We are so excited to share the work of the recipients of the 2022 Southern Equality Studios special grant round. This grant was created to lift up the wonderful work that has been developed by Southern LGBTQ creatives, whose work tells the stories of the resiliency of queer experience. This grant round was dedicated to resourcing and celebrating LGBTQ artists and creatives across the LGBTQ South. Grants of $500 supported LGBTQ Southern artists working on a wide range of creative projects. Applicants had the option of nominating themselves or someone else.
This special grant round was a part of CSE’s Southern Equality Fund, which has been making grassroots grants across the LGBTQ South since 2015.
Jump to Artist Profiles
“Ames Beckerman (he/him) is an Atlanta-based photographer and the founder of the Trans Headshot Project. He is a queer and trans man with 12+ years of experience shooting portraiture and events with a focus on LGBTQ+ community spaces.
Trans representation is often a stepping stone to acceptance and equality. For most cisgender heterosexual people across the South, one major way that they encounter out trans people is through the media and entertainment that they consume. As media shifts to portraying TGD folx as a wide range of characters, special attention needs to be paid to the actors and actresses in these roles”. The Trans Headshot Project aims to provide out trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming actors and performers with a free professional headshot so that they can audition for roles to be the representation we all deserve. ”
— Ames Beckerman
“My name is Edyka Chilomé and I am a queer Indigenous mestiza Poet, cultural worker and a community based literary activist living on the lands known as North Texas. From city halls to border walls, kitchen tables to detention centers, GLAAD and the Texas Democratic Convention, I have been invited to share my work across Abya Ayala. In the last few years I have offered my work as an invitation to reimagine futures that are informed by honoring the land and re-membering traditional lifeways that exist beyond extractive heteronormative colonial realities, of the U.S. South in particular. Most recently, I have been moved to do this by designing a 200 sq ft tiny house that I have named Casita Chilomé.
Far from the classist white heteropatriachal representations that dominate the conversations about alternative housing in conventional media, Casita Chilomé is a milestone in my journey toward housing security, autonomy, and dignity restoration as a detribalized displaced queer indigenous person of color. Shifting my relationship to space, ownership, and land is a necessary step in reindigenizing and finding my way home.
Funding from this grant will help cover my living costs as I develop the treatment for a documentary film exploring my journey with Casita Chilomé. As a 2021 Sundance Institute Uprise Fellow, I have already begun to gather a production team composed of QBIPOC artists and filmmakers based across the U.S. South. As with all of my work, my intention with this film is to reflect and affirm the beauty, resilience, and fierce radical potential of QBIPOC, recognizing that often those of us living in the U.S. South are at the front lines of insisting, envisioning, and creating a more equitable and life affirming future. Sharing the story of Casita Chilomé will complicate the hyper capitalist discourse around tiny living and offer an accessible model for how other QBIPOC might choose to respond to the increasingly violent landscape of this country and the extractive economies that often cost us our freedom and our lives.”
-Edyka Chilomé
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“Musa Alves was born in 1984 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is a Brazilian-American self-taught artist. She earned her BA at Tulane University, where her work was featured in the Carroll Gallery. Parting primarily from painting, she has also worked in other mediums like photography, installation art, and writing, exploring themes related to media and popular culture often through a journalistic lens. Her work was featured in Les Femmes En Avant 2021 group show, Dames Nature, at La Caserne Paris. Most recently, she was featured in the Women’s Caucus for Art of Louisiana 11th Annual Femme Fest 2022 group visual arts exhibit. Private art collectors in New York, New Orleans, and Paris have her work included in their treasuries.”
