For the month of June, LGBTQIA* folks and allies across New England come together in thoughtful reflection and celebration of Pride, which highlights progress since the Stonewall Riots. While much progress has been made, it is also an important time to reflect on what work our LGBTQIA* communities need to do in order to promote inclusivity, safety, and basic civil rights in the face of a hostile political system. We at Take want to acknowledge this important month by highlighting the artists whose work engages with LGBTQIA* themes and issues, as well as the creatives who claim these sexuality, minority, and gender non-conforming identities. All the folks featured on this list enlivened our editorial by challenging normative understandings of gender, sexuality, and identity in general through their unique work.

The following stories are about all kinds artists: previously pregnant butch dykes, rural drag queens of color, cis gay Asian-Americans, trans femmes, lesbian separatists, non-binary babes, and many individuals and groups of people whose identities aren’t as easily summarized. This diversity in our editorial exists because that is the diversity of our region. Though it’s true that we live in a society that constantly works to erase and delegitimize the existence of LGBTQIA* people, we’re still finding artists and cultural leaders who boldly embrace this sometimes fraught, yet always beautiful, spectrum of existence.

While we are proud to present our highlighted list of artists we’ve covered since January 2015, we’re not so naive to think that these are the only LGBTQIA* folks we’ve featured. While some artists openly share their identities with our staff and contributors, other artists have asked us to keep their identities off the record, or choose to never disclose for privacy and safety concerns.

Take is proud to feature these artists and our team will work harder to bring you more creative voices from the LGBTQIA* community as we expand our web edition and return to print this fall.

Massachusetts

Car Wash

Wading In

This Ain’t No Game

Comfort & Discomfort

Catastrophe in Provincetown

The Insider’s Take: Eternal Slumber Party

Come Closer

Tender, Forever

Becoming The Gold Dust Orphans

Facebook-to-Face

The Kids Are Alright

Cave and the Art of Community

Connecticut

Women of Abstraction

Gender Bender

Feminine Mystique

BL&D Interview – Arien Wilkerson

From Clay to Catastasis

Life is Gross

Sacred Stones

Crossing Equators with Arien Wilkerson

Maine

Portland’s Cherry Lemonade

Notes from an Expat: Where Are You From

Not-so-Little Women

Take Q&A: Crystal Williams—Writer, Advocate, Advisor

Slow Boat to Iceland

The Simple Power of the Cup

New Hampshire

Manchester’s “Sexy Industrialist”

Hood is Downtown…For Now

Rhode Island

Kitty Eyes & Spandex

Taken: Todd Oldham at RISD

Rachel Blumberg Sees And Hears More Than You

Hustler of Providence

Aurora Catalyzes Variety and Community in Providence

ART/Crush: J.R. Uretsky

Meet Rhode Island’s Newest City Boy

Nine Months in Drag

Vermont

The Rainbow Cattle Co.

Make Some Time for Angus McCullough

What Happened Before Homosexuals?

New England

Artists to Watch 2017

10 New England Tattooers You Need to Follow on Instagram

7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss

The post Take Magazine Pride Month Round-up appeared first on Take Magazine.

Matthew Towers did not imagine clay would be his muse. Originally from Poughkeepsie, New York, he studied theater at New York University, where he received his BFA. An ardent lover of the stage and deep history of classical performance, he originally pursued the flooded industry of acting in NYC in the 1990s. Finding more frustration than inspiration in that scene, Towers began taking classes to pique his interest in other creative fields; that’s when he discovered the visceral, malleable, and erotic motions of clay. “For me, when clay and porcelain are very wet, it has this ability to fall, to crumple in unexpected ways like hair or clothing on the floor,” he says. “I was taking these classes and fell in love with how it moved and felt. And later on, when I began to learn more about the science of it, glazing, firing, etcetera, I felt inspired and fascinated.”

Towers did not compromise his love for classical theater for pottery and sculpture—he fused them. His current body of work, Catastasis, is named after the third act of a Greek play, in which the climax of the play surrenders itself into a series of complications that set up the fourth act, the catastrophe. “I like that pottery and sculpture have this sort of long, mediated history like the theater,” he says. “During the Sung Dynasty, considered the golden era of ceramics, the Chinese were the only ones who knew how to fire and glaze porcelain. It took Europeans hundreds of years to figure it out.”

Catastasis Vase, Porcelain, 24 inches, 2015 | Photo by Nathan Carnes

The Catastasis series consists of sculptures that fold and bend in lines that are visually textural, but unexpectedly smooth to the touch. Towers sees them as the expressions of carefully manicured wigs, discarded clothing, and the body in motion. His sculptures reflect his interest in male sexuality, especially the ways that hair has historically represented changes in culture. In early European culture, for example, long hair represented male virility; later, men began wearing flamboyant wigs as an expression of wealth and fashion. For Towers, these shifts in hairstyle mark a subversive and historically relevant change in cultural perspectives about gender and sexuality. His use of soft pastel glazes, countering bold red, and rusty oranges, coalesce into something beautifully erotic, bold yet somehow fragile.

Outside of his sculptures, Towers also creates beautifully ornate and functional pottery such as bowls, cups, and plates that reflect his stylization that is both contemporary and classical. “I view making functional pottery as an extension of my need to decorate and ornament my surroundings—as a testimonial about who I am, who I want to be, and how I view the world,” he explains. His work stretches away from pottery as a traditional craft and highlights its capacity as functional fine art, believing that pottery has the capacity to be subversive, to reflect culture, and to challenge it via humor and hyperbolic expression. “I employ decadence, sensuality, humor, and flamboyance to toy with identity as well as the meaning of function.”

Catastasis Vase Form, Porcelain, 2016 | Photo by Matthew Towers

Matthew Towers is currently an Associate Professor of Ceramics at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, where he teaches a range of classes including traditional pottery, abstract sculpture, and clay and glaze chemistry. His upcoming show, Reaction Bubble, opens at Real Art Ways in Hartford beginning March 4th, and is a collaborative project between Towers, interdisciplinary duo LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus), and choreographer Deborah Goffe.

Matthew Towers, sculptor
Hartford, CT
Website

Top photo Crush Bowl, porcelain, 15-inch diameter, 2015 | Photo by Roger Castonguay

The post From Clay to Catastasis appeared first on Take Magazine.