Artwork / 2024 / Fashionpus

Fashionpus
2024
acrylic on panel with high heel silhouette cut out
24 x 24 inches
Octopuses are extravagantly strange creatures. Each of these squishy wonders has multiple hearts and brains to go along with tentacles that taste as well as touch. They can shift their shape and color, camouflaging themselves in extraordinary ways. In fact, they remind me of all the best—and queerest—of humans, finding ways to blend in even as we delight in our strangeness. And while homo sapiens don’t have nine brains, we do process our experiences through our extended minds, which include our grey matter along with our bodies, our communities, and our surroundings.
Fashionpus is part of the High Heel Drag Race Art Project, a public art exhibition and auction that benefits New Hope Celebrates. This non-profit is a voice for the LGBTQIA community in both New Hope in Pennsylvania and Lambertville in New Jersey, two small towns that have been havens for queer and creative individuals for generations. I painted these stiletto cephalopods as a nod to the weird magnificence of this region and because I’m a little in love with octopuses.
You can watch the making of Fashionpus.