— Musa Alves
“I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, and I currently reside in Mebane, North Carolina. The South is all I know, and I have come to appreciate what it means in my life, as a source of inspiration as a painter and a poet. As my work pushes more into environmentalism and water, I further and further dive into the ways water affects the lives of Black people, especially in the South. Growing up in Durham was fundamental to my understanding of this, as Durham has grown to become one of the rainiest cities in the nation, with more annual rainfall than Seattle (a notoriously rainy city). And there were still occasions in which I was a confused child, seeing the bottom of a lake in droughts that troubled the region for most of the early 2000s. Now our waterfronts overflow all too frequently, and it seems there are flash flood warnings every other week. As storms continue to worsen, as Black folks are continually displaced from residential flooding, as drinking water is contaminated, I am constantly reminded of environmental racism. I am also reminded of the ways in which the South uses water as a means of celebration and recreation, from water parks to lake parties to the kiddie pool out back and the ways that water is fundamental to life in the South and to Black culture in ways that segregation diminished and racism continues to stifle. I am looking to bring critique in the form of honesty, of our joys and our pains as they relate to water, and the sources and history in water’s polar habits of recreation and danger, droughts and floods, play and pollution in Black Southern communities.
-Joseph Campbell
Angela Denise Davis
podcaster, music educator, musician
Asheville, NC
“Angela Denise Davis is a podcaster, music educator, musician, composer/arranger, and graphic designer. Her artistic work has spanned over three decades. She is also the Creative Director of ZAMI NOBLA (National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging) where she is the creator, host, and producer of the ZAMI NOBLA Podcast and directs the community music program, Uke-In.
She is committed to public facing projects and artistic ventures that engage community. She is often asked to participate in panels and serve as a public speaker. Her graphic design work literally puts a face on the work of ZAMI NOBLA, and her direction of the organization’s community music program has connected LGBTQ and allies across the country.
Angela’s work with the ukulele is focused within the domain of the African American classical and folk music tradition. In November 2021, the ukulele ensemble she formed, RRUE (Remember and Reimagine Ukulele Ensemble) premiered her arrangements of Negro Spirituals.”
— Javetta Sabra Clemmons
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“I am a custom couture wedding gown designer, but since the pandemic I have begun to shift gears and move into doing more work promoting and encouraging Self Love and Self Care amongst the women of trans-experience in my local network. This year I have made it my mission to combine both my Love for the art of Couture with my desire to uplift my community by orchestrating a debutante for Transgender women, where I will be constructing custom gowns for the women participating. The debut will be a feature all different forms of artistry highlighting the women and the gowns on stage in the Dillard University Theater for what is going to be deemed a night of Majesty and Magic. As most women know coming of age is a huge deal, but for most transgender women that moment isn’t highlighted until we are featured on the front page after we have perished. It is my goal to set a proper stage for the most deserving women and the men who support us in our endeavors. Alongside courses of education, etiquette, articulation, refinement and beauty regimens I am making it my duty to create a platform for us all to showcase our gifts before an audience of whose who both near and far. I believe this illustration of art in motion can be a catapult for the New Orleans trans community and can pave the way for many more events to come. This grant would help to lesson the cost of participation and contribute to fabric and material purchases.”
-Näima Férbos
“As a gay indigenous man I’ve spent a good deal of my life conflicted with who I am and spending time navigating the fringes of society. After years of devoting myself to traditional fiddle music I feel as if I’ve finally found a bit of a home so to speak. A place I can contribute as well as help influence. The more visibility and success I’ve accrued through the traditional american music scene and the more I’ve become aware that I’ve attracted a LGBTQ fanbase.
Community engagement can take many shapes. In the last few years I’ve been playing around with my online presence (instagram, livestream videos) as a place to put some of my more provocative thoughts/ images/ memes/ characters/ and musical ideas. I’ve noticed over the years because of sharing these things I’ve managed to garner a following of people who either identify with or recognize the things I’m saying or paroding. Often I keep my work separate as far as music and my more crude ideas but slowly they feel as they are merging. In this way I feel as if I’ve engaged aspects of the traditional music community that might otherwise not feel inclined to be too involved given the white heteronormative and puritancial dominated scene of traditional american fiddle music.
Although this isn’t my only form of community engagement. I’ve spent years teaching workshops, being a panelist, hosting music sessions, and working in rural native villages in the interior or Alaska teaching school children fiddle music.
