Arts Blog

Rochester just got its first mural that spotlights queer identity. Located on the lot-facing wall of the Kaleidoscope Collective space at 936 Exchange Street, the piece is by Brooklyn-based artist, poet, and filmmaker Jess X Snow. Snow was in town participating in this year's WALL\THERAPY muralism festival, which wrapped on Sunday.

The massive wall features a portrait of Snow's friend Chrysanthemum Tran, a transgender Vietnamese-American poet. Snow and Tran attended school together and were reunited in Rochester last year when they took part in Rachel McKibbens' poetry retreat for women of color, The Pink Door.

Along the right side of Snow's mural are lines pulled from Tran's poem, "Biological Woman" --

I transcend biology / I'm supernova / an extraterrestrial gender / I drink all the water on Mars & rename that my blood

"Chrysanthemum turns to imagery of the magic and the cosmic to describe her gender and self care journey. The magic of her words in the face of transphobia and misogyny is what directly inspired the mural," Snow says.

Tran "takes all of the imagery of outer space and uses that to kind of affirm her gender expression and gender journey," Snow says. If trans people "are seen as such a threat to this heteronormative society, then they must have some kind of magic and they must be extraterrestrial."

Using gentle contours and vibrant colors, Snow presents Tran gazing steadily off to the right, her hair transforming into the black silhouettes of tree branches scratching at a velvety aubergine sky. The red planet peeks from behind Tran's head, and a monarch butterfly clings above one ear like a hair clip.

In one of the best incorporations of mural-interrupting windows I've ever seen, the wood between the panes of glass in the windows flows into the black veins of the butterfly wings, and at night the burned yellow glow through the window becomes almost a stained-glass element in part of the painted wing.

"The Earth and outer space becomes part of the vocabulary of this particular mural and a lot of the murals I do," Snow says. "I wrote a poem about how the idea that queerness is against nature doesn't make any sense, because if you look at the natural world -- leopard slugs, clown fish, parrot fish, and oysters -- a lot of them are transgender or mutually penetrative, so they have both parts. There's lesbian lions and bonobo apes that are polyamorous and solve conflict with queer sex. So basically, the Earth is super queer, and I'm kind of reclaiming the imagery of the Earth from a queer lens. And the butterflies represent the transformation and the fluidity of gender."

Tran "represents the Mother Earth, but a queer and trans Mother," Snow says. "I imagine the Earth as a fluid and colorful motherhood that encompasses all the different ways that animals and plants mate, and transcend gender in the animal kingdom. I believe Mother earth has been resisting colonization and heteronormativity for four and a half billion years."

The lines of Tran's poem, paired with the imagery, speak of the push and pull of trans identity in human culture; of knowing you are natural but being made to feel alien.

"I'm a queer person in the Asian-American community, and I've never seen the stories of queer Asians represented on walls and public space or even in films, or books," Snow says. "They're a little bit more represented in terms of poetry, but in mediums like film and public art -- it's more male-dominated and you have to have access to money, walls, or space to tell those stories. When I found my voice more as a public artist and started getting these opportunities, I realized it was important for me to represent my own communities on this scale."

Art is a crucial part of our emotional well-being, Snow says, and murals have the power to affect the daily lives of the people in the neighborhood and the community that lives there.

"In any community, whether it's Rochester or anywhere else, there is a resilient underground queer and trans population but it is rare that they are given many opportunities to explore their identities in public space," she says. "When it does happen, a queer mural gives the rest of the queer community permission to celebrate our identities in public without fear. It's a personal responsibility that I feel when I'm given a wall or a space to create."

Slideshow JESS X SNOW'S WALL\THERAPY MURAL

7 slides

JESS X SNOW'S WALL\THERAPY MURAL

Click to View 7 slides

Snow says she discovered poetry and art around the same time, but only recently began combining the two through mural-making. As a young child growing up in Canada, her parents divorced and she and her mother moved to the US. She developed a stutter in middle school, and as a result, found that writing poetry and drawing were more comfortable means of expression.

Art was how she reclaimed her voice, and now she uses it to bolster the voices of her blood and chosen family and community.

"I'm carrying the weight of all of the queer people who I've known in my life, who wanted nothing more than to see themselves visible," she says. " I have a lot of queer and trans friends who have contemplated suicide, who have been outed by their entire families, who are products of homophobic diasporas and have had to translate for their parents, resist assimilation, and fight for their gender affirmation and queer identity journeys on top of all that. I think taking a baby step toward a world that is queer- and trans-inclusive is to have our faces, lives and words on a monumental scale in public art . I hope this mural of Chrysanthemum can begin this journey."

Much of Snow's other work -- notably for Just Seeds and for the O+ Festival -- addresses migration. Her mural for the Kingston, New York, O+ Festival features a woman whose flowing tresses transformed into the waves of the Pacific Ocean, with ships and birds crossing it.

"Migration and queerness are natural phenomena that are as ancient as the earth itself," she says.

Although WALL\THERAPY organizers set a theme of arts and activism for this year's festival, they left the specifics up to the individual artists. Todd Stahl, a teacher at Webster Thomas High School, began working Sunday at 59 Pennsylvania Avenue, assisted by a few of his students. His mural features an oversize portrait of a young Syrian girl amid loads of symbolism and patterns that are characteristic of his work.

