and design in order to better understand the entanglements in systems of meaning and power. My areas of emphasis include: contemporary queer art, queer history and theory, race theory, transgender cultural productions, performance art, and sculpture. His fascinations/inspirations are: Vaginal Davis, Del La Grace Volcano, Nayland Blake, Dynasty Handbag, Adrian Piper, his brother and his father.
Anne Louise Mortenson
Anne Louise Mortenson lives in Occidental in the North Bay. She’s active in the Transgender community and now a member of the executive committee of TGSF, Transgender San Francisco. In 2004 she became Ms. TGSF and spent a happy year representing the organization and community together with her special partner, Bobby Cheung, who was Mr. TGSF that year. She’s presently a graphic designer and has dabbled in the arts most of her life.
Anne Louise was born in New Jersey on the other side of the Hudson from New York City and later moved to Buffalo New York. When she was a teenager she loved abstract art, Hieronymus Bosch, Baudelaire and Thelonious Monk. She would collect posters and clip out pictures from Time magazine of Pollack, Sam Francis and Hans Hoffman, and whoever dripped and smeared. Being transgender caused her a great deal of trauma. She found that when she arted, it cut her life open, and with splotches and patches, dabs and splashes she could make it whole again with art.
This is what she says about her work, “Basically I want to watch myself work, it’s like watching a movie. I don’t want to be conscious of the movie to be, I just want it to happen. With art, the mediums are so open and sensitive to mood, so unrestrictive, that they become an expression of my emotions through the movement of my hands. So I watch my life becoming obvious in the pigment and where the brush goes. I become real.”
Cobi Moules
I was born in 1980 in the small town of Oakdale California where I lived the first 20 years of my life. After attending Modesto Junior College for 2 years I decided I needed to leave the small town environment and move to the bay area to finish my undergraduate education at San Jose State University. There I earned my BFA in 2004. For the past few years I have been living and creating art in San Francisco. During this time I feel I have been able to explore myself through my work. The new alleys that have been exposed through my gender identity struggles and discoveries have begun to play a major role in the themes of my work. The experience of using my art to express the things that I could not through words has brought my work to a new level. I have been accepted to the Masters of Fine Arts program at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts and will begin to work towards my MFA in the fall. After graduating I plan on continuing to strive to exhibit my work and deepen my self understanding.
Jes Muse
I am the third generation of artists in my family. My mother and grandmother are also artists, yet they were a little, let’s say, disconcerted, that I did not want to pursue anything but art and art school from a very early age. Born suburban New York, just north of Manhattan, I had the opportunity to visit the great museums of New York City on a fairly regular basis. The Met was my favorite. I wanted to live there, like in that children’s novel, I forget the name; I dreamt about getting lost and having to spend the night sleeping with the sarcophaguses or in an elegantly made up room in the American Decorative Arts wing. My imagination went wild imagining entire families and their interactions within those spaces. I am always thinking about things I could make, build, create; my brain is constantly working; sometimes causing sleepless nights. Art is my oxygen. And yes, Muse is my real last name.
Truc Thanh Nguyen
I am a budding artist hailing from Seattle, WA and identify as a gender queer, 1.5 generation Vietnamese American activist who had the misfortune of growing up in the suburbs of CT. My butt has been unemployed for over an awesome full year. It has been a year of struggle, reflection, exploration, a little more struggle and massively painful personal growth. I only recently realized that I have been fighting for justice my whole life. I’m coming to terms that fighters and warriors like me, don’t live long in battles when your hands are tied behind your back before you even enter the field. By trade I’m an independent trainer/consultant on fun topics like racism, classism, and heterosexism oh my, and try, really, really, hard to find compassion for ignorance, especially when it is our own. I have a lot of love community (even thought it is often bitter sweet) and am a volunteering fool, when I’m not too busy thinking about the impact of violence and oppression.
John D. Parker
“Labyrinth” weaves images and contradictions that exist within a transsexual artists imagination at the beginning of a gender/cultural transition. The artist reinterprets the style of story telling and color usage found on Greek (Red/Black) Attic vase painting. The imagery is born out of his study of Amazonian/Greek myth and art, psychological trauma associated with a southern upbringing, and contemporary queer culture.