With this grant I will either be able to put it towards my first full length album featuring me on the fiddle, Or I can buy equipment (microphones, strings, violin/ instrument upkeep and repair) to continue sustaining the work I make at home, or simply it can alleviate the cost of living which directly influences my time and the way I’m able to continue a career solely sustained by touring, recording, and teaching.”
-Nokosee Fields
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Gabrielle Groos
Visual Artist,Podcaster, Musician,
Tampa, FL
“Gabrielle Groos (she/any pronouns) is an Afro-indigenous visual artist, activist, podcaster and musician working in Tampa FL, where she has recently begun building a photo collective for celebrating visual creatives of color. She also invests her time into a multi-medium activism project called Black Girl Emo Night, with the purpose of raising awareness and creating a safe space for and of alternative people and musicians of color (which can be found on spotify, youtube, instagram and tik tok). She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Florida and has worked under and alongside artists such as Courtney Alexander, Thomas Lopez, and Ezra Johnson. Her visual work has been displayed in various collections and exhibits such as Miami’s ArtBasel and at the Louvre in Paris. In her collage work, Gabrielle is interested in utilizing mixed mediums to relay themes such as Black beauty, cultural appropriation, misogyny, and double standards designed to stereotype and demonize Black femme bodies.”
— Gabrielle Groos
“Hello! I am Kris. I am a multidisciplinary creative who does spoken word, written poetry, paints, designs clothes, and makes video projects based out of Georgia. My work largely centers spiritual healing and black queer and trans divinity. In terms of how my art engages community, my work empowers southern Black trans folx, including donation based art sales I’ve conducted to raise funds for black trans people in Atlanta throughout the pandemic. I have also performed spoken for several benefit concerts to raise funds for top surgeries and living expenses in community through Southern Fried Queer Pride, and facilitated community altars and performance spaces when we’ve lost folx in Atlanta. The vast majority of my audience is southern and queer, and I like to believe my art reminds us that we’re loved.
This funding will enable me to purchase video editing software and to have more time to dedicate to “Yung, Gifted and BlackQueer”, a video project I’ve been working on for the better part of a year now about blackness, queerness, creativity and mental health. I believe it will have a great impact because it tells the stories behind my art and mental health journeys. My hope is that it will inspire and empower other black queer creatives to be open and unlearn shame around the relationship between mental illness and creativity, especially for black LGBTQ folx. My work reflects a world where we are allowed to be human, where we can thrive in ways that feel natural to us in joy and pleasure and the beauty we bring to the world by existing. Thank you for your consideration!
– Kris Henry
“Haaaaaaay! Everyone I’m Lorenzo! My artistry is culinary. My love for food started when I kid. My G-ma was my inspiration! She had such a way with taking ingredients and transforming them into an amazing dishes.As time went on my fascination grew more and more. Eventually she started letting me help her for the holidays, and family get together. To my surprise I was actually really good at baking. My grandmother would always say “God gives us gifts that we are suppose to bring to others and make them happy.”
When I was 13 she passed away, I was crushed and my love for cooking faded for a couple of years. I felt lost without her, and lost when it came to food. Eventually, I realized that she wouldn’t want me not to make others happy.
I got back into the groove, I was a part of Georgia’s Pro-start culinary team at Tri-Cities High School in Atlanta, Ga. I’ve assisted in feeding the homeless for 10yrs now and what I hope to do with my gift is to start a non-profit or catering business that assist LGBTQIA individuals in find their creative talent with food, it will keep them busy, actively engaged in their community, launch them into the workforce, or potentially get them to start their own business.
I hope to be a source of Black Excellence for others someday. I think my grandmother would be really proud of the happiness I brought to others.
”
-Lorenzo Bryant
“Different Strokes! Performing Arts Collective was formed at the intersection of art and activism and consistently calls into question the social norms and quiet acquiescence that allow racism, discrimination, and other forms of oppression to thrive. Different Strokes! appreciates the value of empathetic and thought-provoking theatre as a profound and effective means to social change and transformation. Over the last twelve years Different Strokes! has established itself and remains at the forefront of producing theatre that makes a difference in, and to, our community. Says the company’s founder and Managing Artistic Director, Stephanie Hickling Beckman, “we believe that the arts are capable of bridging cultural and social gaps, and work to increase and sustain opportunities for diversity within the Western North Carolina performing arts community, by presenting theatrical works that confront issues of social diversity in a provocative way.”
