The sixth annual Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR), the month-long program for emerging LGBTQ artists in Cherry Grove, began in July, and on August 2, at the Community House, coordinators Chris Bogia and Ariel Speedwagon introduced the five new resident artists to the community. They are Wilder Alison and Paolo Arao from Brooklyn, New York, Jesse Harrod from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Edie Fake from Twentynine Palms, California, and Derrick Woods-Morrow from Chicago, Illinois. FIAR is sponsored by the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, the Leslie Lohman Museum, Visual AIDS, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. In the evening at the Community House, each artist spoke, showed slides of their work, and answered questions.
Wilder Alison told us about her textiles, sculpture, silk-screening, images on onionskin, painting, and video. She showed excerpts from works “IT A BOY,” “Factsimile,” and “Mom-mon, a video of her mother shaping a pompom with scissors, while talking about Gumby, Claymation, and so on. Her other pieces use a page of Monique Wittig’s “The Lesbian Body” in English and French; block letters, in italics and not; and wordplay on Les Biennes—the goods—and Lesbiennes—lesbians. We also saw a photo of her Installation at Barnard College, which was her MFA thesis exhibit.
Painter Paolo Arao has been working as an artist since the early 2000s. A piece from before he came out was his drawing of his page in his school yearbook, “superimposing my features” on every face. After he came out, he considered erasures—taking images of historic figures in front of microphones and leaving only the “powerful, phallic” mics, and illustrations of pairs of wrestlers, leaving just one of the figures in place. He juxtaposed a Daily News front page, showing a knifing on the C train, with a similarly-arranged Caravaggio painting of martyrdom. Paolo told us about the influence of his Catholic upbringing on his art and showed a rosary depicting men in ecstasy. While he is here, he is working on a series of paintings, one each day, taking just one hour, which is meant to be a year-long project and, eventually, a book.
Jesse Harrod spoke of her sculpture, painting, drawing, and macramé. She began using macramé in response to her mother’s “second-wave feminism” and after teaching in Virginia, where her students were extremely homophobic. Jesse’s macramé has been shown at Leslie Lohman and in Boston. She created a series called “Rangers,” five life-size macramé works, after going to camp, which she called “the best sexual experience of my life.” She named one of her works “Julianne Moore,” incorporates “retired cock rings” in her art, and has created pieces entitled “If I Had Three Vaginas.” “Meatball Sub,” “Beaver vs. Beaver,” and a poster for a fictional band called “Vagina Touchers.”
Edie Fake’s art probes the trans experience, odd-and-end corners of Chicago, and the closet, using “architectural details and historic snippets.” Edie draws real sites, as imagined, as well as entirely imaginary ones. As a Virgo, Edie depicted a real place, no longer standing, that was called the Virgo Bar, as imagined, and came up with an imaginary lesbian bar called the Sappho. Edie considers Pride Parades and “the trans body,” and credits “growing up Catholic and the emergence of AIDS” as influences. The latter led to a work called “Blood Bank.” Another, “Sugar in the Tank,” explores “euphemisms for queerness.”
Derrick Woods-Morrow originally came from North Carolina and lived in Boston for a time before moving to Chicago. He read a statement about being “an African-American person who identifies as queer.” He showed photos of a work entitled “A Tale of Three Women,” utilizing androgynous images of “my own body—which I was uncomfortable with,” amazingly enough. Photos of Grace Jones came into play as he told his story. Derrick offered his photos of men, who posed for him nude or half dressed, among other intimacies, and who “identified as straight.” He described this project as “explored “the courtship process” and “putting straight men in queer areas.” He asked one of the men why he did this and was told, “You made me want to do it.”
Visit www.fireislandartistresidency.org for further information.