Y’all Come Back

CQC 2015, NQAF 2015

June 13, 2015
Y’all Come Back: Stories of Queer Southern Migration
Amanda Arkansassy Harris & Jaison Gardner
San Francisco LGBT Community Center
1800 Market Street @ Octavia
3pm & 7pm
Visual art reception – 5pm (Free)
Exhibition – June 1- July 17
$12-$20, NOTA

3pm show:
7pm show:
Livestream Tickets: 3PM PST / 5PM CST / 6PM EST

Multidisciplinary/Visual Art

Think the South is only about Republicans, sweet tea and fried food? Well, bless your heart. Experience the real queer Dirty South as artists explore our identities and stories of our migration to and from the U.S. South. Through performance events and a visual art exhibition, we draw attention to catalysts of migration and question the meaning of Home. We also point out our impact on the local communities we leave behind and move to, such as displacement in urban hubs like San Francisco. Featuring performers The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins, Gary Brice, Alysia Angel, Star Amerasu, Mia Tu Mutch and visual/audio artists Bryn Kelly, Lewis Wallace, and Oscar Maynard, it’s going to BIG (like our hair). Events are y’all-inclusive for Southerners and non-Southerners alike… so y’all come!

BIOGRAPHIES

PERFORMANCE ARTISTS:
	Angélica De Jesus angélica is a queer carribean/chicana artist, activist, and community health worker. a recent transplant to Lansing, Michigan, angélica often dreams of sticky-sweet southern summers and fluffy buttered biscuits. when not sitting behind a computer crunching numbers, you can find this energetic scorpio making food for loved ones, facilitating work-shops, and dancing in thanks for the many blessings that her incredible chosen and biological family bring. angélica received her BA in Theatre Performance and BS in Psychology in 2012 from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. angélica sends special thanks to Southerners on New Ground and and mi familia (kindred and de sangre).
Star Amerasu. Star Amerasu is a multi-disciplinary artist. She studied music and theatre at Cornish College of the Arts. She has performed professionally around America. Star was Raised Part in rural Florida and Texas, and part in Oregon. Her art is the intersection of those places.
	Kentucky Fried Woman. After spending her first 24 years in the Bluegrass state, Kentucky Fried Woman migrated to the West Coast in 1999. Her passions include Southern Cookbooks, making the perfect fried chicken, and feeding her community. She is a Dancer, Singer, Writer, Speaker, Event Producer, and Community Mommy who has been seen on the stage as a soloist, and in collaboration with other queer performing artists. She feels immense gratitude to those that paved the way for a Southern, fat, queer, tap-dancing, femme with OCD, to practice her art in the spirit of visibility, connection, tender vulnerability, resilience, and joy.
Mia Tu Mutch. Mia Tu Mutch is a San Francisco based educator, activist, and performance artist. Mia and has appeared in commercials, music videos and documentaries including What’s the T? and A Prosecutor’s Stand. She currently studies Public Policy at Mills College and spends her free time twerking to Beyonce and watching beauty pageant contestants fail miserably.
	Amber Burns. Amber Burns is social justice activist, spoken word artist and visual artist based in Louisville, Ky. Amber first began performing her spoken word in 2008 as a member of the interracial, intergenerational, feminist choreo-poetry troupe called Solidifying Her Evolution (or S.H.E.!). Amber and her S.H.E.! sisters used spoken word paired with choreography to create 10-25 min performances that explored race, gender identity, sexuality, feminism, whiteness and power in America as experienced by women from vastly different social locations. As an individual artist, Amber has continued to perform her poetry with a focus on the experience of Black women in America, colorism, love as form of resistance. Amber believes that viewing the world through a Queer, Black feminist lense creates a space for progressive transformation.
SCZ. SCZ (pronounced seize) is an educator, scholar, and artist whose work focuses on decolonization, migration, identity and belonging. They are a mixed media artist. As a deejay, SCZ practices sonic weaving to create audio narratives, focusing on the sonics of space, the way sound migrates, the distance between sounds, and how sound is coded and blended to communicate knowledge to bodies in space. They often describes themself as young, angry and brown. As a poet, thier poetics reflect themes of (dis)placement, brownness, queer love, and transgression. They believe that as queer, diasporic persons of color, cultural production are the spaces where we can resist the violence of marginalization and begin to not only imagine decolonial relationships, but actively put them into practice.
