This exhibition took place at Granite City Arts and Design District in the St. Louis, MO surrounding region. The exhibition dates were June 4th 2022 - July 23rd 2022.

Baby Blue constructs an idyllic landscape to analyze the nuances of queer desire which are informed by the poetics of cowboy masculinity. The queer experience is often designed through inventive effort regarding obstacles like language, distance and technology. In this work, the intersection of longing and sexuality are explored through patterns, form, and symbolic imagery. The melodramatic, lyrical language of old country music formulates the narrative tone throughout the work. Using the emotional scaffolding of songs like Lonely Blue Boy, Blue Bayou, Kentucky Rain and Crazy, I equate these stories as allegory for a rural queer experience.

Country music utilizes vulnerable pageantry to create heightened narratives that produce a cinematic impact for listeners. Ultimately, this romantic transparency depicts a cultural understanding of what it is to love and to lose. Unique to this genre is the welcome space for male vulnerability, which is arguably absent today. We hear ‘cry breaks’ from men like Hank Williams, Elvis, and Roy Orbison that embellish the anguish.

I was invested in using some of these potent qualities to investigate my own experience of fleeting romance and lonesomeness while living in rural America. The camp of country music mixed with society’s grip on heteronormativity did not go unnoticed in the research process. Pop culture’s obsession with romance and sexuality provided context to inform the use of overt symbols which allowed space for humor and absurdity. Windows, wetness, de-flowered roses, and wood highlight the introspective qualities of navigating queerness in isolation. I wish for this work to relay an omniscient perspective which welcomes subjectivity to the present narratives rather than relaying a singular gay sob story.

The color blue is often a hyper-emotional adjective to express heartache, longing and uncertainty within country music and pop culture. By literally applying blue to the surfaces and language of my practice, I seek to unearth my relationship with the color. Night time and thunderstorms popularly stage “feeling blue” like in Lonely Blue Boy from Conway Twitty. Roy Orbison describes a return home with hopeful anticipation in Blue Bayou. This connection to water supports my use of liquid which elicits tears, sweat, spit, and/or cum within this work. It is still unclear if the color demands a solemn or tranquil response. As intricate as my themes are, I hope blue can express the breadth of emotion I have experienced while compiling this series. The investigation of my own queerness is unfixed just as the social constructs around identity are transmutable. The hue ‘baby blue’ signals a pragmatic joy of living and articulating a queer reality which references the color of a new day.