On Aug. 26, the LGBT Center is hosting an Athens Pride Artists Meet-Up where local queer individuals can connect on their shared interest in art.
Ser Spinelli, a sixth year studying fine arts, is a student staff member at the LGBT Center. Spinelli said he proposed the idea for this event after recognizing a lack of programming for queer artists in the Athens area.
“I noticed I had a lack of connections to other queer artists in the area,” Spinelli said. “I recently started a project with another queer artists in the area, and we both wanted to make more connections and start our own little art community-based thing in the area. We noticed that we both didn't really have that many connections. There hasn't really been an event where queer artists can all come together on one go with that identity in mind.”
With this idea in focus, Ser and Micah McCarey, the director of the LGBT Center, worked to solidify the event and bring queer artists together.
McCarey described the event, which will cater to both queer student artists at OU as well as queer artists around the Athens area as a whole.
“We are aware that we have many members of our LGBTQ+ community who have artistic talents, whether it's in dance, or ceramics or something else, and there are so many opportunities to form friendships and potentially even collaborative relationships when we help network those individuals,” McCarey said. “So recognizing that the start of the school year is an oftentimes really helpful time for people to get acquainted, we thought we would try and do something not only for Ohio University students but also artists in the Athens communities. We can just have an even stronger sense of all the diversity we have here.”
Avery Plummer, a senior studying art history, will be attending the meet-up event. Plummer said the significance of uniting queer artists is they are able to share a unique, unified experience that is often expressed through the art they create.
“I think especially for queer artists, it's really important to make a community around it to bounce ideas off of each other, because, a lot of the times, queer artists are making art that speaks to certain identities or certain experiences,” Plummer said. “I think that it can be a really important space to have open discussions about what that identity means and also what queer expression means for different people, because that could look different for many different people.”
Spinelli said he is excited have the opportunity to connect with fellow queer artists through this event, to expand his conceptualization of queer experiences and their reflection in artistic mediums.
“I feel isolated from the queer artist community, since it's so often just the art community that's talked about at Sigfried, and there isn't really so much of a focus on queer identity and art,” Spinelli said. “I’m just excited to see all the different queer artists in the area and see what kind of mediums they use and what they're up to.”
Ultimately, Plummer said she hopes that the event will create numerous new friendships, sharing similar understandings and experiences.
“I am just really excited to expand my community of queer friends,” Plummer said. “I think (having a queer community) is such a big, important thing for queer people to have just because you can have these conversations about these different forms of expression and also identity struggles. I think that a lot of the time the art that everyone is making can synthesize in a really nice way and be a really cool conversation.”
