SPRITE
2021-2022 Undergraduate Thesis:
‘Sprite’ first emerged in my creative process as a way to avoid making trauma-heavy work about the relationship between family and the queer self. The way that queer identity manifests in the body and in relationships can oppose the nuclear family without rejecting it. What if, instead, the force of queerness in my work interacted with images of my family and me in a playful way?
The answer to this question was ‘sprite’: a disruption that originates in the politics of queerness. I use queerness both as a socially subversive identity, as the rejection of normativity, and queerness as the energy in bodies that refuse to perform gender and sexuality appropriately. The word ‘sprite’ itself is in reference both to the magic of childhood through the fairy tale, and the character of the trickster. ‘Sprite’ is loud, ‘sprite’ is cunning: ‘sprite’ makes things up about the world.
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Im Garten
February 2022. Watercolor, tracing paper.
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Engaged! x9
October-February 2021-2022. Watercolor, tracing paper.
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Reaching For
April 2022. Watercolor, vellum, colored pencil.
More importantly, ‘sprite’ fabricates a queer history where there isn’t one. ‘Sprite’ stays present in the search, in the questioning. It is the perpetrator of constant reimagining. This is what makes it both playful and political. It freed me to make work about my family without focusing on how harmful it can be to grow up queer in a place where queerness has never been modeled for you.
Don’t feel like you have to pretend to understand the sprite. I certainly don’t. It doesn’t require that from us: you might try to ask it questions instead.
Pear Tree
April 2022. Watercolor, thread, vellum, ink, linen tape.
Catching Crabs
April 2022. Watercolor, thread, linen tape, tracing paper.
COUCH!
April 2022. Watercolor.
