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 Flowers for Frank (1/10)

Digital & Analog Collage, 12"x12", $300
Activist Frank Kameny formed the Mattachine Society of Washington, where he staged some of the first protests in support of gay rights in the United States. Kameny also fought against discrimination of LGBTQ+ federal employees.

When he was fired as an Army astronomer for a liaison in Washington, DC's Lafayette Park, he fought the charges. "The government's regulations ... are a stench in the nostrils of decent people, an offense against morality, an abandonment of reason, an affront to human dignity, an improper restraint upon proper freedom and liberty, a disgrace to any civilized society, and a violation of all that this nation stands for," Kameny wrote in his 60-page brief that he filed with the Supreme Court. 

The artist imagines Frank's perspective if he were lying on his back, looking up at the stars in a country field, with wildflowers poking up in his field of view. The sliver-blue stars are fractal shaped derived from numerals in Frank's birth date (May 21, 1925) and the Stonewall Uprising (July 28, 1969).