The Good Judy Reader | 2023
An ongoing project, The Good Judy Reader is a new bi-monthly printed zine that I have the privilege of creative directing, editing, and even writing select parts. This project is a collaborative community effort with Good Judy, an LGBTQ+ bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn; with the intention of providing an amplification platform for queer artists, performers, writers, etc., as well as a welcome relief from staring at a screen all day.
The Reader takes inspiration from old school self-published digests and consists of interviews, horoscopes, essays, comics, and more. It features several mod design elements that ft the bar’s existing branding, mainly by the use of small starbursts throughout, stretched sans serif fonts, and a warped checkerboard patterned background on many of the pages. It’s important for me to highlight that the zine is free at the bar for all patrons to read and enjoy. The Reader features much of my work: layout design, hand-lettering, logo design, and flm photography.
It was born out of my own personal desire to use my design skills in service of something bigger than me or my job, to give back to my community in a direct way, and elevate my own work and the work of other queer artists and performers.
The Reader is available at the bar and the first issue is free to read online here.
Water Sign | 2022
"Water Sign" is a collection of fifteen collages – and my first being riso-printed – collected 20 page zine. Fusing my longtime love of vintage gay magazine collages and my newfound love of paper marbling, it explores the murky nature of memory, sex, and color. Who or what do we remember? Who or what do we forget? Memory and physical memory is complex, contextual, and layered, and so is "Water Sign." Three individual prints are available in 11x14, with all coming eventually.
Rejection Flowers | 2022
The original title of this zine was “Flowers for My Exes” but that didn’t quite fit because A) not all of the men these texts were sent to are quote unquote “exes” and B) it’s an awful title. The sentiment is nice enough, but in reality I don’t think all of these men deserve flowers - metaphysical nor physical. I did, however, start to think more critically about a subject that all of us invariably have to deal with at some point in life: Rejection.
Rejection Flowers collages my own film photography of flowers with breakup texts, exploring the nature of rejection.
“NOTES” | 2020
“NOTES” is a small compilation zine of anonymous screenshots of what people write in the “Notes” app on their phones: random thoughts, rants, breakup texts, drawings, dreams, etc. Interested in what we write down and why, I put out the call for submissions a few months back, and this is a collection of what I received. The notes are compiled in a specific order with anonymity preserved; along with details like time, carrier, data, and battery percentage displayed when included. Written foreword by me. I’d love to do another collection of these, so if you have good notes, send them my way.
I’m very happy to have “NOTES” included in the 2020 New York Queer Zine Fair, as part of a directory featuring other talented zinesters.
RESCUE PARTY | 2020
A project organized by Desert Island Comics, Rescue Party is “a series of comics dreaming about a utopian or ideal future post-virus.” I submitted nine hand-cut collages related to quarantine life in COVID-19, which were subsequently featured on Rescue Party’s Instagram. I’m very excited to have these pieces available in my Shop, and I hope they resonate with you and your own feelings about quarantine living.
“IN BLOOM” | 2019
My first collage show titled “IN BLOOM” was on display at C’Mon Everybody in Brooklyn, New York, from August 1 through September 8, 2019. Inspired by the relationship between nature and sex, I explored how these subjects talk to and fuck one another. Many of the pieces shown incorporate surreal punches of landscape or objects, not just flowers and plants. How does pornography, which is usually considered raunchy and vulgar, contrast with delicate and fragile flowers?
The show was comprised with fifteen original hand-cut collages, and six digital collages. In conjunction with the opening of “IN BLOOM”, I also designed and published a zine called BLOOMERS, which was only available opening night and to those who purchased pieces.
Several hand-cut collages and all digital collages are still available here.
“A fantasy is a world without limitations. It is a book, a film, a show, an album. As a kid, fantasy is the pretend stories you tell in your backyard. It’s in the books you write on looseleaf paper clasped in binders. These outward facing fantasies turn inward with age. They turn into thoughts of hips, touch, and friction. I’ve found that relying on the world behind my eyes is one of the best ways to combat the tough shit in this world. A tool to use when your real life doesn’t stack up to what you picture for yourself. Not quite a dream, something more real because you can feel it in the nerve endings of your body. Quickening your pulse and heating your blood. Most importantly, fantasy is in your head and your body, an energy seemingly on the tip of materialization.
This is a show about how those fantasies evolved. I pulled what was in my head into reality. The friction, touch, and hips that didn’t exist in reality; I made physical. They came not from a place of disappointment but from a place of ambition, to push the boundaries of what I want to see realized. A desire to render the worlds I saw in my head onto the 9x12 canvases around you. Collage as mental masturbation.
I hope that you discover something about yourself here. I hope that they transport you to a place where you can be free of gravity, ghosting, and gonorrhea. That maybe your blood starts flowing a little faster, your nerve endings fire up. To say that we were here at the same time and shared a fantasy together. “Bloomers” is a visual journal of thoughts around “IN BLOOM”: how I feel about love, sex, relationships, lust, heartbreak, men, New York City. The word “Bloomers” to me can refer to people who are discovering themselves, budding flowers, or underwear; so I thought the name fit quite perfectly with the ambition and intimacy of this show. I’ve kept a journal my entire life and thought it would be nice to share this to coincide with my first art show. You and I won’t be here forever but at least for a moment we can share a thought, an experience, a page.”