Stephanie Hickling Beckman
“Adam Atkinson and Everett Hoffman are cross-disciplinary artists, educators, and curators currently completing a three-year residency at Penland School of Craft, in Penland, NC. While at the residency they share a studio space and collaborate on their curatorial project Spectral Matter. Adam received an MFA in Metal Design at East Carolina University in 2019, and a BFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Practices at Boise State University in 2013. Atkinson’s work documents relationships between gender and the body using adornment and small-scale sculpture as formats for exploration. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Everett received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2018), and BFA from Boise State University (2013). Hoffman’s current body of work examines contemporary forms of protection and iconographic communication, illuminated through lights and sculptural forms. He has completed multiple artist residencies around the United States, his work has been published and exhibited nationally and internationally. “
— Everett Hoffman
“Valentina Hueck is a Venezuelan American filmmaker. In 2020, she graduated with Honors from Pratt Institute with a B.F.A. in Film. Since graduating, she has been working as a freelance video editor. She is one of the eleven 2021 “Filmed in NC” awardees. Her film, “pulsing orange, skinny youth,” was screened at the New York Lift-Off Film Festival and the VisionsFFC, where she won the highest award for filmmaking known as the “VISIONARY AWARD.” She has received an Artist Support Grant from the United Arts Council of Raleigh & Wake County, along with a grant from the Pivotal Fund for her upcoming short film “mañana negra.” Through cinema, she dissects her ideas of love and identity as a queer, Venezuelan-American woman. The experience of leaving her home country as a child has instilled in her the understanding of a marginalized persons’ endeavor in America. Therefore, she hopes that my filmmaking practice will not only represent and amplify her voice but also others, thus nurturing a community. The artistic object of her work is to heal and emotionally enchant all involved.”.
Valentina Hueck
“I am nominating Ash Hunter, a local LGBTQ+ artist living in Little Rock, Arkansas (central Arkansas region)
Ash has been a long time resident of the area, an activist and organizer for the community. They have participated in the initiative to collective liberation via art spaces, art opportunities they helped organize in the area. At one time, they cohosted a BIPOC art night that was held once-twice a month. This space was created to hold space with other BIPOC queer and transgender artists. Ash has led campaigns with local transgender led organizations to help raise funds from time to time. Through sales on their social media, they have been able to raise funds to extend programs such as bail out funds, money for food insecurity and rent uncertainty for community members. Ash is currently working out of their home as part of their studio. They have been asked to host workshops in the summer in a local LGBTQ+ drop center to teach others in the community about art as a self care activity. This lends to the concept of equity mentioned, as the artist will be using teaching methods to info share and skill transfer to others. That audience will include BIPOC trans people who may not have other safe spaces to attend to , learn new, constructive ways of expressing the self/making statements in and around the narratives of queer, trans people in the South. Ash has mentioned renewing/revitalizing the QTBIPOC Art Space as a monthly fixture, as possible in the current pandemic. The need for the scholarship/grant would allow this artist to prep their toolkit(s)/rebuild their art supplies to continue making these deliverables being asked for in the community. Thank you for your consideration for this peer nomination.”
– Krystopher Stephens
“Hunter is an intersex, queer, Black, nonbinary/trans, and femme. All of those titles hold precious meaning to them and the way they perceive and move through the world. Hunter’s artistic mediums include photography and writing, with a deep passion for patterns, dream-like states, and fleeting moments too gentle for words to describe. Since relocating to Durham 3 years ago, Hunter’s photography has, much like other components of their life, transitioned to incorporate the old and the new. Hunter is also the Health and Community Coordinator for the LGBTQ Center of Durham, where their passion for health equity and access goes directly into serving their community.”
