FREE* GAY BOOTS
The bottom half of a body mid-jump, feet returning to the ground, while dancing in a screened-in porch with wood built-in benches and trees in the distance. They're wearing loose navy pants, green/blue/white striped socks, and black boots that tbh are kinda blurry, bc this isn't marketing copy, okay?, it's a thinly-veiled-in-humor testimony to none of our structures being functional :)
FREE* GAY BOOTS ENTER BY JUNE 30!
Dear everyone,
I’m writing in a bit of an unusual mode, a mode I’ll call “Haha But Honestly (HBH),” because what follows involves threads I’m not used to tying together all at once: loss, opportunity, blessings, disappointment; the urgency of the present moment amidst the wash of the sands of time; a touch of #sponcon, and, for better or worse, a call for cash. (Or is that in fact precisely the set of threads we are all constantly tying together all the time, excepting perhaps the sponcon but certainly not the call for cash?) The good news is, the call for cash is (spoiler if you wanna skip the rest) A RAFFLE!! So, for all of you 90s public school fundraiser nostalgia-heads, state fair try-your-hands, “Text This Number to Win” don’t-mind-if-I-doers: read on.
This year I’m part of one of the best things I’ve ever been part of: the Queer|Art Mentorship program. If you’re not familiar, Queer|Art is “an artist-led and community-centered organization—united by shared values of collective care, creative resilience, and the preservation and advancement of queer legacies and queer futures” that was “born out of the recognition of a generation of artists and audiences lost to the ongoing AIDS Crisis, and in a profound understanding that one of the many repercussions of that loss has been a lack of mentors and role models for a new generation of LGBTQ+ artists.” In addition to running the Mentorship program, they hold community-based programming and events and also grant a number of major cash awards for queer artists.
The nationwide Mentorship program pairs emerging artists with established folks in their field for a year of individual mentorship, alongside peer-to-peer cohort support and organizational support for professional and career strategizing. So since January, I’ve been meeting monthly with Will Davis, my kind, affirming, insightful, funny, and deeply heart-filling mentor, as well as with the rest of the cohort, all of whom I’ve come to admire intensely. The work that Queer|Art co-director Rio Sofia does to manage the program and the org as a whole is truly a model of what the dreamiest nonprofit leadership could look like - transparent, warm, shit-together, effective. QAM sets a high bar - I’ve never been in a sexy artist fellowship thingy like this before, but let me tell you, THIS ONE IS SEXY, by which I mean: thoughtful, supportive, real, authentic, personal, pragmatic, strategic, connective, relationship-building, world-opening…and, until recently, well-resourced.
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN. (You knew it was coming at some point.) As we’ve all seen this year more than ever: corporate pride is one fragile fucking float! If your feed is swirling with venue and festival closures alongside companies canceling their pride campaigns, then I have one perfect combo to add to your list.
Basically, Queer|Art historically relied on a lot of corporate funding, and now, all at once, a lot of it is gone. Queer|Art has experienced a devastating cutback of three major corporate sponsorships, and the last sponsor informed staff of their decision less than two weeks before Pride month (!!), after programming that was dependent on their support was already in motion (!!!). This is a phenomenon affecting many LGBTQ+ organizations right now and is a disturbing reflection of recent legislation that is targeting our communities, and trans folks in particular. The details are [redacted redacted redacted] but I’m telling you: they’re wack!! If you heard them your mouth would fall open, and then you’d close it into a thin firm line and shake your head in judgment and dismay.
It’s not surprising, I guess, given, well, everything. But it still sucks.
To be clear right quick, at this point it's not about me or the program I’m in - if it was just about securing my bag I wouldn’t reach out. It’s about Queer|Art’s long-term ability to continue providing uniquely excellent support for queer artists - support that is as warm and fuzzy as it is strategic and concrete, as resourced as it is intentional. There just aren’t that many arts orgs out there that are doing the work well, and it makes me really sad to imagine the stress the staff are under at the moment as they seek to keep this incredible work going. I want every artist I know to have the kind of specific, rich, attentive support that QAM has offered. Keeping Queer|Art alive and abundant won’t make that happen for everyone. But it will enrich the lives, work, and audiences of so many artists whose work the world needs. And we have an opportunity right now to come together to secure that future.
Here’s where the fun comes in!
Queer|Art is raffling off 20 pairs of Blundstone boots to raise money!
(Yes those are the ones that as your bestie put it “all those people in Seattle wear” and as your boo put it “yes you look good in those…everybody does, honey…” and *No, they’re not technically free, but - )
Raffle tickets are only $5 and each one increases your chance of winning a pair!
