Buy art from these LGBTQ artists and more at this year's Art Auction
Photo: Two Princes by Eric Chan; starting bid $300
The Lavender Rights Project is proud to feature 38 local LGBTQ artists in our first-ever LGBTQ Artist Showcase throughout the month of November.
Housed in the community-centric Hillman City Collaboratory in South Seattle, the showcase opened last weekend with an Artist Reception and will continue with an exhibition in the venue through November 20, 2019.
Perhaps the most exciting event in the showcase is LRP’s 2nd Annual LGBTQ Art Auction, held this Saturday, November 9, 2019 from 6:00-9:00pm. Doors open at 5:30pm, allowing guests to enjoy happy hour deals until 6:30pm and browse featured artwork prior to the silent auction, which will be held from 6:00-7:30pm.
Tickets to the auction can be purchased here or at the door on a fully sliding scale.
During the event, which serves as the Lavender Rights Project’s annual fundraiser, guests can purchase exclusive LRP merchandise, raffle tickets for prizes ranging from $100-$500 in value, and non-auction artwork from vending artists while enjoying entertainment from local performers.
You can learn more about some of the talented artists featured in the showcase below. Please note: some images contain mature content (nudity, eroticism).
Kelly Dean Verity
Kelly Dean Verity is a queer trans artist living in Seattle, Washington. He has been drawing and painting since childhood. His current work is inspired by concepts of life and death, animals and nature, and science and magic.
Hayden Stern
Bioluminator is the artist name of Hayden Stern, an artist whose work is informed by the experience of living in a mad, trans, disabled body. They create two dimensional art in ink, paint, and fiber to tenderly portray the reclamation of body/self in a society that would prefer they were either cured or absent. Their work draws on such diverse themes as cartography, dreamscape, ritual, and monstrosity, and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Push/Pull Gallery (Seattle, WA), La Perla Cafe (Evanston, IL), and Junior High (Hollywood, CA). They are based in unceded Duwamish Territories (Seattle). Most recently, they successfully funded a Kickstarter project for a major arcana tarot deck illustrated with portraits of transgender community members.
Website / Instagram / Twitter / Kickstarter: The Trans Tarot
Angela Michaelina
While Angela Michaelina works with an array of visual media, as of late, she works primarily with watercolor and acrylics. As a visual artist, she tends to see artwork as an extension of oneself. The subject matter of her artwork is quite varied, and she feels that is due her mind being a constant menagerie of thoughts. Despite that, there is a constant to her work: bold colors are often present. Angela Michaelina often thinks of the presence of color as the existence of life and vitality. Even color represents a special sort of energy in those subjects which are not living. Her aim is for viewers to feel this presence and to perhaps even feel in rhythm with it. She uses simple brush strokes to apply deceptively simple images, though sometimes this technique is accompanied by the use of other media.
Angela Michaelina is largely self-taught as her majors were in the sciences and language teaching, but she has gleamed nuggets of artistic techniques from Path with Art classes, from Donna Housel’s instruction, and various YouTube tutorials. Her late aunt Deborah Heavner was a huge influence on her as she was an artist in her hometown. Angela Michaelina’s active involvement in Path with Art continues to fuel her artistic endeavors and nourish her as a whole.
She has participated in a variety of Path with Art exhibitions, but in particular, her artwork has headlined the Housing Is a Human Right show at the Columbia City Gallery. She was also involved with Path with Art’s and Pearl Jam’s Unpacking Homelessness poster project for their Home Shows in Seattle. Angela Michaelina has also participated and has also participated in shows outside of Path with Art, including the 2019 Crush/Repeat show in Seattle and 40 Under 40 art show in Cumberland, Maryland. She has had her artwork published in Fangamer’s Psychokinetic Zine. Aside from participating in the Lavender Rights Project’s LGBTQ Artist Showcase in November 2019, she will also have art for sale at the Burien Art Market.
Tobias Gurl
Tobias developed his style of art for an LGBT youth art fair in San Francisco in 2014, and when it received an enthusiastic reception, he continued practicing it afterward on holiday cards and drawings for friends. In October 2017 he started his business and began selling art locally. Since then he has been accepted into several galleries and shows, and sold at several other fairs and conventions across the country.
All of his mixed media pieces are created on locally purchased or sourced materials. Tobias sketches out his subject using pencil, then traces the outline in metallic ink. He then adds his signature 'bubble' pattern, which is based on a fractal called an Apollonian gasket. His last step is touching up the piece with a black ink outline, similar to what one sees in comic books. Depending on the size and complexity of the piece, the process can take between one and ten hours. Tobias loves his style because the repetition feels meditative, and disappearing into one of his physical pieces is one of the few times he feels truly relaxed.
Eric Chan
Eric Chan is a self-taught portrait artist specializing in ink line drawing and oil painting on reclaimed wood panels. He co-runs Haskett Works, a design studio and fabrication workshop on Westlake Ave N with his husband Dan, a carpenter.
Eric’s work is a celebration of the diaspora and indigenousness, an exploration of diverse and inclusive queerness, and of the many intersections of subjects and narratives that have been historically excluded, devalued, and misrepresented by institutions of power, wealth, status, and culture and reinforced by artwork of more traditionally-primed surfaces and conventionally-defined dimensions.
