Welcome to Public Display’s third Pride on Public Display issue!

For this Pride issue, Public Display has commissioned six local artists from LGBTQIA2S+ communities to create original works that reflect what Pride means to them. This year’s artists are Oli Anderson Bigley, Såhi Velasco, Sam Guccione, Joe John Sanchez, Tesla Kawakami, and Andy DeLapp. Their works will be wheatpasted around town, and copies of the posters can be picked up (for free, while supplies last) at our mobile exhibit that will be on display at various art walks in June.

It’s the understatement of the year when I say it’s an incredibly fraught time to be a queer or trans person in the United States. The Trump administration is hell-bent on criminalizing, dehumanizing, and erasing LGBTQIA2S+ people from public life.

At press time, the Trans Legislation Tracker has reported 886 introduced bills across the country that seek to limit the rights of trans people. In Washington state, there have been eight anti-trans bills introduced this year. We’ve seen the budget fall for organizations like Seattle Pride and Seattle PrideFest as corporate sponsors walk back their lip service to DEI commitments. Meanwhile, social services are being defunded, and hate crimes—like those happening in the University District and Capitol Hill—continue to rise.

If all that sounds overwhelming, well, it is for us too. We are tired.

You won’t be dazzled by loud rainbows in this year’s Pride on Public Display imagery. Instead, I see a quiet calling in and yearning for closeness and tenderness among the community. The message I see is: Take comfort and nourish each other. This is going to be a long fight, and we need you. We need each other.

Oli Anderson Bigley found comfort and community after moving to Seattle from a small town. Their poster gives us a peek into sweet, intimate slices of queer and trans life, viewed through the windows of an apartment complex. An airplane hangs in the night sky above—a nod to those who come here seeking protection and connection.

Tesla Kawakami’s La Belle Dame Amoureuse is a queer take on John Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” the story of a knight who is bewitched and tricked by a fairy. In this queer reimagining, longing is real, but so is lasting love.

Oil painter Andy DeLapp’s poster is a vignette of rainbow letters that spell out “Pride,” taped to a faded turquoise fence. An old black-and-white Polaroid of a young man is also taped there—perhaps a portrait of a gay or trans ancestor forgotten in time—alongside a sketch of a rhinoceros. An Easter lily sprouts from the corner. This feels like an altar, a witnessing of queerness that was never acknowledged in its time.

Black and brown queer and trans bodies hold and comfort each other in Såhi Velasco’s image, along with the pronouncement “Queer Intimacy Is Sacred.” It’s an ode to the power of queer love in all its forms: platonic, romantic, and intergenerational.

Multimedia artist Sam Guccione’s work takes inspiration from a tangible source of comfort and rest—the quilt—while Joe John Sanchez’s work comes with a serving of whimsy; here’s a ghost holding up instructions to scream (with joy). But also to “Love Recklessly and Throw a Brick!!!”

Read on to learn more about each artist and their works in their own words. Give them a follow on socials and support queer and trans artists at large!

Wherever Pride season takes you, I hope you find the comfort of community and tenderness there, which is always more powerful than the forces against us.◼︎