John was born in Birmingham, Alabama, 32 years old and received his B.F.A. from University of Texas in Arlington. He is currently designing clothes for reused clothing line “No She Didn’t!”, an anti-sizest anti-capitalist pro fat-feminist clothing line based out of Columbia Missouri.
Emmett Ramstad
Emmett Ramstad is a visual artist and costume and set designer for dance. Based out of Oakland, California, Ramstad has exhibited his artwork in solo shows at Jon Sims Center for Performing Arts Gallery and Femina Potens Gallery in San Francisco, along with group shows such as Deviant Bodies at Cepa Gallery in New York, Fresh Meat in the Gallery in San Francisco, Engendered Species and Queer Craft at the Advocate Gallery in Los Angeles, and Reasonable at Hafriyat Gallery in Istanbul, Turkey. Ramstad holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. www.emmettramstad.com
Lacey Jane Roberts
Lacey Jane Roberts is pursuing a dual masters degree in Fine Arts and Visual Criticism at California College of Arts (and Crafts). She is interested in the overlapping of genderqueer, intersex, and Jewish communities, the relationship of craft to art (and vice versa), and issues surrounding HIV and AIDS. LJ is always looking for knitting/stitching buddies. In her free time she enjoys exploring her surroundings, reading, going to the beach, and spending time with her cat.
Jen Rosenstein
Jen Rosenstein is a Los Angeles based photographer who earned her BFA in Photography from Art Center College of Design. Her fascination with human nature projects itself through her portraiture, which confronts the onlooker with images that are undeniably honest, and captures individual complexities. Rosenstein self-published a photography book called Transformational Project this last year alongside an exhibit at Ed Gould Gallery at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was recently featured at The Annenberg Space For Photography in Los Angeles, Ca.
To purchase Transformational Project or to view more of her work, go to www.JenRosenstein.com
R. Sandler
I was an art student at Flagler College and now I am an art teacher for a bunch of very cool kids. I like to paint and draw and glue bits of things together. I think gender is a fun toy- or a headache, depending on the day.
Deb Schneider (and Ari Lev Fornari)
deb & ari are neighbors. they share a community garden plot where ari planted the veggies & deb planted the herbs, making this their second co-production. they can be found riding their bikes, attending organizing meetings, processing, processing, processing, and eating pot cookies.
Lex Non Scripta
Lex Non Scripta creates intricately hand cut paper pieces that exploit the manner in which negative space and cast shadows interact. Armed with an x-acto knife and an ever-expanding doctrine of transgressive politics, Lex carves worlds out of single sheets of paper, ever mindful of the frailty of her medium. She has exhibited in and curated shows around the United States, most recently in San Francisco, Raleigh, NC, and Alberta, Canada. In addition to exhibiting her art, Lex is the founder, creative director, jack-of-all-trades of ArtXX Magazine, a grassroots, collaborative publication by, for, and about women in the arts, has worked extensively with community-run arts organizations, and is always looking for new methods for the general public and creative expression to overlap. Lex holds a BFA in Illustration and Design from Columbia College Chicago. She works as a freelance artist, lives around an amazing and inspiring community of people, and plays between and among both worlds in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Maxx Sizeler
Maxx Sizeler is a mixed media artist focusing on installation work. Before Katrina and the Federal Flood, Maxx’s work centered on issues of living between the binaries of pink-girl and blue-boy. Maxx’s present work (Picking Up The Pieces, 2007) has been shaped by the experience of Katrina and how it has changed his life and New Orleans’ unique architectural landscape. Maxx’s solo projects include, Picking Up The Pieces, (Barristers Gallery New Orleans) The Morphing Mobility of Two and Fro, (Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans/ Leslie-Lohman Foundation, New York); Working Drawings For Gender, (Delgado University, New Orleans); and Questioning the Pink/blueprint of Gender, (University Of New Orleans). Maxx lives and works in New Orleans. To learn more about Maxx Sizeler’s work please visit his website at www.maxxsizeler.com.