"I wanted to focus this year on Syrian refugee children," Stahl says. He's been following the civil war and refugee crisis, but not very closely until recently. "I had heard about the atrocities that were happening, but because there's so much happening in America, I didn't really focus on it," he says. "It's so far away. My wife and I love to watch documentaries, and we happened upon one on Frontline called 'Children of Syria.' It follows this family with three kids of varying ages, from high school down to five, and a husband and wife."

Despite the exodus, the family stayed in the city because the father began working with a group of resistance fighters. The kids homeschooled themselves. And walking around the city is a gambit -- there are snipers in the buildings.

"It was really eye-opening," Stahl says. "I have a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old. Our lives are so comfortable, even on days when we think, 'Oh, life is hard.' I don't have to worry about snipers. Their city was in shambles."

Stahl's mural was specifically inspired by a scene in the documentary when the children -- the family having finally escaped the city -- encounter the sea for the first time. Their sense of freedom and relief was amazing, Stahl says. "I live close to Lake Ontario and drive by it all of the time -- you take it for granted."

Central to his mural is a larger-than-life portrait of a Syrian girl, who is surrounded by a barren landscape, but pulling the tide of the ocean up close to her heart, like something precious.

The reference photographs for Stahl's piece are sourced with permission from a Syrian documentary photographer named Manar Bilal, who was excited about Stahl's project.

Off to the right of the girl, the sky is filled with silhouettes of World War II era bombers -- chosen because they are such an iconic war plane -- transforming into birds, like an M. C. Escher tessellation.

It wouldn't be a Todd Stahl piece without text. A sign behind the girl points to Damascus in one direction and Baghdad in the other, both city names appearing in blocky English characters and flowing Arabic script. Bold red and white diagonal stripes allude to "caution" signs as well as the American flag and our decades-long presence in the Middle East.

While wall hunting with the WALL\THERAPY team, Stahl's mural location changed a few times before the current spot was agreed upon. He's painting on two garage doors, one of which have the wooden-assemblage look of much of Stahl's studio work. The left door features a giant hand throwing a peace sign and painted barbed wire snakes across the surface, which has one or two broken windows. These were left unrepaired, as they subtly reference the broken-down infrastructure of war-torn cities.

Stahl will continue to work on his mural throughout the week. See the slideshow below for some visuals, and follow us on Instagram @roccitynews for more pictures and videos.

Slideshow Todd Stahl's WALL\THERAPY mural

7 slides

Todd Stahl's WALL\THERAPY mural

Click to View 7 slides

WALL\THERAPY over the weekend announced its 2017 mural locations, which span a swath of Rochester on both sides of the river.

A brief recap of the weekend's progress follows, and stay tuned for individual artist spotlights and interviews coming this week. See the slideshow below for some visuals, and follow CITY on Instagram @roccitynews for more pictures and videos.

This is a female-centric year for WALL\THERAPY. Seven of the 10 muralists are women, and every mural that has been started so far features women.

SARAH C RUTHERFORDhas made quite a dent in the work on her massive mural at 548 West Main Street, which features a woman holding a small child, surrounded by Art Nouveau flourishes and colorful flora and fauna. In addition to joining WALL\THERAPY's lineup this year, Rutherford's mural is part of her series, "Her Voice Carries."

LUCINDA YRENE (aka La Morena)began work Sunday on her wall at 1112 East Main Street, on the west side of Minges Alley. The painting includes a portrait of her daughter holding a sage smudge stick, and an owl floating aloft.

AUBREY ROEMER, working on a huge wall at 936 Exchange Street, is creating a vibrant, mixed-media painting featuring a central woman holding a child, with three figures in the background, all surrounded by vibrant plant-life.

TODD STAHL also began working Sunday at 59 Pennsylvania Avenue, next to Thievin' Stephen's "Stock Lives" mural. A teacher at Webster Thomas High School, Stahl has six students assisting him this week. His mural, featuring a young Syrian girl amid loads of symbolism and patterns, is inspired by international politics and the refugee crisis.

JESS X SNOWworked into the wee hours of Monday morning, projecting her sketch for her portrait of a transwoman poet at 936 Exchange Street (located to the right of Aubrey Roemer's wall). It can be tricky to design around windows, but the leading of the window on this wall lines up perfectly with the wing markings of a butterfly in the subject's hair.

Given the rain in the forecast, it's uncertain how much painting the muralists will accomplish on Monday. Barring weather issues, IAN KUALI'Iis set to begin painting at 40 Greenleaf Street, and ROC PAINT DIVISION(featuring Nzinga Muhammad, Etana Browne, and Kaori-Mei Stephens) will begin work at the Flying Squirrel, 285 Clarissa Street.

SEAN 9 LUGOwill arrive in Rochester Tuesday night and begin painting on Wednesday, July 26. Instead of one wall, Lugo will create a series of wheatpaste murals to form a story throughout the city. CITY will update you with locations as they are available.

Slideshow WALL\THERAPY 2017: getting started

14 slides

WALL\THERAPY 2017: getting started

Click to View 14 slides