Published 2010-10-04T19:53:00Z”/>
Coming out in styleStephanie Maynard
See the rainbow – celebrate the rainbow. On Monday, which is National Coming Out Day, <a href= “http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chico-CA/RAYRAY-GALLERY/105085882860337″ target=”_blank”>RAYRAY</a> Gallery and the Stonewall Alliance Center are hosting the Coming Out for Art show.
The show, which is now in its second year, was the brainchild of Christina Brower.
“I was unemployed at the time and didn’t have a whole lot going on and all the time in the world, so I started to think about what I wanted to do,” Brower said. “To my knowledge, there had never been a gay/lesbian art show in Chico before.”
Brower partnered up with local <a href= “http://www.stonewallchico.org/” target=”_blank”>Stonewall Alliance Center</a> to host the first show celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer acceptance, she said.
Brower has been a gay rights activist for about six years, she said. She grew up in Oroville and Susanville and went to prom with her gay best friend. The atmosphere was not always welcoming.
“There was one time we were walking down the street and four cars in a row shouted at us,” Brower said. “I had Slurpees thrown at me, and a glass Snapple bottle.”
The bottle broke and cut Brower’s face, she said.
“The police told me, ‘Well what did you expect?'” Brower said.
One of her pieces used to advertise the event shows seven women in black and white wearing nothing but their underwear, each pair in a different color of the rainbow.
“I was in Victoria’s Secret when I saw all this underwear laid out in a rainbow on a table,” Brower said. “I thought that was so cool and should be a photograph.”
For the first show, she used a similar-style photo for posters – two women in black and white with colored paint smeared on them, Brower said. This year’s show uses the same concept, but with two male figures.
“I wanted something both provocative and that would accurately represent the show,” she said.
The rainbow underwear photo was used to make bookmarks promoting the event at the Stonewall Alliance Center.
They were gone within the week, said Jackie Humphrey-Straub, a board member of the center and one of the art show’s key organizers.
She has been working with the center since June. Humphrey-Straub helped out at last year’s show and enjoyed it so much she wanted to help again, she said. Some of her favorite pieces of art included giant metal sculptures of a penis and a vagina.
“The show offers an ability to safely express thoughts about sexuality,” Humphrey-Straub said.
Humphrey-Straub looked into working for a non-profit organization after graduating from Chico State in May 2009 with a degree in social work and a minor in women’s studies, she said.
“I never came out my last year at my internship,” Humphrey-Straub said. “I was pretty much forced into the closet by my boss who made it very clear he was against Prop 8.”
The ordeal was an eye-opener, she said.
“I wanted to go find work where I knew I would be valued as a human being,” she said.
As of Sept. 27, the show has 20 confirmed submissions, though it’s hard to estimate how many there will be by the show date, Humphrey-Straub said.
“Last year we had 60 submissions and a lot of those didn’t come in until the day of,” she said.
The show will feature many different media, including paintings, drawings, photography, sculptures and even a woman who is painting her own body as an art piece, Humphrey-Straub said.
Of the pieces already submitted, some are from Chico State students. Freshman Taylor Sullivan has submitted acrylic paintings and sculptures to the show.
One of her sculptures is of two shackled hands, painted black and reaching upwards, representing both the struggle that everyone experiences in life and a need to keep fighting and hoping, Sullivan said.
Sullivan came out to her family last year, she said.
“My family’s pretty conservative Christian,” Sullivan said. “I know they still love me, but it was hard.”
Before coming to Chico, Sullivan researched LGBTQ support and community groups and found Stonewall, she said. She joined the first week and became involved in the second.
At 18, Sullivan is one of the event’s younger artists. The youngest artist of the show is likely Christina Brower’s 6-year-old daughter, Ariane, who drew a picture of herself, her mother and Brower’s girlfriend smiling and standing under a rainbow.
“I want more than just the LGBT community to show up for the event,” Brower said. “I want people who might not have been interested to come in and feel something, like that classic picture of the little girl in Vietnam, how it just hits you in the heart. I want my art to do that.”
The show will be held at 6 p.m. Oct. 11 at RAYRAY Gallery on 530 Broadway St.
Stephanie Maynard can be reached at
