Big Gay Art Show back at Sedona Arts Center

The 12th annual Big Gay Art Show is running in the Sedona Arts Center’s Special Exhibition Gallery through Friday, Dec. 22.

“In 2012, The Big Gay Art Show was conceptualized by a small group of community members with Sedona Pride,” a SAC press release stated. “In 2022, Sedona Arts Center took over the program and opened it up nationally. In the last 11 years, hundreds of emerging and professional artists have exhibited in Sedona — sharing their diverse stories. This year, eight local artists were invited to participate, including Anita Elias, Cecily Fazekas, C.J. Henderson, Denize Katzen, Robin Heywood, Amy Light, Michael McCalla, Bells Medlin and Leesa Stevens.”

The show’s opening reception on Wednesday, Dec. 6, featured an appearance by former librarian Marshall Shore, known by the moniker “Arizona’s Hip Historian,” who also served as the show’s judge.

“So many people come and think nothing ever happened here before [they] got here,” Shore said. “I try to get people to realize that so many folks here in Arizona have changed how we look at the world.”

“We have Rusty Warren, who is the birth mother of the sex revolution,” Shore continued. “She was a piano player and comedian here and in the early ’60s had a hit song called ‘Knockers Up!’ and because her humor was very pro-female and so early, she is now because it’d be the birth mother of this revolution. For stuff she’s doing right here. You look at folks like George Quaintance, who was an artist who wound up doing a lot of the work with muscle magazines in the ’50s, and he was doing that from right here in Arizona.”

Shore’s involvement with telling these largely untold stories of Arizona history can be seen in unexpected places. With the Arizona Trans Alliance, he helped raise more than $3,000 in 2021 for a new headstone for Nicolai de Raylan, who died in 1906 and is buried at the Greenwood Memory Lawn Mortuary and Cemetery in Phoenix.

“One of my other favorite stories is Nicolai de Raylan, a transgender pioneer from Russian aristocracy,” Shore said. “He basically moved from Russia to Chicago, got himself a good job, two wives, one divorce and tuberculosis. He moved to Arizona for his health. It didn’t go so well and when he passed away, they discovered that he had been born a woman. So they buried him in 1906, pre-statehood, without a headstone.”

Shore said that he sees an analogy between art and history in that both expand one’s perceptions.

“I think with art, it’s showing different sides than what is your experience,” he said. “It might be something from a different community that you’re not a part of, that it might be just something that you didn’t expect. Something that at first glance might be nothing, but once you start looking at it has a deeper meaning and starting to play upon that.”

He suggested this concept was visible in the show’s first-prize winner, “HB 1557” by Rachel Ivy Clarke, a quilt made of colored blocks with the word “gay” stitched between the blocks.

“You look on the wall, just see a beautiful rainbow quilt. But if you get close to it, and you start looking, you’ll see some hiddens texts in that quilt,” Shore said, explaining his choice. “In the last few years, textiles have really become not just something that you wear or put across your couch or on a wall … I just love the fact that it takes the traditional media and kind of ends it a little bit and makes it even so much more powerful.”

Sedona resident Leesa Stevens’ work “Colors of Love,” an assemblage piece, is among the works on display. Stevens is a retired architectural designer from Phoenix who was an art teacher and uses recyclables within her works.

“As an art teacher [I] taught crafts and my first assignment, I had no materials,” Stevens said. “So all my students had to go out and find stuff to make their artwork. This was back in the ’70s, like pull tabs from pop bottles, and that carried with me. I’ve been through all the mediums and somehow kind of found objects, recyclables always found their way into my artwork, until I moved [to Sedona].”

The show also brought in artists from out of state, such as Trevor Castor, who showed “Gathering Strength,” a mixed media work of plaster, acrylic, tissue and ink. The work depicted a lone figure steeling himself to face the issues before him.

“I’m honored to be included. We just drove from San Diego to be here,” Castor said. “It’s great to showcase through art, especially for the LGBT community, but to show our struggles and to show that we’re just human. That’s the common theme, that we’re all made of the same stuff, and it’s beautiful to see different interpretations of that.”

Castor added that his body of work is about body positivity and shedding light on anxiety and depression.

“It’s why I showcase the beauty of every day,” Castor said. “Because I wake up every morning just grateful that I’m still here and alive to experience everything it has to offer, not just the highlights and the great emotions, but everything in between, too, because I’m here, I’m alive.”

Other works on display take a more playful tone, such as Denize Katzen’s work “Let Freedom Sing — Portrait of a Drag Queen “ with an accompanying book of works.

“All my work has to do with birds and freedom and this is the freedom to be lifted up,” Katzen said. “So it’s very show busy.”

“One of the things that makes this show so special is art celebrating the LGBTQ community [but] it’s also their allies,” SAC Executive Director Julie Richard said. “The artists are not necessarily all gay. Some of them are allies of the gay community, [such as] parents.” Those include Amy Light, who has two works in the show, including “Pride Waterfall,” and specializes in glass work.

“I just felt like I needed to honor [my family] and honor the queer community,” Light said. “ I think sometimes there’s a real bashing of people who don’t fit into the per se mold. I think that this show is important because it gives a voice to people who sometimes don’t have a voice. And I like to celebrate that.”

“Obviously, the show benefits us as well as the artists,” Richard said. “But we’re also partnering with Northland Cares, like we did last year, which is an HIV specialty care clinic, and they’re based in Prescott and Cottonwood.”

The show is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. There is no charge for admission.