There’s nothing quite like a morning swim with baby kraken. They follow me even in the bay, swimming out of the protection of the Atlantic and their mothers. They are adventurous and playful and bigger far than me, and while their tentacles wrap around my leg occasionally, they don’t pull me down. This one has already been tormenting local fishermen, drumming on the bottom of their boats, reaching for their nets. They’re too frightened of her to do much but take pictures, so for now she’s relatively safe. Eventually, she’ll learn to love the depths even more than the surface. You can only be fascinated by something that isn’t for you until you find the things that are for you. Loud frantic fishermen out of reach won’t seem as interesting once she hangs out more with the cool sleek creatures of the deep.
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Here begins the “The Further (Queer) Adventures of Yukon Cornelius,” the series of paintings I did reimagining the prospector from the Rankin/Bass 1964 Christmas Special, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” written by Romeo Muller as a gay man whose life is helping “Hiddens” (the world calls them Monsters) adapt to the often fearful Humans around them. It’s a chance for me to write about queer issues through monsters and heroes. There are about 45 of these, I believe. The solo art show happens Dec 16, 6pm EST at the Dayton Society of Artists, 48 High Street, Dayton OH. I’ll try and create a video of the show before we have to take it down so I can have a record of the show as it was up.
You’ll notice that the text under the pictures gets longer and longer as we go. I’m a short story writer… so these excerpts just started forming into stories.
Bear Witness 