IN AND OUT: Being LBGTQ on Vashon Island

Collagraph lacquer print plate detail from "Anthem" in Let's All Dance series
On June 7, 2019 the Vashon Island Heritage Museum will open IN AND OUT: Being LGBTQ 🏳️‍🌈 on Vashon Island.  IN And Out will be an interactive, collaborative exhibit and series of programs that examine and celebrate the long, quiet history of LGBTQ+ people of Vashon-Maury Island. According to the last US census, Vashon-Maury Island reported the greatest per capita population of Gays and Lesbians in Washington State. You might like to participate as a patron of this historic exhibition here- GoFundMe.

My contribution to IN AND OUT will be 5 double panel collagraphs printed over monotype backgrounds.  Each set of prints will also have a unique sculptural, dance as subject element.  I call this series of song sourced images "Let's All Dance".
  
A song is a personal experience.  It may evoke the emotional poignancy or elation of a defining moment.  The same song might also be experienced as an anthem representative of tribe, connection and even a societal movement.  


"Let's All Dance" is inspired by the coming out "Anthems" and music gay friends have shared with me.  Some are songs speaking to the universal experience of romance.  Some are songs about family and redefining what family means.  Others are songs of loss and pain.  Still others are songs that celebrate personal growth and acceptance.


I've listened to this music while planning, printing backgrounds and while making the lacquered mat-board collagraph plates like the one above that I hope to soon be printing. 

My ears, eyes, hands and creative process have been filters for a diverse but individual experience of  music that defined the coming out experience of my friends and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer community of Vashon-Maury Island.

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