About

What makes an animal in a suit queer? Watch this space as I try to figure it all out.

I develop designs using AI image generation and then burn them into basswood panels. Each piece features a different kind of animal and the word “Queer” in a different font. This work sits between digital impulse and analog permanence. It is as if I had a dream with my computer and then wrote it down very slowly so I would remember.

Wood is more durable than digital. I once read about an archeological site in Novgorod, Russia, where they found medieval letters on pieces of birchbark. One was a short note from a man to his brother about a bushel of wheat. I burned a copy of it into wood because it fascinated me: a fragment of communication, preserved for centuries underground. I want the word “Queer” preserved in that way too, held tightly in history so that nobody forgets us.

When I was young I wasn’t drawn to dolls. I much preferred my stuffed animals all of which had boy names. I have long pursued a masculine aesthetic and happily find it again and again with each animal I render. One day I would like to display and sell them so that they might scatter to the homes of other people. But for now, they live in pixels.

Perhaps the suited animal is a symbol of queerness, something that is both part of nature as well as culture. Something that you may be born with but you can also wear. I want people to remember how it can always be both.

Thank you for visiting. I hope these dapper creatures bring you joy.