BIO
How we move through our days is how we move through our lives, the nature of simple contentment within daily life is fascinating, and the disconnect between body and home—I have found—defines how we move through spaces, especially our most intimate spaces.
My name is KC, I am a trans artist and senior at The University of Vermont. I study Sociology, Studio Art, and American Sign Language. I have experience in a vast array of mediums, such as; printmaking, wood-working, sculpture, painting, drawing, writing, collage, photography, filmmaking, and more. These past few years during my studies as well as my personal life, the mediums I have deeply connected with and have been honing have been photography, collage, and illustration. Through all these mediums, my artwork’s purpose connects back to the simultaneous simple and glamorous beauties of queer life.
Contentment and extravagance are not mutually exclusive, a prime example of this is gender euphoria. My art serves as a documentation of domesticity, queer relationships and networks, the home, the body, the self, the extravagant, the frivolous, the maximalist, and all the simple yet gratifying pleasures found and curated within the home. My focus is the significance of what we choose to embellish our days with.
Transhood is like no other, queerness flourishes generously and yearns to exist simply. To be trans is to be beautiful and affirmative trans narratives and art works deserve to take up space. This is how I center my artwork's purpose.
PHOTOGRAPHY
MY PORTRAIT, YOUR PORTRAIT
Documenting Queer Portraits - Film & Digital Photography
ANALOG
HOME REFLECTIONS
sequence
Film & Digital Photography Meet Collage
film photographs of digital self portraits are layered with film photographs of analog artworks created in the home
NEIGHBORHOOD
black & white film photography sequence
LAYERS OF FAMILY & HOME
black & white film photography
ILLUSTRATIONS
I have been documenting day-to-day beauty and bliss through drawing since I can remember. Now more than ever, I have come to understand where my insatiable hunger to capture domestic life has sprouted from. How one’s home and body are decorated is deeply intimate and directly connected to transhood and queerness. Within my own experience, I have found that the home acts as a body with endless and evolving possibilities for embellishment. Home should be where one lives unashamedly, comfortably, and sweetly. The home is significant, the home is the body you can choose, the home is where the day is yours. This is a dignity I believe everyone deserves.
BODY
HOME
SANCTUARY
The intricacies and ‘lived-in’ aspects within these works serve to reflect our active choice of adoration. Details within these illustrations are more often than not, true objects in existence in my room; which act as deeply personal daily reminders of who I am and my love for life. The objects, the letters, the photographs, the fliers, the receipts, the necklaces we recognize as ornaments reflect who we are. What we choose to keep and what we choose to cherish is how we create our sanctuary—especially when sanctuary is an alien concept. To value beauty is to value one’s daily search for solace. The practice of purposefully living in adoration and gratitude is no small feat, and is not universally accessible.
PINK IN MY ROOM
8.3" × 11.7" paper, acrylic paint, water, black ink
BIG
3 ft × 4 ft unstretched canvas, color pastels
BIG
BIG was made on unstretched canvas that is slightly frayed at the ends, with color pastels and large gestural strokes, as well as bold defined linework. The unstretched canvas and frayed ends represent a worn and far too familiar confinement. However, the technique, style, and expression of the piece exhibits autonomy, it demands you to look at it, and look at it softly. The use of pastels was intentional, to give the piece a soft, textured, almost airbrushed feeling. I wanted BIG to come across as colorful and bold, yet soft. There is this dichotomy within BIG, there is endurance, strength, confinement, yet there is concurrently, self expression, color, large sweeping shapes. In its totality, the piece is informing the viewer that BIG is taking up space. This piece, because of the materials, the composition and the size, is very visually compelling. The goal is to connect this somewhat abstract character to a tangible material that has depth and reminds people of skin and cloth.
give me back my man
listening close
it's a wonderful life
home restaurant
DREAM GIRL
spray paint, color pencils
COOK IN THE KITCHEN
acrylic paint, water, black ink
SOCIOLOGY & ART
Although resistance art is powerful and important in its own right, I find there is a deficit in affirmation art surrounding transhood and trans bodies.
I have found a passion within sociology through social justice and social change, as many in the field do; yet a majority of scholarly sociological works are inaccessible to the public and inaccessible to those it would benefit. Free, public art has immense purpose in society, and the integration of sociological meanings within art provides access to knowledge and power. Art -especially free public art- has the ability to break the boundaries of academia whilst providing sociological findings to communities. I aim to pursue sociology and art interdisciplinarily, with the goal of turning tacit knowledge into, not only; a palatable, interesting, engaging, and eye-catching form, but also, as a tangible, reachable means of access to knowledge. Sociological works and findings often touch upon grievances and injustices within social systems and societies, these sociological understandings can and should be digestible to the public, not only scholars. There is a longstanding history across time and space which connects social justice to art, its purpose and its effects are alive, and have been for quite some time.
MORE ABOUT BIG
I find it necessary to have representative art that reflects the wonders, the softness, the playfulness, and the ethereal nature of being gender-queer. This piece defies the confinements of discourse surrounding trans bodies. I intentionally made this piece big, as well as named it ‘BIG’, because BIG is beautiful, BIG takes up space unapologetically. Trans bodies as well as big bodies should be displayed in a glorious light. BIG is for fat trans people to have and for everyone else to adore. BIG reflects autonomy, and the assertion that trans bodies are not 'supposed' to be cis-passing, and that bodies don't need to be small to be worthy. The use of primary colors represents that—to our core—we can all individually connect with the human condition of having a body.
I felt inspired to bring my art to a larger scale, I've illustrated my whole life, using ink and standard sized paper. My bigger illustrations have been observational with charcoal. I knew a piece surrounding a big body and a big beautiful trans soul needed to have a more compelling size. In person, BIG is even more eye-catching. BIG is important because its message is one that falls far behind within representation. Trans people are marginalized, so are fat people, and this intersection cuts deep for many of us. Trans and fat people's bodies are devalued, this work makes their value abundantly clear. Aesthetically, this piece is intriguing, it carries a clear style, it's shape, it's texture, it’s material, it's scale, it's color scheme, it all is intentional.
