artist. writer. performer. curator. educator. mystic. queerly complex.
WHO ARE YOU?
I am many things. I am an artist that uses all the tools available -- photography, video, interviews, social media, sound, design -- to create visual works that reveal layers, connections, and perspectives. I am a writer examining truths and myths through fables, poetry, and parallel observations. I am a performer crafting multi-media experiences that dance between light and dark, despair and hope, reality and possibility. I am a curator filling white walls and empty spaces with the voices and visions of community, emerging, and established artists. I am an educator cultivating environments of peer exchange rooted in creative inquiry and multi-sensory pedagogies. I am a catholic (notice it is not capitalized) mystic conjuring ephemeral landscapes of astral and temporal origins. I am queerly complex.
WHAT IS QUEERLY COMPLEX?
Queerly is loving fearlessly, transforming radically, and compassionately mirroring. Complex is abstraction and structure. Queerly Complex is me.
WHERE HAVE YOU PRESENTED WORK?
Please check out these projects for more detail about my current work: 14 Black Poppies, the #WhereDoYouBelong Project, and A Simple Collective.
My work has graced walls, stages, screens, cafes, classrooms, and cultural complexes including the Asian Art Museum, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the DeYoung Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora, SOMArts Cultural Center, the African American Art and Culture Complex, Ninth Street Independent Film Center, ASC Projects, Black and White Projects, The Red Poppy Art House, The Box Factory, Adobe Books, Laurel Bookstore, Qulture Collective, Amnesia Lounge, The Stud, The Elbow Room, Mercury Cafe, the San Francisco Public Library (Main Branch), San Francisco City Hall, Historic Sweets Ballroom, the New Parkway Theater, The Roxie, the Emerald Tablet, Denman Middle School, International Studies Academy, French-America International School, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, In Our Words: A Salon for Queers and Company, The Western Edition, Mission Local, the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, COUP Journal, the 14 Black Poppies blog, the OutLook Theater Project blog, and many other alleys, street corners, parking lots, social media platforms, bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, and closets.
The space, though, ultimately is unimportant. What matters most is that the work exists in memories and dreams.
My work has graced walls, stages, screens, cafes, classrooms, and cultural complexes including the Asian Art Museum, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the DeYoung Museum, the Museum of the African Diaspora, SOMArts Cultural Center, the African American Art and Culture Complex, Ninth Street Independent Film Center, ASC Projects, Black and White Projects, The Red Poppy Art House, The Box Factory, Adobe Books, Laurel Bookstore, Qulture Collective, Amnesia Lounge, The Stud, The Elbow Room, Mercury Cafe, the San Francisco Public Library (Main Branch), San Francisco City Hall, Historic Sweets Ballroom, the New Parkway Theater, The Roxie, the Emerald Tablet, Denman Middle School, International Studies Academy, French-America International School, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, In Our Words: A Salon for Queers and Company, The Western Edition, Mission Local, the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, COUP Journal, the 14 Black Poppies blog, the OutLook Theater Project blog, and many other alleys, street corners, parking lots, social media platforms, bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, and closets.
The space, though, ultimately is unimportant. What matters most is that the work exists in memories and dreams.
WHEN DID YOU BECOME AN ARTIST?
Jason means healer, or at least that is what I've been told, and it is the legacy imparted onto me by my parents. With healer has also come many other names. In my childhood, it included altar boy. In middle school, it included actor. In my adolescence, it included seminarian. In college, it included activist. In my twenties, it included youth worker. In my thirties, I decided to call it artist.
Now, it is all of these things and so much more: artist is just a synonym for that who reveals truths in all its queerness and complexity.
Now, it is all of these things and so much more: artist is just a synonym for that who reveals truths in all its queerness and complexity.
WHY ART?
Art saved me from suicide more than once. It liberated me from dogmatic duality engrained in me by my Catholic upbringing. It is what taught me complexity, what showed me queer.
I remember a particular visit to the public library when I was about 12. I had sat all night the evening before with a knife to my wrist. I felt its cold steel and could not yet bring myself to let it cut out the warm blood. I went to bed sobbing.
The next morning, I begged to visit the large public library across town, not the small one that was near my home. My mother drove me there and dropped me off. I was supposed to stay in the Teen Center. Instead, I snaked my way to the art books. There on a shelf was a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe. I opened the pages and drank in each image. I knew then that I was unlike all of the other kids.
It would be quite some time before I felt called to pursue art full-time. Instead, I wandered trying on other practices and identities. Each one was not quite right. They were a shadow of something greater, and in all of those shadows, art lurked.
Now, I've fully embraced ART. It is the great communicator. It heals, reveals, transforms, mirrors, shatters, and bridges. It is transcends a single language, and it allows each viewer, each audience, each spectator to make their meaning and find their own truth. In essence, art is queerly complex.
I remember a particular visit to the public library when I was about 12. I had sat all night the evening before with a knife to my wrist. I felt its cold steel and could not yet bring myself to let it cut out the warm blood. I went to bed sobbing.
The next morning, I begged to visit the large public library across town, not the small one that was near my home. My mother drove me there and dropped me off. I was supposed to stay in the Teen Center. Instead, I snaked my way to the art books. There on a shelf was a retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe. I opened the pages and drank in each image. I knew then that I was unlike all of the other kids.
It would be quite some time before I felt called to pursue art full-time. Instead, I wandered trying on other practices and identities. Each one was not quite right. They were a shadow of something greater, and in all of those shadows, art lurked.
Now, I've fully embraced ART. It is the great communicator. It heals, reveals, transforms, mirrors, shatters, and bridges. It is transcends a single language, and it allows each viewer, each audience, each spectator to make their meaning and find their own truth. In essence, art is queerly complex.
HOW CAN I SUPPORT YOUR WORK?
This one is fairly simple. Here is a list of ways you can support my work:
- Attend an event, exhibition, installation, performance, or screening. (Calendar coming soon.)
- Share what you like on this site via social media.
- Follow me on Instagram.
- Get In Touch.
- Invite me to your event, exhibition, performance, or screening.
- Take a pause. Observe what is around you. Let it wash over you. Find art in that moment. Share what you found with me.
