From, Dawn. 2023

Solo Show
Featured at: Leon Gallery
Photos by: Amanda Tipton

From, Dawn is inspired by both Walter Benjamin’s theory of mechanical reproduction and myown historical narrative of the land into which I was born - Capitol Reef Desert in Emery County,Utah, the ancestral lands of the Timpanogos, and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) Nations. It is a unique landscape; the type of land that draws the attention of the parallels of time, trauma, existence and perspectives and has led me to find myself fixated on the American West, specifically the Western Cowboy boot, an American symbol of heroism with a surprising and hidden history of queerness.

Fancy, flashy, and decorative, the American western cowboy boot design was mass producedand appropriated by the Hollywood stylists of the 1920’s and 30’s western cinema. Distributedaround the West, that fancy footwear lost the fundamentals of functional use along the way, andwas replaced by the elegance of style and culture. The ultimate embodiment of the AmericanWest’s male masculinity was now adorned with dual threaded decorations embedded in some of the world's most exotic dyed leathers, folded into every wrinkle, knee high, and high heeled.

Which leads us to the Queerness...

Contrary to the story told by most historians, the West was initially settled by members of thefringes of American society. Excluded and persecuted back East, and in pursuit of manifest destiny, Black, Queer, Mexican, and formerly incarcerated riders helped form the Western landscape you see today. Sadly historians fail to include the identity of these workers who settled the west, along with the tragic genocide that coincided. The west offered hope for a life of freedom and sold it to them as the American dream.

From, Dawn consists of large scale paintings of deconstructed cowboy boots using flat plains of color suggested by Josef Albers color theory. This show includes a collection of minimalist oil landscape paintings, performance video art, and a series of cast ceramic cowboy boots as an installation. Through the replication of the cowboy boot, the work considers the juxtaposition of the binary through color association of the effeminate displayed on the masculine icon of the American west, the cowboy boot.

The pink painted ceramic boots are replicas of my grandfather’s last pair of black leather church boots. His identity was formed by watching American cowboy movies, and internalizing the ideals of hard work, individual freedom and masculinity which he held onto until his very last breath. He grew up on the farm and he died there – pursuing the American dream. As a child, I soaked up this hyper masculinity, while at the same time, bombarded with images of the women in my family taking on the quintessential role of the woman in the kitchen. This was a perpetuated narrative that neither fit nor was accepting of my queer identity and expression. Yet, I am still nostalgic for the Utah desert.