GOOD ADVICE/BAD GAY is an advice series from an anonymous gay therapist1 who’s not afraid to hurt your feelings with the truth.
Last time, we asked readers to submit their queer art questions to be answered by today’s guest, interdisciplinary artist and author Zach Ozma. All submissions were entered into a raffle for prizes made by Zach (congrats to J and K on their victories!).
For this entry, Bad Gay and I decided to be extremely generous and share Zach’s answers with everyone. HOWEVER, only subscribers will be able to access Zach’s advice for comic artists, including homework assignments for structured creative play and a list of controversial queer artists to look to for inspiration that Zach and I came up with together.
Subscribers should also stay tuned for next week, when Bad Gay will also weigh in on this question. That will be paywalled, too, so if you want to know what Bad Gay thinks about queer art, well…you know what to do.
Hi Zach and Bad Gay,
I'm a young trans man and aspiring artist/kinkster. I have a lot of ideas for things I want to make and things I want to do. My passion is making comics, and I have a few short ones under my belt. However, I've never made a comic that I was completely excited about.
I think this stems from a couple places: 1) I'm afraid to start working because I don't think my skill level will ever match what I imagine in my head, and 2) I want to write about disgusting, depraved things that scare me. I want to write about queer people with fucked up morals who have gross sex and fuck each other over.
I know there's a market for stuff like this because I myself want to read it, but I think it takes a certain amount of courage to put something like that out into the world that I'm not sure I have. I guess I'm afraid of backlash from my family and friends, or on the other hand, backlash from the kinky queers that I want to like me if I end up misrepresenting their communities, since I haven't been able to form my own yet.
Do you have any advice on getting past these fears and just creating already??
Sincerely,
Stuck In My Head
Dear Stuck,
Few things make art-working less exciting than imagining future reviews. I have a great deal of empathy for your worry about what The Public will think of your art work and by extension you. Ask Ellis Martin—I was 100% sure our edit of Lou Sullivan’s diary would be too much sex for the people to handle, and that they’d all hate us for perving up a nice, neat trans historical figure.
Perhaps you’re even encountering a universal artist anxiety about reception. But let’s not mince words: this one’s harder when you’re queer.
If you are a person who wants to be good and who perhaps has also come of age in a dogmatic queer community with lots of unclear rules about how to be good, you may find yourself with some anxieties about how your people perceive you. It may be hard to let go of imagining all your actions through the lens of a publicist who is trying to not get you canceled. Nobody gets any good art-making done under that level of self-scrutiny. I personally can’t even draw a full breath when I feel that way.
So what do you do? For one thing, you build tolerance for receiving rejection or misdirected aggression—some people are going to HATE your work. It’s fine. You probably hate their work, too. Most of the time, they will not tell you. (I’m hoping Bad Gay can say some therapisty things about building tolerance.) Editor’s note: They will, next week!
For another, you make some conscious decisions about how to protect your own feelings: using a pseudonym for privacy, not reading your reviews, asking for only a specific kind of feedback, choosing which work is for social media and which isn’t, not showing work to family, wearing sunglasses so no one can see you cry.
For yet another, you make attempts to disentangle your personal goodness or morality or values from queer clout-chasing via buzzwords and walking on eggshells. Actually, Darryl author Jackie Ess probably says better things about this than I do, or anyway a lot of what I say I got from her:
“I really wanted to write outside of a slightly valorized political identity, because that’s something that felt very uncomfortable for me to wear. I walk poorly in heels and balance poorly on pedestals. Just let me wobble on this way.”
Whether or not your art receives backlash is essentially a marketing question. You, Stuck, identified the market for your work (the fact that you yourself want it!) as a reason to make it. It’s difficult (though not impossible) to sell art work that doesn’t exist. Try to put off imagining publishing and exhibiting the work. Publishing and exhibiting are administrative tasks. Making the work is a studio task. I find it helps to separate them. Are you unable to avoid seeing the future audience when you are doing studio work? Try to have an exhibitionistic experience with that fantasy.
As queer artists, we are conscripted into a multi-generational conflict with interests that seek to censor deviant cultural production. Forces governmental, social, religious, educational, and simply snobbish move at all times to squeeze gay and erotic art out from the visible realm of Art and into the musty, beaded-curtain dim of Pornography. This used to be trendy on the Right, but lately more lefties seem to be riding the anti-sex wave.
You “want to write about queer people with fucked up morals who have gross sex and fuck each other over.” Good! I actually don’t think art needs to tell a morality tale. A lot of art for children does this, and art for children is popular for queer people. Maybe Steven Universe queers simply aren’t your audience—it’s ok! They have plenty of art to look at. Me? I want more smut.
I actually think it is our obligation as queer artists to make real our most out-there ideas. This kind of art has enemies who would like to see it dead. I am telling you, it is your duty to add your fucked up, depraved comics to the visible realm of art. There’s plenty of sexual art out there that isn’t my taste or just doesn’t turn me on, but I am grateful for every bit it because it expands the visual realm, taking that big squeeze off me and my work a little.
As poet Essex Hemphill puts it:
“They’re too busy
looting the land
to watch us.
They don’t know
we need each other
critically.
They expect us to call in sick,
watch television all night,
die by our own hands.
They don’t know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world coming.”
Every time we write queer texts, produce queer images, do queer actions, we confirm the new world coming. You worry about misrepresenting kinky, queer communities in your work because you haven’t found your own. What if you find your people BY making the work? We need each other critically. What is it about their experiences that draws you? What do you want to mimic or try on? Can you become part of what you want to represent? Is your art a way you might enter into the communities you desire? Are you a voyeur? Is that wrong?
Want to read Zach’s advice for comic artists, homework assignments for structured creative play, and a list of controversial queer artists to look to for inspiration? Subscribe for $5/month for all that and more.
Gonna be in Philly this month? Support Zach in person at:
Vicarious Love Artist’s Market
Love City Brewery, April 23 12-7pm
West Craft Fest
The Woodlands, April 30 11am-5pm
Thank you so much for supporting GOOD ADVICE/BAD GAY! As you know, 100% of your subscription funds go to mutual aid and reparations projects.
For this edition, we’re splitting $4,200 between National Bailout and Philadelphia’s Morris Home. $2,100 will go to National Bailout, a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers, and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration, and $2,100 to Morris Home, the only residential recovery program in the country to offer comprehensive services specifically for the transgender community.
Bad Gay and I thank you for your continued support. We’re all in this together, so let’s act like it!
David tweets at @k8bushofficial. David is not Bad Gay. David is DAVID. Bad Gay and David are two separate entities, brought together by a shared passion for being gay and mean. Read more GOOD ADVICE/BAD GAY.
This column is meant as a source of advice and entertainment, and should not be considered therapy or medical advice in any way, nor does it establish a therapeutic relationship. If you are seeking either, please look into appropriate venues.
GOOD ADVICE/BAD GAY #14: on queer art