BASK
The first iteration of BASK is a durational projection mapping installation featuring different visual perspectives of queerness. Atmospheric visuals create a stage where audience members are invited to step inside, play, and bask in their own intersecting identities of queerness.
Collaborator bios:
Freakmeats
Charlie Hills (@freakmeats) is a 27 year old Tattoo Artist currently living and working in Edmonton, Alberta. Their favourite mediums are digital illustration, gouache and ink. Charlie is the co-owner at Pansy Poke Collective, a space that encourages creativity, positivity and a consent focused tattoo experience for clients.
The inspiration for this illustration comes from American Traditional tattoo flash as well as Catholic Iconography to create a colourful image celebrating queer and trans love, growth, and physical change.
Andrew Cormier:
I am a 26 year old artist, animator and performer, originally from Calgary. I took some art classes in junior high/high school, but I am mostly self taught. I have always loved drawing. As a little queer kid, I drew a lot of Disney princesses (based on the vhs collection/inspiration we had available). I think that influence and love of sort of romanticized cartoon style has stuck with me. I enjoy drawing the human form, and different queer bodies. My art often incorporates elements of queerness, homo-eroticism, and nudity, presented in a non-offensive manner. Part of my goal as an artist is to break down stigma around nudity, and play with the separation of sexual vs non-sexual nudity. Bodies are beautiful!
I am very thankful for this experience and for the opportunity to bring more queer art to public spaces. Thank you for letting me share my queerness with you.
Dress Up Box:
I am always proud to see someone in public dressed fashionably, extravagantly, or in a way I perceive as queer. This raises the question, how does one perceive queerness from the way someone is dressed? What elements like femininity and masculinity, camp and extravagance do we associate with queerness?
Clothing plays such a large role in self-expression, and individuality. I LOVED playing dress up as a kid, because it was a chance for me to explore feeling feminine, flamboyant, glamorous, sexy, etc. I came out at 19, and before that, I was dressing how I thought I "should" dress, not necessarily how I wanted to dress. Now, as a queer adult, I’m wanting more and more to show these sides of myself that I've hidden for most of my life. I created a sort of “dream queer wardrobe” of outfits that embody queerness for me (and hopefully for others). I invite you to have fun considering each outfit for yourself.
Which ones would you wear?
Sophie May Healey:
SAPPHIC GLITTER LOVE CLOUD
Sapphic Glitter Love Cloud takes its inspiration from the dreamy, sparkly visuals of shoujo manga, bath bomb water, and summer sunsets. Unabashedly girly, it's a celebration of a gentle and sweet feeling of first love, whispered secrets, giddiness, self discovery, and embracing the lush and complex thing that is the soul of a preteen girl. It invites onlookers to bask in the warm glow of feminine love (and possibly even roleplay a magical girl transformation sequence in the process).
This piece is a warm embrace from the artist to her younger self, who was always slightly embarrassed of her feminine interests, curious about her desires, and entangled in some very dramatic and tumultuous friendships with other girls that coalesced into an eventual realization of queer identity. Sapphic Glitter Love Cloud is a cotton candy sanctuary for anyone who has ever made their Barbies kiss.
You are welcome here. You are lovely.
BIO
Sophie May Healey (she/they) is a queer, biracial multidisciplinary artist working in Amiskwaciwâskahikan/Edmonton. She holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Alberta. Their original neo-bouffon clown works, including Hysteria Winthrop and Sharon the Wellness Hag, have been featured in cabarets and festivals such as Nextfest and SkirtsAfire, with performances in the Play the Fool Festival coming in September. This year, she was also Azimuth Theatre’s Co-creation and Outreach Apprentice, and supervised the devising of a piece for the Lobbyists at the 2022 Expanse Festival. She's currently doing a devising intensive with Ghost River Theatre and working on a few summer comic and zine projects.
Collaborator fees sponsored by Alberta Media Arts Society.
Projected at Found Festival '22 produced by Common Ground Arts Society
