Meet & Greet: Artist Reception & Ally Performance

Giovanna Capone has been making, exhibiting, and selling her mixed media visual art for many years. She is also a published writer. However, for her visual art captures and expresses what the written word cannot. In her collage art, she uses various types of media such as acrylic paint, photographs, fabric and oil pastels to address themes of politics, spirituality, sexuality, and the environment. She finds that making art is meditative and relaxing.

 Prints and originals of Giovanna’s work are available for sale in various sizes. You can reach her at:  mailto:giovannacapone@sbcglobal.net Stay tuned!  Her new website is coming soon!

Ty Chance is a 30-something, Asian, adopted, Italian/Scotch-Irish, New England, queer artist and educator who has resided in Portland, Oregon for 11 years.  I was formally educated in New York City and San Francisco art schools.  I feel more comfortable in a pageboy cap and tie, than in a

dress and heels, any day of the week.  My gender is not apparent at first glance and people often get flustered when searching for a pronoun when addressing me.  I don’t mind because any opportunity to open up a discussion about gender identity is a good one.  I am a gender anarchist

and don’t subscribe to any specific pronoun or gender role.  Help me to obliterate the binary roles we were raised to embody by joining me in my mission to erase those little white boxes forever.

Wendi Kali is a self-taught, fledgling photographer and writer finding her way through this crazy world while enjoying the ride. Her constant companions are her Nikon,  her journal, her perspective and her sense of adventure.  She loves to capture the beauty of everyday things that most people may not see. Helping others recognize and appreciate the beauty that surrounds them is her passion. Evoking emotions and awaking the senses is what she loves most about photographs.  Living simply, compassionately and honestly is what she constantly strives for.

The images that she captures are very organic. What you see in the photo is exactly what she saw through her eyes and her lens.  She likes the idea of capturing beautiful moments in space and time.

H. Lenn Keller is a photographer, filmmaker, musician, DJ, writer, archivist, curator, oral historian and public speaker. She was born in Evanston, IL and has been based in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years. As a photographer, she has been documenting, exhibiting and archiving the SF Bay Area’s LGBT and lesbian of color communities. She was the curator of Fierce Sistahs: The Art, Activism & Community of Bay Area Lesbians of Color 1975-2000, and was a co-curator for the Fabulous/Activist Bay Area Lesbians with Disabilities: A 40 Year Retrospective exhbit.

She has produced and directed two award winning short 16mm films, (Ifé, Sightings), and is currently directing and producing a feature length documentary, A Persistent Desire, about butch and femme identities and dynamics. www.apersistentdesire.com.

She has been an active community builder in the SF Bay Area’s LGBT community for several decades. She is currently working with a group to build butch-stud community to create support for female identified butches. She is an independent scholar in multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural and historical research.

More of my work can be seen at my website:
www.lennkeller.com

C.D. Kirven is a nationally known author, artist, activist & filmmaker.  Her exhibition is called “Life through the eyes of a Southern Blue-Necked Dyke” .  The exhibit is about equality, music, sexuality & acceptance. The exhibit explores the production of art with music, artistic & political content — moving a concept into production, from vision to presentation. It allows the audience to see the world through the eyes of an African-American lesbian reflecting on her racial and sexual history then expressing herself with contemporary images. “Blue-neck” is a spin on the term “Red-neck” which is paying tribute to her deep southern roots.  Guitar-player C.D. Kirven is a well-respected visual artist with 5 years experience & her artwork was featured in December 2009 issue of Curve magazine. She recently created the first Black Lesbian Superhero Comic Book Series called; “The TAO Diaries”, which she has promoted at Comic-Con conventions across the country.  C.D. Kirven is currently reviewing several galleries in Texas to have a comprehensive art exhibition.

To view Kirven’s artwork or to contact the artist:
http://cdkirven.blogspot.com/ or http://www.talenthouse.com/cdkirven

Kat Wallace is a female identified butch lesbian.  I am an artist, extremely spiritual, intensely political, and working to support and empower women.  Especially butch women.

My identity, as a woman loving, alternatively gendered, kinky, pagan was clear to me from a very young age.  This put me deeply at odds with my parents’ identity as radical Christian fundamentalists.  The painful challenges of leaving the cult and subsequently losing my family of origin have been, and continue to be, an intense process.

