Series on partial view at Arlington Courthouse Library Gallery through 8/28/26.

One work on view at Pawsh Gallery (Alexandria Mayor Gaskins' Art In Every Space Initiative) through 9/30/26.

All tea, no shade...

Biographical Fractal Portraits Celebrate LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Movement Activists

In the steamy summer of '69, after months of police violence, bar patrons finally had enough. They fought back. In the scuffle, Marsha P. Johnson, a Trans woman built like an NFL quarterback, reportedly flung her size 11 1/2 heels at police. Iconic!

Catalyzing their outrage, Marsha and other vanguard activists fought police for their right to assemble and their basic right to exist at the Stonewall Inn Tavern. In doing so, they embodied the American experiment, uniting as one.

They fought hate with pride, evolving into a generation of fearless activists and. They fought for decades, devoting much of their lives for our civic betterment. The fight continues.

On February 14th, 2025, [clutches pearls -- a day for love] the National Park Service obliterated Marsha’s and other Bi, Queer, and Trans stories from its website -- at an historical park founded specifically for these vanguard activists. The current U.S. administration vanished them from our official national story in a single keystroke.

If the government can simply vanish internationally famous activists like Marsha P. Johnson from our country’s official history, who is next?

This series celebrates the unlikely activists who advanced human rights for sexual minorities in the United States. Expanded marriage rights might not exist without brave souls like Marsha "Pay No Mind" Johnson. The art is dedicated to activists like Johnson and to DC poet, Michael P. Whelan, whose oral history interview partly inspired the project.

This art is biographical fractal portraiture, a research-driven, fractal-math based method devised by the artist.

After studying the lives of vanguard activists erased by the U.S. government, the artist conducted two oral history interviews with Stonewall activists and descendants of the family that owned the Stonewall Inn.

Next, I employed subjects’ biographical data as variables in fractal math equations. Next, I sculpted and iterated the resulting organic forms. I created shapes that reminded me of my subjects' life stories: reflections, literal and figurative, of lives lived authentically and joyfully.

Finally, I created digital/analog mixed media collage layering digital imagery, photography, historical media, acrylic, watercolor, colored pencil, marker and artist's knife. I mounted and layered the pieces of collage in shadowboxes using a variety of patterns. Backgrounds represent related concepts. I selected pink, blue and teal for my primary colors to symbolize the vibrancy of queer existence and also because I am a repeat offender with this palette.

Fractals cry out as a metaphor for queerness. They demonstrate how the world is not as straightforward as we may think. Few perfect, Platonic forms exist in nature. Rather, a variety of forms exist, adapted for their space in the universe. These shapes point to a world that is not fully predictable or wholly random. In a way, fractals also mirror human experience. Fractals contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman described. Math becomes art, and the art celebrates people whose contributions and stories can never be tainted by tyrants.

In direct contradiction to recent executive orders, there is no LGB without the T. We owe a tremendous debt to Trans activists for their historic contributions. Divisive times require unity. As Ben Franklin warns, "We must hang together or we hang separately." I thank Marsha, Sylvia and others who paved the way for the expanded civil rights that we enjoy.

A portion of each sale from this series will go to Trans Continental Pipeline. Please consider supporting this organization.

Marsha P. ("Pay No Mind") Johnson (see Mandala artwork under "Series Highlights"menu) was seemingly everywhere, taking care of seemingly everyone. Her social justice activism spanned multiple areas of civil rights: fair housing, quality gender-affirming healthcare and abolition work. She was called "Saint Marsha" around Greenwich Village.

Stormé DeLarverie (Gumbo For Stormé artwork) was a queer Louisianian, is described as a "butch lesbian who scuffled with police outside [Stonewall Inn]." Stormé referred to the events of June 28, 1969 as, "a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience — it wasn’t no damn riot."

Sylvia Rivera (Star For Sylvia artwork) was a trans activist who advocated for many disenfranchised groups. She fought injustice within and without the burgeoning civil rights movement. She participated in the 25th Anniversary Stonewall March, remarking later, “the movement had put me on the shelf, but they took me down and dusted me off... Still, it was beautiful. I walked down 58th Street and the young ones were calling from the sidewalk, 'Sylvia, Sylvia, thank you, we know what you did.'” 

Walt Whitman (What History Forgets artwork) was a poet who wrote in his draft notebook, "Be it as if I were with you — Be not too certain but I am with you . . . poem to one three centuries hence” (from pages from Whitman trial lines and descriptions notebook, 1857. Feinberg-Whitman Papers, Manuscript Division).

Frank E. Kamany (Flowers For Frank artwork) was a gay rights activist in the DC region. He has been called "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement. During the Lavender scare, in 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer, leading him to begin "a Herculean struggle with the American establishment" that would "spearhead a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s."

Angel of the Brick and Angel of Christopher Street are dedicated conscientious instigators and accidental/bystander activists of the Stonewall uprising. The latter group includes my friend, DC Poet Michael P. Whelan who said, "We didn't know what was happening at the time -- what is all this racket? But we were there, together, pissed and angry as all hell!"