Tuesday Smillie
Tuesday Smillie is a multimedia, trans-feminist artist. She is interested in art as a form of communication and as a means for social change. Sometimes this means making beautiful art with subversive content. Other times this means being honest with strangers, even though honest vulnerability can be terrifying. Smillie lives and works in New York as an artist assistant as well as a service provider to queer homeless youth.
Alex Smith
A farm boy from small-town Pennsylvania, far far away from home. Graduated with a degree in art, and not a clue what to do. In his own search for meaning and belonging, he hopped in the car and headed south. By the grace of some higher being with a plan, he landed in the beautiful city of New Orleans. Interest in marginalized people, communities, and cultures had always been brewing, but the undercurrent of NOLA brought that thinking to the forefront. The queer community is a marginalized population within our society, and the trans community is not only marginalized within that, but seemingly invisible to the majority population. While finding solace and solidarity in a broken city, the importance of community became increasingly more apparent. The obvious missing element from this soulful city was trans pride. After a year, he hit the road again, continuing across the country, on a pilgrimage of sorts, to the Tranny Mecca of the world – San Francisco. Proud to be a transgender revolutionary, he wants to change the world. With a child-like glimmer in his eye and a fascination with the unknown, he roots for the underdog, challenges the big guy, creates art, creates community, makes you think, makes you smile, and hopefully makes you want to join in.
Henry Schneiderman
Henry Schneiderman grew up in New York and London with a sole career goal of being “a boy artist.” He is a printmaker and occasional book artist working in Minneapolis, where he is a member of several community art collectives. Henry has exhibited in group shows in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Northfield, Minnesota. He holds a degree in Philosophy from Macalester College and is currently completing coursework at the University of Minnesota (non-degree seeking) in hopes of applying to MFA programs this fall.
Jillian Soto
Jillian Soto received her BA in Photography from San Francisco State University. Much of her work depicts the intersections of gender representation and family relationships. In addition she also produces mixed-media work dealing with the issues surrounding U.S. immigration from Mexico. She lives and works in San Francisco.
Rowen Strange
I started painting at an early age, it became an escape-from constantly moving, trying to assimilate to new people, surroundings-how to fit in to all of it, and how it affected me. The same people and surroundings became the focus of my paintings. Like a diary, and an emotional outlet-charting my own changes, my own evolution, how I wanted to look- I wanted to wear the suit-give my brother the dress. Through my own painting I could do it. My portraits evolve out of those daily influences-they are my lovers, my friends people on the street, images stored. I consider myself an expressionist, interested in what my people seem and feel like, to show who they are, and to show who I am when painting them.
Strangelfreak
The interest in portraying people who differ from mainstream culture, an heterogenic mix of opinions, postures and values always fascinated me. The reason why I started integrating elements of queer culture, as well as a greater need to demystify taboos and prejudices related with genre, sexual freedom, integrating them in a recent artistic field that defies heteronormality and promotes a social acceptance of diversity. www.fotologue.jp/strangelfreak | www.Strangelfreak.blogspot.com
Rae Strozzo
Rae Strozzo is a transgendered painter, photographer and writer. He received his B.A. in English and philosophy from Georgia Southern University in 1997. He graduated with an M.F.A in photography from the University of Arizona in May 2008. He is currently an adjunct instructor of photography at Pima Community College and a freelance graphic designer.
Gwendolyn Molly Madeline Sund
I was born and raised in the Dakotas. I received my B.A. in creative writing and my minor in fine arts from Northern State University in Aberdeen South Dakota. Now I live in New Mexico where I enjoy dust storms, hundreds of days of sun, and not freezing to death every winter. I am a believer in the Oxford comma and the general hope that everything will work itself out in time. tee-light.deviantart.com
C. Francis Vavra
“Fashion Police LineUp #1,” created in 2002, celebrates my love of male fashion with bright gypsy colors, broken car glass from my Oakland neighborhood, framed within societal laws. People have been arrested for dressing outside their class or gender; there are still laws in some states prohibiting cross-dressing by either sex. Who will be arrested today? My hat is off to him.
