Dreaming Tree and Heart’s Desire Heart’s Desire My 2018 Illuminate Salt Lake entry was the Heart’s Desire, where participants wrote their greatest desire on a heart-shaped wooden tag and added it to the sculpture. Dreaming Tree In 2017 my entry for the...
Film Projects I was privileged to work with the amazing filmmaker Stan Clawson on both of these short documentaries. Hairball of Glam Hairball Of Glam is an exploration of my identity as a middle aged nonbinary/genderqueer person via getting put into “drag” (how I...
Dear Stewart “Within the human cortex crouches an impulse to build something huge.” – Kathryn Gabriel Thanks for checking this out! I’m glad you’re here. This is the long version. To keep it from being even longer I’ve linked some stuff out, but it’s...
Visionary Artists Hildegard of Bingen Jean-Jaques Lequeu Hilma af Klint Bill Martin Emma Kunz Georgiana Houghton James...
Finding My Biological Family When I first reunited with my biological family back in 2012, I wrote a story for Catalyst magazine about it. Re-reading it I realize I would write it differently now. Finding my family at the age of 38 was exciting and bewildering and...
Finding Dad I was about to meet my bio father, Joe, for the first time. My heart was in my mouth as I climbed the steps to his front door in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I knocked on the door, and this avuncular old dude opened it. He’d been expecting me, but he looked...
Finding Mom This story was originally published in Catalyst magazine’s October 2012 issue. The HTML link has long since decayed, but you can see the original layout in the issuu link here, starting on page 18. This year I did something I had thought was a...
The Lady of the West Desert “It’s only a model…” “Shhh!!” Current model of this planned monumental ceramic-tile-faced basalt sculpture. Sigourney Weavers are 6′ tall for scale. No, it’s not a very good model. But it’s a seed, and I made it for...
The Importance of the Prompt Everyone wants to make a mark, but not everyone is brave enough to do it. Everyone wants to be heard, but not everyone is brave enough to speak up. Things like PostSecret are great, but without a prompt they’re often a forum for an awful...
Spiral Jetty Robert Smithson’s masterwork is located about a two hour drive north of Salt Lake City. It’s been different every time I’ve gone, and even in the middle of the day in the middle of the work week I’ve never had the place to myself...
The Isle of Man Magic Gardens When I was 11, we moved from the hot, bright, subtropical Bahama islands to the cold, wet, windy Isle of Man. In the Bahamas, being cold was a novelty. In the Isle of Man, it was a given. I had never experienced autumn or winter before. I...
The Bahamas — Junkanoo I can’t overstate the artistic influence of Junkanoo on not just myself, but on practically every Bahamian artist. It is the fire from which we are forged, the blazing root of the culture, one of the things that creates a coherent identity for...