— Hunter
“My name is Siete Luera (they/them) I am a queer, non binary visual artist from the Rio Grande Valley, TX. I primarily focus on American traditional tattooing with a queer xicanx lens that redefines the storytelling of who America is. I choose ancestral imagery that challenges the way we define and empower our bodies through permanent art. As a tattooer and illustrator, my intentions are to foster a safe space for queers of color to transmute generational pain into meaningful art”.
Siete Luera
“My name is Andie Morgenlander (she/they), and I’m a gender-fluid femme director, writer, and producer of short and feature length narrative films. My filmmaking practice centers community-based work, personal/collective healing, and stories that shift the dominant media landscape. As a member of the LGBT+ community, many of us have been denied space to exist freely in our bodies. I care deeply about crafting ethical space on film sets and sharing stories that amplify queerness in the American South. Shying away from southern stereotypes, my filmmaking explores the cultural conditions that keep all members of the LGBTQIA+ community from openly giving and receiving the love that they/we deserve.
I co-wrote, executive produced and acted in the independent feature “Luke & Jo” which has garnered various awards including “Best Narrative Film” at Full Bloom Film Festival and “Best Feature Film” at Fort Meyers Beach International Film Festival. I co-created a narrative about queer visibility in Appalachia with Julia Christgau, titled “Whistle Down Wind.” It has played both nationally and internationally on the festival circuit, and has been adapted into a feature film. We’ve been working to finance this film, and are planning to shoot it in 2023 in Asheville, North Carolina. ”
— Andie Morgenlander
“Sam Peterson is a Queer Transgender writer (Trunky: Transgender Junky, and Sugar, A Memoir of Craving, on Transgress Press) whose books candidly detail his experiences with depression, addiction, and transition. His Covid mental health struggles nearly got the best of him, which led him to an idea: what if he interviewed folx who had been through something, to see how they survived, and why they are thriving now. The result is a weekly podcast called “Why Live?!,” on YouTube and Spotify. Thus far he’s interviewed comedians, drag kings, crayon artists, and his oldest friend, to ask them the question: why live!? It is a philosophical, open, creative conversation that dares to take on one of our time’s most salient questions.
Currently he’s also touring with Sugar, while maintaining his job as a rape prevention educator for a Durham, NC non-profit. He lives happily in Durham, with his cat-muse, Walter.”
—Sam Peterson
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“The Queer-Trans Project is on a mission to provide gender-empowering resources to LGBTQ+ minorities so that they have the power to create social change in their communities.
The Queer-Trans Project organizes the LGBTQ+ community together to provide resources so that they have the power and confidence to create social change. Our programs enable individuals to feel empowered and confident in themselves so that they can take on the world without feelings of dysphoria, diffidence, powerlessness, or being an imposter. Your support will help to fund our programs, including Social Groups, Sexual Health Education, and Advocacy opportunities.
Cheyenne Smith
“As an artist + community member, my work is rooted in how we communicate, navigate, deconstruct and reconstruct boundaries. I have always been engaged in the educational mutual aid efforts that surround me. As someone who was born and raised in the South, it has always been apparent to me how necessary it is to have inclusion and accessibility as a foundation, especially in Art spaces that strive to encourage growth. Community can’t truly thrive without support and a sense of belonging.
For the last handful of years, I have operated as Seether Bookstore. Seether aims to recirculate literature by way of selling books and using the proceeds to buy and ship books to incarcerated members of the LGBTQ+ community. When someone buys a book or zine from us, we are able to send one to an incarcerated community member who doesn’t have access to the printed resources they desire. What started as an online bookstore that sold used books and zines has blossomed into a public bookshelf that sells used books, holds workshops and publishes zines for LGBTQ+ community members [incarcerated and otherwise]. Although Seether Bookstore is logistically operated by one person [myself], it could not exist without the support and engagement of the community. The physical space that Seether now occupies is at Revolve, a contemporary art space in Asheville. Revolve has been around for a handful of years, but I was recently brought on as the Director to pivot the space to be what it has always intended to be, which is an accessible and inclusive space for Art to flourish. Since I took on this responsibility in September of 2021, I have started various initiatives to make the space more accessible, especially to LGBTQ+ folks. Aside from improved programming that centers LGBTQ+ folks as well as BIPOC creatives, The Reading Room is a new addition I have brought to the space. The Reading Room is a community zine library that is occasionally taken over by local print-based artists to share their work with the community in a public way.”