Art is a progression, religious journey, transformation. Mostly self-taught, I took some drawing, painting and sculpture classes in Los Angeles art schools where I worked as an artist’s model. Growing up in St. Louis, I discovered nature, large and small, on weekends in a small rural Illinois town where my grandparents lived. After high school, I moved to Los Angeles, then Seattle, Berkeley, and currently reside in Oakland, California. I make art for myself, creation its own reward.
My art revolves around collected vintage items, fetishes and childhood toys, intertwined with self-portraits of my male trans-alter ego, using cigar boxes or top hats as frames. The boy within the girl, living in the forest of my imagination. Last year I completed a safe haven series with bird nests in top hats. Recently, cigar boxes returned, incorporating old calling card photos of people and their pets. My small art universes save my life, whisking me into their secret rooms, replacing the neighborhood cacophony. When my art can be shared with others, the yin yang circle is complete. www.FrancisVavra.com
Noelle Walker
Noelle is a non-op trans woman who has changed her name so many times that all of her friends call her different names. She is obsessed with the bride of Frankenstein, she skateboards and dj’s in her spare time and works as a welder. She lives part time on her own and the other part time with her girlfriend, her girlfriend’s ex, a huge, drooly mastiff puppymonster and two cats.
Tobaron Waxman
Tobaron Waxman is a performance artist, specializing in digital media and voice. His work contextualizes gender, embodiment, and the physical experience of time as systems of inscription. His work includes and queers elements of Diaspora experience and traditional Jewish texts, music, and philosophy, as well as politics and desire. He completed an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he also taught Voice. Waxman also studies and performs Jewish liturgical music as a cantorial soloist, and continues to give workshops for the voice.
Awards:
VanLier Residency (2007) at Harvestworks, funded by New York Artists Trust
Franklin Furnace Performance Art Award (2004)
Canada Council for the Arts (2003, 2005, 2006).
Screenings/Exhibitions:
Mix New York, Mix Brasil, the Lesbian Film Festival in Berlin, the Frameline Persistent Vision Conference in San Francisco, the Flaming Film Festival of Minneapolis, CoCA Seattle, MMoCA Wisconsin, ViDance Tel Aviv/Ramallah, Toronto Alternative Art Fair International invited artist (2005).
Publications:
GLQ, LTTR, Fuse, Time Out Tel Aviv. Recently published as one of the two-hundred best photo-based artists in Canada in Carte Blanche, the first juried compendium of Canadian photography.
Visiting Artist/Lecturer:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UC Irvine, CLAGS, Parsons, Videotage Hong Kong, Tel Aviv University.
Anja Weber
Anja Weber, 36, studied photography in Dortmund/Germany and Exeter/UK. A Fulbright Scholarship, granted to her in 1996, provided the opportunity to further her education for a year in the U.S. at the International Center of Photography and New York University.
Besides making a living as an editorial photographer, queer issues have influenced Anja’s photography over the last ten years. A portraitist of her time she has photographed Drag Kings, queer bands and performance artists such as Bridge Markland, who was the promoter of Berlin’s Go Drag!-Festival in 2002. /p>
Anja has exhibited extensively in her homecountry Germany and participated in various groupshows in the United States. In 2004 she had two solo shows, one at Hamburg’s Robert Morat Photography Gallery and one in Brussels at the Pink Screen Festival with a series of color images depicting Berlin’s thriving Drag King Scene.
Anja Weber, aka Buddy Schnitzel, makes her home in Berlin, Germany.
Stacey Wexler
Stacey Wexler was born in 1961 to Mr. and Mrs. Harry I. Wexler, who were mercantile owners in the quiet town of Plainfield N.J. Ms. Wexler displayed an uncanning ability for art. She always was drawing as a little girl, making her own cards, creating her own toy scenery for dolls and enrolling in several art classes in high school fostered a passion for art. Pursuing her passion, art led Ms. Wexler to obtain her BFA in ceramics from University of the Arts. In 1982 Ms Wexler received the coveted Aurelis Renzetti award and in 1983 she was awarded the President’s Purchase Award for outstanding achievement. Continuing her education, Ms Wexler traveled to California driving across country with her father. Obtaining her MFA in sculpture in 1985 at a very young 24 she wondered what to do. Going into the entertainment industry seemed like a positive thing to do. Starting as a scenic artist/model maker/sculptor at Lexington scenery shop. Ms. Wexler was able to experiment with many different materials, which translate, into her own work. Her own work, which started as jocular pottery, eventually morph into mixed media figurative sculpture and finally transitioned into mixed media on paper.