One piece of that process has been expressed in my art.  It is my intention, in producing and showing my art, to reach out to others with similar struggles.  I believe it is through sharing our experiences that we find validation and strength.

J.S. Walls is a two and three dimensional artist and film maker, was born and raised in Texas. Jay moved to Seattle in 2001 after she received a BA in Fine Art/Art History from Texas Woman’s University.  During Jay’s career, she has been accepted into several juried art exhibitions, displayed in various galleries, restaurants and coffee shops, commissioned by patrons, and she has sold many of her works across the country.   Jay creates art using photography, graphite, conte, maker, watercolor, acrylic, and mixed media.  Her work includes both realistic and abstract styles using various methods of application in the creation of her work.  Jay’s work encompasses a variety of subject matters and ideas including the concept of her evolving identity through a series of self portraits she has created over the last 12 years.

In her spare time, she has created two films Super Speed, presented at the 2006 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and On the Cutting Edge, which was featured at the 2010 Seattle Erotic Art Festival.  In 2009, she curated the BUTCH Voices art showcase Visually Speaking at the first national conference in Oakland. She joined the BUTCH Voices Steering Committee as the Programming Co-Chair at the end of 2009. In 2010, she was the Programming Coordinator for BUTCH Voices Regional Conference in Portland and curated the art exhibition A Taste of BUTCH Flavor. She is currently a stay at home parent of 5 adopted siblings, and has never worked harder in her life!

I would like to perform an excerpt from my solo show My Body Love Story Using dance, poetry, monologues, and humor it explores the one relationship that you can’t ever end. I am particularly interested in performing a piece that explores parallels between my disability experience and a FTM trans partner’s experience in terms of how we are perceived.

Dominika Bednarska, is a writer, performer, and academic. For more information about her work, go to dominikabednarskaspeaks.blogspot.com.

Being a feminine lesbian, an out and PROUD musician, and a partner of a MOC lesbian, I utilize my voice and music to open people’s minds to my world. My song “Genderfuck” does just that. The song is about the way the LGBT community (especially MOC lesbians and feminine gay men) are viewed by the heterosexual community. What is so exciting to me about this song is it really makes people think twice before casting judgment on our relationships.

Jurni Rayne is not your average Adult Contemporary vocalist/artist. This Dallas, Texas native has a great sound and unique flair. Do not judge a book by its cover because this anomaly of a diva will have you melting over the sultry sounds of her voice and the depth of her lyrics. Jurni Rayne is well versed in guitar and piano, however, it is the voice that pulls everything together.

Celebrating 32 years as a tap dancer, Kentucky Fried Woman (KFW)/Kentucky Grilled Man has been performing in, emceeing and producing queer cabaret shows since 2000. Since moving to Oakland in 2005 she has performed and produced as a solo artist and with other San Francisco Bay Area queer performance artists, including Hogwarts Express: The Musical, Trekking with the Stars, ButchBallet, ButchTap & Titland. She is the producer of the monthly Kentucky Fried Woman show on the first Sunday of every month at Bench & Bar in downtown Oakland. You can catch what she is currently up to on her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KyFriedWoman

Tehea Robie is an Associate Editor with Oakland Local, a novelist and a spoken word artist. She loves genre bending, gender benders and interactive media tools. She was a finalist for the 2005 Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers; she’s been published in Rad Dad, Five Fingers Review, Controlled Burn and various sites online. She composes her poems by heart, without writing them down and has been featured at venues all around the Bay, such as the 2009 Nectarena stage at San Francisco Pride, I Am A Man Fundraiser and ShePeoples. Tehea was raised by an exquisite, fierce, working-poor mother. She received her MFA in Writing and Consciousness.

It all started with a foursome of sexy girls playing together in an undisclosed basement. They had so much fun down there, they decided to bring it to the stage for your viewing pleasure. Introducing Damien, Roxy Picaflor, and Ms. Sassy of Debauchery fame, joined by the lovely Miss Magnoliah Black of Rubenesque Burlesque! These hot ladies love them some hot butches, so get ready to get wicked!