Inspired
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About the Exhibit:
In conjunction with the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania History Project and the Dickinson College Archives, the Susquehanna Art Museum hosted an exhibit of art from LGBTQ artists. The full title of the exhibit is Inspired: Contemporary Responses to a Legacy of Courage, which ran from June 28th to July 1st in 2019. It later traveled to the Lancaster Museum of Art for another showing later that year. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, Inspired challenged artists to create a unique piece of artwork of any medium based on the LGBTQ+ archive collection housed at Dickinson College. The collection ended up documenting various stories and moments in history of LGBTQ+ life in Central Pennsylvania. The following is a selection of artwork from the original Inspired Exhibit. Artwork captions were taken from the original Inspired exhibit. To see more about the Inspired: Contemporary Responses to a Legacy of Courage click here. For more information on the Susquehanna Art Museum click here. |
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Inspired Art and Artists:
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Sahn Tran
Tran's identity and social consciousness as a gay man was shaped by the governments willful neglect of the queer community during the AIDS crisis. He recalls news of gay men dying of an unknown disease at an alarming rate while growing up in Los Angeles during the Reagan administration. Tran was inspired by the activist that resulted from institutional homophobia, and his artwork explores the social politics surrounding the contemporary queer community. Photographs from the series were created in response to the stores and information shared by pioneering activists Joy Ufema Counsel and Paul Foltz. These pieces expand the focus of the AIDS epidemic to include stories of how AIDS impacted smaller and/or rural communities in central PA. 
Sahn Tran, Classic Foltz, digital c-print, 20" x 24" |
Sahn Tran, Angel for Bernie, No. 4, digital c-print, 20" x 24" In 1991 Counsel founded York House, the first AIDS hospice in PA. Angel for Bernie was inspired by Counsel's stories about her patients. In Angel for Bernie, Tran imagined and created an angelic body that Bernie, a patient in an advanced stage of the disease, might have seen in the last stage of his life.
Classic Foltz is inspired by Paul Foltz's drag persona Lily White. As Lily White, Foltz performed drag shows in the Harrisburg area to fundraise for AIDS organizations, including York House Hospice. To see more about Sahn Tran click here. |
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JC Villalon
Villalon's work investigates the struggles and perseverance of the LGBTQ+ community in the their fight for recognition as citizens worthy of equal treatment. The Exorcism depicts a child being subject to conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is the highly controversial process of attempting to change an individual's sexual orientation using physical, psychological, or spiritual interventions. Medical, scientific, and government organizations in the United States and Europe have expressed opposition to this practice, declaring it invalid, ineffective, and unethical. A bill to ban the use of conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ minors in PA was introduced in the General Assembly in April 2015. The bill had 20 sponsors but died without any legislative action. Since that time, conversion therapy on minors has been banned in various cities and counties in PA., including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Allentown, Reading and Bucks County. In December 2018 Harrisburg City Council unanimously voted to support Resolution 83-2018 condemning conversion therapy for minors. While the resolution itself is a policy statement and not an outright ban, it does provide that the Law Bureau shall draft legislation which provides for a complete ban of conversion therapy within the city of Harrisburg by the end of the second quarter of 2019. To learn more about JC Villalon click here. |
JC Villalon, The Exorcism, 2017, oil on canvas, 48" x 60" |
Finnley Truman, I am Someone, 2019, collage, 11" x 13" |
Finnley Truman, The Riot, 2019, collage, 11' x 13" |
Truman's artwork investigates the ways queer people experience the world and society's perception of them. They explore the dichotomies of the LGBTQ+ existence: hate, discrimination, death, violence, pride, life community, renewal, and strength. I Am Someone and The Riot illustrate the fear and courage shown during the historic Stonewall uprising.
To learn more about Finnley Truman click here.
To learn more about Finnley Truman click here.
Brad Gebhart and Frank Pizzoli
Brad Gebhart and Frank Pizzoli, Our Voice by Cartoon, 2019
The stories of the LGBTQ+ community in central Pennsylvania have been captured in cartoon form by the team of Frank Pizzoli, the Editor in Chief of the Central Voice newspaper, and Brad Gebhart, Central Voice cartoonists, for over a decade. This creative duo has compiled some of the most relevant social commentary cartoons from their time working together to highlight the important issues facing the LGBTQ+ community.
Above is a digitalized video of the comics that make up Our Voice by Cartoon.
Above is a digitalized video of the comics that make up Our Voice by Cartoon.
Julien Tomasello
Julien Tomasello, The Writing on the Wall (NYC, 1991), 2019, mixed media collage, 12" x 72" x 2" (full image)
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Tomasello's collage fuses personal experiences as a gender-fluid LGBTQ+ person with narratives from the historical and popular culture they absorbed as a young adult during the 1980's and 1990's. This period was one of immense fascination, beauty, and horror for the artist. The Writing on the Wall (NYC, 1991) captures an amalgamation of their visual memory from this tumultuous and creative time period. "As much as I was intoxicated by the art, fashion, music, and beautifully-diverse people I encountered daily. I was equally horrified by the wave of death washing through the LGBTQ community due to AIDS. Anger over the lack of response from local and national government and mainstream media to this late twentieth-century plague was literally flowing onto the streets in the form of protests, disturbances, and die-ins." One of the artist's most vivid memories from this time is one of the exterior surfaces (wall, doors, fences, etc.) of downtown Manhattan. They seemed to be covered with colorful and diverse posters, street art, and advertisements. This signage reflected the stark duality of the modern day, where the horror of the AIDS epidemic and the fight against death coexisted with the unceasing drive to create new life, art, and culture. To learn more about Julien Tomasello click here. |
Close up of The Writing on the Wall by Tomasello, pt 1
Close up of The Writing on the Wall by Tomasello, pt 2
Close up of The Writing on the Wall by Tomasello, pt 3 |
Devon Reiffer
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Devon Reiffer creates art with the hope that viewers will see themselves in their work. They are an artist of social change, and their mission is to create art that allows viewers to see one another and reconnect to their humanity. Devon merges traditional techniques with non-traditional concepts to create art that furthers the visibility of intersecting LGBTQIA+ identities through layers of charcoal and gesso. This gives their work a monochromatic display creating undefinable grey areas both visually and conceptually. The message reflected in every work is: the world was and will never be black and white. Every person’s existence falls somewhere in a unique shade of gray, and each has a purpose that contributes to the overall picture.
To learn more about Devon Reiffer click here. |
Devon Reiffer, coLors, 2018, charcoal, gesso, and pastel on
un-stretched canvas, 55'' x 71'' |