Mim Weisburd
In my work I explore the transformative process of birth, growth, death, decay and rebirth both within myself and the world around me. As a genderfluid individual I am in a constant state of change. Endlessly reinventing myself as I give birth to new aspects of my person and allow old pieces to fall away and die. My rich and textured works often incorporate items that were discarded by people and then transformed by nature or vice versa. I am fascinated by the intrinsic mystery of things that are ephemeral and undefined. In my works I wish to inspire the viewer to forget the original nature of the objects I use, and simply accept them for what they are now. Similarly, I hope people will perceive me as I present myself, instead of trying to solve the mystery of my organic origin. My works reside in a strange land between reality and fiction, abstraction and representation as well as sculpture and painting. Just as I live my life as an individual who resides in the mysterious place somewhere between male and female, incorporating aspects of both into my daily existence. www.mimart.com
Adelaide Windsome
Adelaide Windsome expends great deals of time in her studio, the Haberdasherium, crafting a mess of tiny arms and legs, painting vivid, yet nostalgic landscapes and filling up pages with epic and tragic tales amid cans of paint, cups of tea, and mountains of cardboard. What crawls forth from the wreckage is a wide range mixed-media artwork and performance that spills from galleries and venues and into the streets. She strives to blur the lines between visual artwork and performance art, distinguishing the strong and necessary connections between the two.
Adelaide has been creating mixed-media illustrations and puppet theater over the past few years with a whimsical fervor. She has toured nationally with Tranny Roadshow in 2008 and 2009 as well as extensively around the Northeast.
GB Woolf
Born in Boston in 1968. GB Woolf was raised female. Formerly known as Sarah Woolf, he began his professional career as a musician at the age of 15, busking in Harvard Square and in the MBTA subway system. He has also busked in Israel when he lived there in 1986. For the past 5 years Woolf has been the front person for “The Wicked Queeah Band”.
In addition to his music, Woolf received a BA in Education/ Visual Arts from Antioch College in 1991. He has exhibited his paintings in Boston in several galleries. These days he focuses on his family; fiancée and daughter, Buddhism, painting, composing classical music and working with the elderly.
Woo
Alysha Wood (Woo) is a graduate of Naropa University’s M.F.A. Writing & Poetics program and holds an undergraduate degree from Hollins University. A writer, dancer, and performer, Woo’s critical and creative work appears in “Across and Between the Void” (Achiote Press, 2008), In Dance, Galatea Resurrects, Feminist Review, Cliterature, Glimpse Abroad, and “Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices” (Johnson Books, 2007). Woo performs with The Rice Kings, a San Francisco bay area API drag king troupe, and curates the blog TRANS/VERSE at eucalyptusraven.blogspot.com.
Lanaye’ Yriqui la Yaqui
My goal as a post-op TS Artist is to challenge preexisting notions viewers may have on first seeing the subject matter of my paintings. Painting autobiographical pictures mixed with a bit of whimsy comes easily. My desire is to pose a statement to the viewer mixed with questions. Artist are a reflection of their society. Throughout history many artist made the social statements no one else dared… I am one of those Artists.
The Two Paintings in this show: I’m Pretty I’m A Pretty Girl Momma & I’m Handsome I’m A Handsome Man Mom represent what it is like to see ourselves differently from what we appear. While it is natural to some it is completely surreal to others. The crucifix reminds us of the social stigma of being Gay and how it is used is used as a banner of Bigotry.
Aryn Zev
Aryn Zev is a combined media artist with extensive backgrounds in creative writing and visual art. Recent projects include architectural drawing and photo installations, costume design, and found footage video collage. Her video work tends towards the experimental, and includes shorts, multimedia performances, and gallery installations. She holds an M.A. in English from SUNY New Paltz and an M.F.A. in Combined Media from SUNY Albany.