RAFFLE ENDS FRIDAY JUNE 30 SO ENTER NOW!!
Can you believe this is where we've landed? I'm just an artist, showing up in your inbox, asking if you'd like a shot at $200 boots because it'll help some folks I love be less precarious. Haha But Honestly, for real tho.
In one of the most unexpected turns of my creative career, I myself received a free pair of Blundstones as a Fellow in the QAM program. (I promised you #sponcon didn’t I?!) Blundstone has been a supporter of the Mentorship retreat that Fellows gather at every year, at the also-recently-announced-as-closing Stephen Petronio Residency Center (RIP, damn). When we were there earlier this spring, it all felt so fancy and unreal, like okay what??? are we actually allowed to be here so abundantly?? but obvi I’m not complaining?!? And now suddenly it feels like of course that couldn't last, and here comes the bottom, falling out like it was always destined to do. With all the stories of cuts and closures at major institutions, and now learning from Rio at our last mentor meeting about what’s happening at Queer|Art, I fear and wonder whether any artist-centered organization (or institution that provides major resources to artists, whether or not we’d call them artist-centered) is secure.
And if they aren't?
If the bottom is truly falling out and the rubble is about to cascade down the valley of hopes and dreams?
Then WHAT SHOES WILL YOU WISH YOU WERE WEARING WHEN YOU SCALE THAT RUBBLE, MY FRIEND?
(Especially if you need them to double as costume for your self-produced improvisational performance about post-apocalyptic community-building?)
YOU’LL WISH YOU HAD HOT, RUGGED, ALL-GENDER BIG GAY BOOTS!
(Note: you do not have to be gay to wear Blundstones. See comment re “all the people in Seattle” above.)
So damn the corporate funders, save the art, and enter the Queer|Art Blundstone raffle by June 30, my friend.
Speaking of which, I can’t believe I’ve gotten through this whole piece without proselytizing about raffles in general. Select readers may have heard me wax on this topic before, but if not, here we go:
I am a big believer in buying raffle tickets. The reason why raffle participation is such a smart choice is that many fewer people buy raffle tickets than you’d think! This is bad for fundraising, but good for your chances of winning. I myself have won many raffles and I truly believe it’s simply because I enter them (lol - what a sentence, but we’re here for the vibes, not the logic!). At a fundraiser at the Beverly Arts Center when I was 10, I won a weird candelabra (which then became a silver-polishing chore - I believe we sold it in a garage sale when we moved a few years later). My first WNBA game, back when the Sky still played at UIC, was via a “text this number to win” ad on the CTA. I texted, and I won! Once at a fundraiser for the Legal Council for Health Justice that my bestie brought me to in our mid-20s, I won a night’s stay at a luxury hotel in Chicago for me and one guest! Unbelievable! Granted, it was so hard to decide who to bring and so unimaginable to actually receive that experience that I never used it and it eventually expired. (I obviously should have brought bestie! Lally, forgive me!!) But that would never happen to you, because you’re decisive and have a healthy relationship to scarcity-vs.-abundance mindsets.
So enter the damn raffle by June 30! And win some hot gay boots!!
HBH, and with great gratitude,
Nora
Some loose P.S.’es
A bit newsletter-ception, but I wanted to say a big thank you to Londs Reuter for inviting me to share a conversation in Movement Research's Critical Correspondence about finding unexpected containers for our practice (or for things that don’t have to be our practice), including newsletter-writing and door-knocking. I hope we all feel encouraged to keep tracking and assessing the right containers for ourselves! And grateful that this newsletter itself connected me and Londs.
I’ll be performing a tiny excerpt of my long-term solo project at Physical Theater Festival’s Scratch Night at Theater Wit in Chicago on Monday, July 10 at 7pm. Come thru! Run time says an hour but I’m guessing it’ll be closer to 2 if you stay for the whole thing.
And wanted to share a couple other fundraisers that I donated to recently, if you’re not too tight at the end of the month or on the off chance my Queer|Art plea didn’t blow our shared wad. Larissa Velez-Jackson and Bimbola Akinbola are both artists who I don’t know personally but whose work has moved and impacted me and feels vital to our shared fields. Larissa has a GoFundMe up for cancer treatment and recovery, and Bimbola’s family has one up for funeral costs and to establish an artist fellowship in the name of her mother, who recently passed. I know these are just two of the many needs crossing all our radars right now, but I try to show up for artists, so I’m passing them on.