	Rahel Neirene Ellis. Rahel is a queer black femme living in the south. Her work focuses on the intersections of race, sexuality, and mental health. She is especially interested in how Black women, woc, qwoc, and queer femmes of color form connections through dialogue, artful expression, loving, and how space between people in various times and places has a role with stitching all those together. Her work is a reflection of how she deals with her everyday struggles–she takes a thoughtful approach to each body of work she does, sometimes this means one project can take a few weeks or a few months and others can take over a year to complete. The best part of her work is how it gives a picture to change over time and what happens during these changes–displacement, rethinking what ‘home’ is, self-empowerment, sharing stories of self progression, and loving while black and brown. Rahel’s work consists mostly of writing at this moment, but she is looking to incorporate other forms of media into her work as well.
The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins. For over 10 years, queer burlesque starlet Vagina Jenkins has been gracing stages across North America. An ecdysiast exemplar, Vagina Jenkins style is reminiscent of classic Vegas glitz and glamour. Ms. Jenkins act defies audience expectations, wows them and leaves them wanting more. Ms. Jenkins got her start at the 2003 Michigan Women’s Music Festival. And has since graced many stages, including but not limited to; South By Burlesque (Austin, TX), Miss Exotic World (Las Vegas, NV),The New York Burlesque Festival ’08, The Femme Conference ’08 (Chicago, IL), Moxie: A Queer Cabaret of Caliber (Atlanta, GA), The Southern Comfort Conference ’06 and ’07 (Atlanta, GA), Big Mamma’s House of Burlesque (Charlotte, NC) , Atlanta PRIDE ’08 and Toronto Pride ’09.
	Gary Edjukated Rebel Brice. Gary is a native of the St. Louis area who came to Louisville to persue an MFA in Theatre Arts at the University of Louisville, which he recieved in 2012. Gary is an actor, director, playwright, and producer. Previous stage plays include “Murder the Devil” at Vault 1031 with Larry Muhammad, “Money, Marriage, and Misery” at the Ursiline Arts Center with Tyrone Goodman Productions, as well as various ten-minuet plays at the Open Gallery with Nipsey Greene and Smoked Apple Produtions for the 6:10 Play Festival. His play “Bilnd Date #3” was also featured at the 6:10. Other plays written by Gary include “Crossroads Circle” produced at UofL’s Studio Theatre and the full “Blind Date”produced by “The 502 Crew”. Gary is also a rapper/ spoken word artist going by The Edjukated Rebel. In 2014 he released his first Ep entiltled “Open Mic Night”. Gary is also a local activist working with Women in Transition and the Kentucky Alliance.
Alysia Angel. Alysia Angel is a southern-bred working class queer high femme. She writes in fiction, non-fiction, memoir, prose, poetry, and personal essays. Alysia is a 2011 and 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. Some of her work can be read at: http://www.alysiaangel.comShe is published online and in print in Salacious Magazine, Cactus Heart #1, Hater, Femme Family Zine, Bay Woof Magazine, Curve Magazine, Say Please, a Cleis Press BDSM anthology edited by Sinclair Sexsmith, Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion edited by Virgie Tovar, Qs Zine edited by Sarah Gottesdiener, Martian Lit, Sassafras Lowrey’s Kicked Out Blog Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, Leather Ever After edited by Sassafras Lowrey, and Brace Yourself – Her collection of weird short stories e-published on Amazon.
	Bryn Kelly. Bryn Kelly has shared her written work at NYC-based performance series TRIPS, Low Standards, and Queer Memoir; as a columnist at Showtime Network’s OurChart.com; in Original Plumbingmagazine; as a regular contributor to the digital literary magazine PrettyQueer.com; and in the anthology, Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love and Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary, edited by Morty Diamond. She has written short fiction for the journal Time is Not A Line: Reflections on HIV/AIDS Now, commissioned by the New Museum, andEOAGH, a Journal of the Arts.She was a cofounder of Theater Transgression, a transgender multimedia performance collective; a co-creator and cast member of the touring roadshow, The Fully Functional Cabaret; and performed in Lisa Auerbach’s public program, Art in the Age of Aquarius, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She studied playwriting at Brooklyn College, was a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