Jiéyì 杰意
Jiéyì 杰意 Ludden is an interdisciplinary artist who has shapeshifted through many mediums. Jiéyì was born in Nagoya, Japan and bounced between elementary school in Iowa and summers in Shanghai before landing in rural Kentucky as a queer, trans, and mixed race tween. They left Kentucky at 18 years old to create a new life honoring their authenticity and belonging. Making art has been a refuge to return to because it is a way of tapping into the generative space between words. Through art, Jiéyì opens towards play and imagination so that they can untangle the truthiness of a story and generate new possibilities in the world. They hold an MFA in 4d art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they focused on socially-engaged arts practices. They are currently working on a picture book for young queer and trans people of color ages 5-8. Jiéyì lives in a collective house in Seattle, Washington and likes to dance wildly in the kitchen.
The best way to support their artwork is by subscribing to their Patreon at any level.
Jennifer Anne Robinson
Jennifer Robinson paints in the Traditional Chinese Brushstroke style. Having had the wonderful opportunity to have studied with Master Lucy Liu, a designated Living Treasure of the State of Washington for eleven years, she has been painting, showing, and demonstrating for over forty years. Sharing the peace derived from practicing this highly disciplined art form and its unique qualities, continue the age old tradition of revealing the world's beauty to others.
The foundation of Traditional Chinese Brushstroke painting is learning the use of the "Four Treasures", as they are known in China. They are: the brush, think stick, the ink stone, and the paper. The brush is an extension of the artist's hand and the window to her soul, the ink is the means to translate those thoughts and feelings into a form that others may share, the paper is the lever that allows the ink to become a statement of those feelings, and the ink stone is the well from which the artist draws her peace and discipline to focus on letting the picture flow from her soul.
Learning Traditional Chinese Brushstroke is an ongoing process, to always seek the next layer of simplicity to peel away in order to truly paint the essence of one's vision.
Jennifer has been very active in the arts community over the years, including being on the Boards of Northwest Artists in Action and the Northwest Art Alliance, and showing/demonstrating at numerous Best of the Northwest shows and many venues around the Puget Sound area.
Panic Volkushka
Panic Volkushka is a queer, transgender man, born and raised in Texas, currently living in the Pacific Northwest and working in the mental health field. Panic is an eclectic multimedia artist, creating comic books, paintings, dolls, embroidery, and tapestries. Regardless of media, Panic’s work often focuses on bodies and embodiment, and the shifting boundaries of queerness, beauty, and body horror.
Liam Kaplan
Liam's work is informed by trauma - past and present. Often starting with an old photo for reference and going wherever it takes him. He builds a landscape from fractured memory - a haunted visual diary. One that embraces that there is beauty, even in nightmares. He invites you to bring your baggage and stay while.
Ian Shearer
Ian Shearer is an artist and graphic designer based in Seattle, Washington. He is a graduate of The Academy of Art of San Francisco.
Ian survived a massive stroke in 2018. Through intense therapy he was able to regain use of the right side of his body, however, his painting style and abilities were greatly changed. These changes have led him to “start over” as an artist, as there is a personal need for a separation to be made between the artist he was and the artist he is becoming.
Currently, Ian’s work focuses on urban nightscapes, as severe light and sound sensitivity, as well as cognitive issues, can make the daytime world a difficult place to navigate. The work explores the isolation and sensory overload that he has experienced throughout the recovery process.
It also touches on the moments of sublime grace and safe spaces Ian has encountered; often finding beauty in the everyday moments of urban life. These moments intrigue him, especially as ordinary moments become extraordinary in the wake of disability.
Through his work Ian is currently exploring the changes in his visual language and working on developing a dialogue of post-stroke experience. Adding another voice to a condition that affects hundreds of thousands and documenting the recovery process through mark-making.
Lennox Mars
Lennox is a self-taught embroiderer who believes deeply in centering liberation in their work. They are intentional in centering and uplifting the work of black, brown, and indigenous grassroots organizers, and to stay in line with these values, 100% of the proceeds from their work goes to various grassroots organizations and organizers.
Talia Halperin (Talia Glassblowing)
Talia Halperin is a queer Seattle-based glassblowing student artist creating glass plant hangers, plant stakes, cannabis pipes, marbles, and pendants. She works to create inviting pieces with a feminine vibe, inspired by flora and geometric motifs. All pieces are made with high-quality borosilicate glass and each purchase includes one free repair. You can find her work and own our own piece of art @TaliaGlassblowing on Facebook and Instagram.
Joseph John Sanchez II
Joseph John Sanchez III creates ink-based pieces composed of swirling handwritten text that appears as texture from afar.
His work encourages the viewer to pause, linger, and appreciate the beauty of language.
Based in Wenatchee, he has recently displayed pieces throughout the state at MIVAL Gallery, Confluence Gallery, and the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
Adrienne Bell-Koch
Adrienne is a queer artist from North Carolina and currently based in Seattle. Working primarily in oils, their work focuses on the beauty in everyday moments. They view painting as a physical action that helps them discover the extraordinary in themselves and others.