“The next step for Seether and Revolve’s hybrid project, The Reading Room, is to offer a series of self-publishing and printmaking workshops to our LGBTQ+ community in Western North Carolina. This grant will allow me the opportunity to buy materials for workshops, so I can truly get the education + publication part of this creative mutual aid effort evolving. My goal is to offer these workshops to individuals who identify as BIPOC and/or LGBTQ+ to ensure a safer space where folks feel more comfortable to experiment and learn something new. Time and time again I have fallen in love with the power of print. I believe that print can be used as a tool for resistance as well as expression, and creating an accessible space rooted in inclusion is the necessary foundation folks need to realize their full potential as creative community members.”
– Lex Turnbull
Michael Ward
Actor, Activist, and Writer
Atlanta, GA
“BLACK, GAY, stuck at home fathers BLACK queer folks together around Black Queer media. Created during the pandemic by Michael Ward & Josh Jenks. Our inaugural viewing and live chat featured Patrik Ian Polk’s 2000 feature film debut Punks which has long been out of print and rarely screened in recent years. That event saw 500+ registrants. Legend Vanessa Williams, Doug Spearman, Rodney Chester, Nathan Hale Williams have shared space with us. BGSAH has been featured on Counter Narrative Project (CNP), Esteem Awards, and partnered with JACK’D, Advocates for Youth, BOTL’D, Team Rayceen, and The Healing Space Podcast.”
— Michael Ward
Christine Wyatt
Dance Artist, Choreographer
Richmond, VA
“My name is Christine Wyatt, I am a Black, femme, dance artist, grief doula, and facilitator. My work is centered around continuing the legacies of resistance, love, equity and care through body based, community based, and liberation based practice. Each and all are evident in my practice as a choreographer and facilitator of movement experiences, in my emotional and practical Grief support of clients in my community, in my collaborations with MK Abadoo and her multi-generational dance collective MKArts, as well as my podcasting and mutual aid work with The Dance Union (podcast). I engage with community in several different capacities with 1 on 1 support, mutual aid, community movement workshops, sight specific/historically informed/ancestral performance works, and deep listening to the dance community. With this grant I will be able to create space for visioning for my next collaborative project with other queer artists in Richmond, VA. My work, process of making and type of (non-hierarchical) collaborations are all an act of committed curiosity and exploration of more equitable ways of being an artist, practitioner, and steward of resources.”
-Christine Wyatt
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“Words From Rasta is an inspirational poet and spoken word artist. Raised in Houston, the Creolean creative is an inspiration to her peers and family. Words From Rasta began performing in 2016 at Brandy Wine’s “Food For Soul Experience.” She was later discovered on Instagram which instantly began expanding her speaking opportunities and ventures. Words From Rasta has since hosted Open Mic, spoke at many schools, churches, juvenile centers and events, including performing at major venues such as the Improv. Words From Rasta also stars in a hit documentary, “P.E.N.S.” being aired on Kweli TV.
She’s always been able to express herself through art. Losing her father early in life and being inspired by the resilience of her mother played huge roles in her development and passion for music, spoken words, and motivating others.
Words From Rasta has been bringing enlightenment and awareness about mental health, recreating your reality and the importance of youth growth; while encouraging others to #SpreadLoveNotHate by giving one #FreeHug at a time.”
-Words From Rasta
“I use cross stitch, a craft traditionally associated with sweet floral prints and alphabet primers, to bring attention to inequality experienced the LGBTQ community.
Proceeds from sales of these items have been used to support gender affirming surgeries, emergency shelter funds, and food insecurity programs at Tranzmission and Youth OutRight. My hope is that something I make will bring joy or inspiration to others.”
-Sharon Hanson
