by CJ Hunt

Medium: Acrylic
Size: 18.5 x 15.5 in
$75

This is a scene from the denouement of William Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, in which Prince Henry of House Plantagenet (the future Henry V) defeats his rival, Henry "Hotspur" of House Percy. It's a big deal in the story, because nobody expects him to win. You can google the plot summary. Many have read a certain homoeroticism into the relationship between the characters before this point, when the political commitments of their fathers tragically condemn them to be each other's murderers. I've tried to put that into the work here, drawing also on the iconography of Sumo, Kabuki theatre, Greek drama and wrestling and "Greek love," and other forms of ritual combat to, I suppose, point out the crude resemblance between the erotic and the violent, and the spiritual inter-identification of the two-- in either case, after all, what we are looking at is the forceful dialectic of bodies physically inter-heaving in space and time. But especially I think we see an eroticism of ritual violence and a violence of ritual eroticism in the matrix of a traditional patriarchal masculine culture, in which the figure of the Man, as Husband and Father, is the owner of property, and by extension of women and reproduction and therefore of the erotic, and is expected to justify and maintain his owner-father-right by force. What represents this more clearly than two young lost boys, locked out of the freer love and joy they might have had by the power of the Father, killing and dying on the shitstained field of battle for the right to claim ownership of the kingdom, and all its women and their wombs, in the context of feudal class society. But capitalist class society is another iteration of the same-- think not that ye have advanced so far beyond your forebears! The drama of Henry and Henry plays out just as well in modern imperialist war as in old dynastic feuding.

☙❦❧

I myself, as a transgender woman, have my own personal reckoning to do with masculinity—which I quite firmly believe is neither of much value to me nor to anyone else if I do not see it as connected to and enmeshed in the reckoning of the whole of human civilization in the epoch of class society and, by extension, patriarchy. In a certain sense, emotionally if not visually, this piece may as well be my last self-portrait in the guise of Man. I suppose I should state clearly I don't have a problem with men, that in fact I quite like them; I've capitalized Man because I'm not talking about man but about the thing he is forced, not altogether willingly, to be under the ideology and state force of class society. I should like to see him liberated—I should like to see Henry and Henry in peace together, old and free and no longer knowing nor caring who sits the throne, making love in a field somewhere in the south of England (too ribald?). I think the liberation of Queer people, gay men or trans women or anyone else, and the liberation of non-Queer people, from the matrix of violence and repressive social performance of enforced roles, which the combat of Henry and Henry represents to me, actually has to amount to the same cultural broadening, by means political and artistic. Freedom cannot be won if it is won for the individual alone.

by CJ Hunt

Medium: Repurposed Materialsrn
Size: 11 x 14 in
$50

Someone tried to trick me once by presenting me with a "painting," getting me (an avowed admirer of pure abstraction) to confess to finding it pretty, and then revealing: "Ah ha! But it is not a painting at all; it is the splatterings of paint left behind on my apron after I painted this [bland, worthless] photorealist portrait of Marilyn Monroe! So indeed, abstract 'art' has come to naught." But I thought: why should I care? So what if it is revealed to me that the paint-spots I found pretty were not a deliberate product but a waste-product, deliberately repositioned? I do not stop finding them pretty. And the deliberate repositioning is its own act, I think, of artistic labour. In fact I find the reclamation of waste-products of art appealing; it is like the lilies that grow on a grave. So indeed, "abstract 'art'" wins out after all.

by Emma C.

Medium: paint pens
Size: 4 x 6 in
$20

by Frances Cardinale

Medium: Acrylic
Size: 12 x 12 in
$70

Multicolored shapes

by Frances Cardinale

Medium: Yarn
Size: 4 x 15.5 in
$20

Crochet jellyfish, blueish

by Frances Cardinale

Medium: Acrylic, Collage
Size: 20 x 16 in
$50

Collage of street preacher pamphlets

by Iphigenia Wilder

Medium: Graphite, Ink
Size: 7 x 10 in
$90

by Iris Walker-Lee

Medium: Oil, Olegel
Size: 15 x 30 in
$150

The purpose of this piece is to resonate with teenagers, who are often insecure whether that be physically or mentally. I hope it can act as a lens for others to see that they are not alone in their youth.

by Jess Soriano

Medium: Watercolor
Size: 20 x 28 in
$350

by Jesse Juarez

Medium: Watercolor
Size: 12 x 16 in
$200

Two Mount Holyoke College students: Kitty Ely and Helen Emory, class of 1889. Massachusetts

by Katelynn Birks

Medium: Digital Print
Size: 8.5 x 11 in
$50

Peachy Parakeets Plan Provided Parties

by Kendall Conlin

Medium: Acrylic, Marker, Ceramic, mixed media
Size: 6.5 x 5.5 in
NFS

by Luke Metcalfe

Medium: Ink, Magazine Collage
Size: 21 x 24 in
$100

by Marcia Perry

Medium: Airbrush acrylic on silk
Size: 19 in diameter
$259

Airbrushed silk moon mobile/soft sculpture

by Marcia Perry

Medium: Giclee print
Size: 16 x 16 in
$195

Limited edition giclee print of airbrush painting

by Melanie Blaha

Medium: Digital Print
Size: 11 x 10 in
$85

by Mordecai L.

Medium: Digital Print
Size: 8.5 x 11 in
$35

A portrait of my oc Valerius in a soft pink and white themed painting. It has some fancy, almost Victorian elements to it.

by Natalia Corazza

Medium: Oil
Size: 8 x 10 in vase
$450

by Natalia Corazza

Medium: Ink, linoleum cut print
Size: 6 x 6 in
$80

one-of-a-kind framed linoleum cut print

by Nina Hartwig

Medium: Graphite, Color Pencil, Marker, Alcohol marker
Size: 8.5 x 12 in
$115

by Raha M.

Medium: print of color pencil ordinal
Size: 8.5 x 11 in
$50

by Raven Cook

Medium: Ink
Size: 7.5 x 11.5 in
$100

by Sasha Miotke

Medium: Acrylic
Size: 11 x 14 in
$175

My take on Etta James’s “Sunday kinda love” song-the day to relax with your loved one, and make coffee.

by Sasha Miotke

Medium: Graphite
Size: 17.5 x 20 in
$100

The ASL sign for ‘I love you’

by Sienna Farfan

Medium: Watercolor, Graphite, Color Pencil, Collage
Size: 16 x 20 in
Original $80, Prints $15

Valentine’s Day reminds me of one thing, and that Paul McCartney song “My Love” in his Red Rose Speedway album. So I drew that.