VISUAL ARTISTS:
	Oscar Maynard. Elizabeth “Oscar” Maynard has a self-designed B.A. in Visual Art, Psychology, and Gender Studies from Antioch College. They have an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in Printmaking. Their work has been shown at Somarts, Mission Cultural Center, and in a number of the National Queer Arts Festival shows. They were a Queer Cultural Center Grantee for a 2014 show called Breaking Code, looking at mental health and madness through a queer lens. They are an intern and educator at Kala Art Institute. They are currently working on a project to queer the Christian practice of tent revival. In their spare time they nerd out about gender, feed wild animals in local parks, carve gourd luminaries, and make new things from the Southern Living magazine recipes section. You can see more of their work at: www.countrycounterculture.com
Felix McGuire. I’m a gender-fluid dyke punk from Louisiana. I’ve been painting my entire life. I am enchanted by the figure, visual manipulations of flesh on canvas, topics of identity, 80’s hardcore, and spicy foods.
	Jerre B. Fine. Jerre Fine is a self-taught, multi-disciplinary artist hailing from the state of Oklahoma. Born transgender into the crossfire counties of Tornado Alley and The Bible Belt, he first found footing in the arts of drawing surreal images and creating abstract sounds as means for expression and declaration for the things he was unable to express vocally about gender and sexuality as a child. Jerre has toured the United States as a military queer under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell but is most proud of having been a ukulele-wielding, camera-touting, poet wrangler with a primary focus on documenting the formidable, Lauren Zuniga.
Xavier Juárez. Xavier Juárez b. 1990 San Francisco, CA currently living in New Orleans he practices film making, photography and drag performance.
	Lewis Wallace. Lewis Wallace is a white transgender radio producer and writer from Michigan with roots in South Carolina. He’s been working with youth as an organizer, sex educator, and transformative justice advocate since 1998. His writing has appeared in many magazines and books including Why Are Faggots So Afraid Of Faggots (2012, AK Press) and Unsquared: Ann Arbor Writers Unleash Their Edgiest Stories and Poems (2006, 826Michigan). He was a 2012-2013 Pritzker Journalism Fellow at WBEZ Chicago, and he contributes regularly to NPR and Marketplace. He spends most days making stories for WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs, and most evenings playing an accordion and scribbling furiously.
Ariyah April. Ariyah April is a bisexual lesbian of color working as a photographer, acrylic painter, and green business consultant. A founding board member of OUT for Sustainability, a green meets gay non-profit based in Seattle, Ariyah makes art that addresses environmental and social sustainability. She has shot portrait and event photography for several organizations, including UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. She is currently a board member of the Durham Art Guild and a 2014 National Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. Some of her artwork can be found at www.facebook.com/ariyah.april
	Kiki DeLovely. Kiki DeLovely is a witchy, working class, bilingual, healer, erotica writer, queer femme who owns both her white privilege and her mixed roots. Thanks to her Gypsy bloodlines, she has lived all over the U.S. and Mexico and, though born in the Midwest, feels both grateful and conflicted to have finally settled in the U.S. South where she calls Durham, North Carolina home.
Kiernan Dunn. Kiernan Dunn (b. 1987) was born in New York and currently lives and works in New Orleans. Dunn received an undergraduate degree in fine arts and art history from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2009 and a private investigator certificate from Delgado Community College in 2011. Her curiosity heavily influences her work. Dunn combines printmaking with performative installations that invite the viewer into the alternate reality she creates. She is a devoted member of the New Orleans Community Print Shop and Fine Art Coordinator for Endless Gaycation. Dunn was awarded an artist residency at the North End Studios in Detroit, MI.
