Staff Pick of the Week
Hi, Teddy here! For my staff pick this week I selected Hiding in the Light, an unbound suite of nine hand-made cotton-rag papers by artists and married collaborators Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger. This work excites me because it provides a very unique reading experience which speaks powerfully about queer issues in a very simple way. After opening the manila-style folder, embossed with the artists’ initials, you encounter blank pages. After closely examining the sheets you discover that each paper contains a unique watermark that is revealed when a sheet is held up to light. The watermarks depict intimate interactions between two bearded men, the artists.
From a short bio on the artists: “their multidisciplinary work… documents the rhythms of human relationships, speaking both to common experiences of intimacy as well as the specifics of queer identities….Their gestures shift between moments of togetherness and separation, private and public, protection and pain, and visibility and invisibility. Their work is both autobiographical and metaphorical, speaking to common human interaction and queer relationships. Silhouettes of each other, their iconic beards, and their bodies appear regularly in their work.”
The table of contents lists the performed interactions, Peak, Jackhammer, Reach, On Your Knees, Lift, Spread, Grab•Hold, Gourds, and Submit. This work, I believe, expresses the dichotomy of being in a queer relationship in public and private spaces. Queer people may fear being harassed or being given unwanted attention in public. So they make themselves invisible, by keeping distance between them and their partners, leaving affection for private spaces. The hidden images also expose the ridiculousness of assuming a person’s sexual orientation purely based on appearances. Perhaps we should not ascribe labels or judge a person based on the kind of sex we assume they have.
This unbound suite was made with technical assistance from Jillian Bruschera at The Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois. It was produced in an edition of 12 copies and ours is signed by the artists. Special Collections acquired this work with funds from the Johnson/Pabst LGBT Humanity Fund.
-- Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern
