Queer and Dear 2022 is curated by Sarah Steininger Leroux.

Queer & Dear: Say It Louder is Saltstone Ceramics’s fourth annual invitational show of ceramic work by Queer artists from all over the U.S. This show is a celebration of the unique Queer voices working in the ceramic arts today.

We’re living in a time when the right for all citizens to fully participate in society is once again coming under attack. Some of the most visible examples of this are the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws cropping up across the country. We find these laws abhorrent; Queer youth deserve full recognition of their humanity.

In consideration of this, we’ve adopted the tagline Say It Louder for Queer & Dear 2022. We have also invited queer-identifying high school students from the Seattle area to exhibit alongside our invited artists.

We want to express solidarity and recognize both the prevalence and importance of queer youth in all our communities. We believe it is essential for queer youth to participate in conversations about the queer experience.

I was born in 1979 – I grew up in the ‘80’s and came of age in the ‘90’s. Besides conversations about “homosexuals” and the AIDS crisis, queer people were utterly invisible in the tiny town where I grew up. In my youth and young adulthood, being queer was an act of defiance. I have such clear memories of my first pride parade in Chicago in 2002 – just being there felt like a radical act, especially for this small-town Christian queer! When I canvassed for HRC in the early 2000’s, there were times when we felt like we were in real danger – especially the more gender-non-conforming among us.

But by 2015, when the US Supreme Court recognized the right to same-sex marriage nationwide, it was easy to feel like we had done it. Not all of it – I mean, we still had a lot of work to do to protect trans people, especially trans people of color, but this felt SO BIG!

My pride over these accomplishments has been facing a death by a thousand cuts since then, as States attempt to block trans people from the most basic things like public bathrooms. Or we learn about violent attacks on queer and trans people–sometimes from those who are sworn to protect them. Or we experience those attacks ourselves.

And now we watch in horror as States attempt to erase the existence of queer youth and criminalize the parents, teachers, and health care providers who know and love them best.

With this show, I want to imagine a world of queer love, queer freedom, queer nurturing.

I want to imagine a world where we continue to love and support our queer children. A world where trans and gender queer people can feel safe and see themselves represented in our culture in positive and meaningful ways. And a world where we can all experience the fullest expression of ourselves and be embraced by our communities.

Some of the work in this show directly addresses the queer experience – queer relationships, sex, gender expression, and outrage at oppressive laws. Other work does not.

That really is what Queer & Dear is all about: our freedom to express the fullness of our human experience, to discuss our failures, to revel in sweetness and beauty, to examine the grotesque, and everything in between.

Full self-expression is always a radical act.

Update from Sarah: A few days before this show launched, and shortly after we published the full line-up of artists for Queer and Dear: Say It Louder, it was pointed out that the show falls drastically short in representing BIPOC artists.

This was my mistake. I should have worked harder to invite more artists of color, and to make sure those invitations were seen.

Two years ago I made a public commitment raise the profile of BIPOC artists within our studio and the pottery community in general. I am proud of the work we’ve done to bring in and elevate truly diverse voices in our studio. That work is not complete and it continues. This show, however, is a gross misstep that doesn’t live up to the commitments I made.

I will be donating 100% of the proceeds from the sale of my own work in this show to a local black- and queer-focused charity. This is a small step towards accountability, but it’s an important one, and it won’t be the only action I take.