	Rae Strozzo Rae Strozzo is a transgendered artist 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. He is also a case manager and teacher with Our Family Services in Tucson. His blog called Over and Over on art and spirituality can be found at www.raestrozzo.blogspot.com.
Catherine Shiel. Catherine Shiel is a cremation urn designer who migrated from the Bay Area to the south in 1993. She received her B.A. in Women Studies at UC, Berkeley and studied woodworking at the Appalachian Center for Arts and Crafts. She has taken classes at the Atlanta School of Art, Arrowmont, John C. Campbell Center and Callanwolde in bookmaking, handbuilding, tinsmithing. She often mixes materials and uses recycled materials. She has read her short stories at the Decatur Arts Festival and currently has two clay sculptures in a show at Cornell University’s Mann Gallery. Catherine lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.
	Fallon Young. Fallon Young is an arts administrator for a local community arts organization. She has curated events for the literary series Feast of Words, edited interviews for Aorta, a radical arts magazine featuring a diversity of emerging and established female, queer and transgender artist, taught professional development workshops for ArtSpan’s Make Your Art Your Business series and California College of the Arts’ Career Summit on topics such as growing your fanbase selling art online and equity in community outreach. In 2013–14 she served on the curatorial review panels for 2 x 2 Solos at Pro Arts Gallery and the group exhibition Queer Prophesies. She co-curated the group visual art exhibition and evening of performance Second Helpings, which opened at SOMArts on June 7, 2014 as part of the National Queer Arts Festival, where she also exhibited a collaborative artwork with Rory Hejtmanek exploring the compression undergarment. Recently, she co-created a visual artwork with Carrie Leilam Love and others that appeared in the group exhibition at Visions at Twilight: Dia de los Muertos 2014.
Lacey Johnson. Lacey Johnson is a Texan Jew who loves Rube Goldberg machines and makes multi-media visual art and sci-fi textiles in the vision of a feminist safe space Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. After growing up all over Texas she migrated out of the south to pursue dreams of queer safe space and girl gangs on the West Coast. She does an undercover diary comic published by Whaleribbed Press, is a hermit, and her goal is to know how to do everything. She was politicized by punk rock in the suburban sprawl of Houston and continues to be a disorganized activist to this day.
	Bri Peterson. Growing up, I didn’t want to accept that I was queer. It was a personal battle with my Southern upbringing. I was told it was wrong. I was raised with morals that differed from that of my own. When I did accept my queerness, I wanted to meet other queers. I began dating and remembered being asked, “Are you the man or the woman?” I loathed this question. In the South, some individuals that identify with the queer community wanted to box you into gender roles. I don’t fit into one spectrum, nor do I want to. I’ve been labeled and outcasted in my community. I’ve also been told that I’m not queer enough. Rather than succumbing to others ideas of these labels, I’ve grown comfortable with my own. I am a queer Southern woman.
Bill Pappas. Hi, I’m Bill Pappas. I recently graduated from UNC- Chapel Hill with Bachelors degrees in Visual/cultural Anthropology and Media/ Production. I am 23 years old. I consider myself a multidisciplinary artist but only recently. Most of my creative energy has been applied through the audio/visual medium. I love documentary but find it to be too rigid so I focus on experimental visual ethnography and conceptual projects that activate my spirit- usually involving queerness, disability, and race. I am new to this world of sharing my creations and working in other disciplines but I am very excited about the work I am producing right now and want to share that without fear. I am grateful for this opportunity.

March 11, 2015/by C Q

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