Pictured At the Be-All Conference. Coordinator Olivia Conners. Photos by Chuck Kramer
Tony was in his 20s and living in San Diego when he felt that something needed to change. At the time, he was working as an engineer while also delving into the arts. He dabbled in different mediums—anything from acting to painting with watercolors—but would always move on to something new and different.
This need for creativity was not sparked by an interest in becoming famous. Tony, who was born as a female, was grappling with his own identity as a transgendered male.
'If you can't fix yourself right away, you need to dive into something else with intensity,' he said.
Tony, like many other transgendered people, views art as a way to explore and understand issues of identity, acceptance and other matters that face members of this community. That is why organizers of Be-All, a transgendered convention that regularly takes place during Pride month in Arlington Heights, decided to include the Visions Gallery in its list of festivities for its 2006 conference. The inclusion of such art exhibitions is a growing phenomenon among transgendered conventions and, according to organizers of Be-All, is most likely going to grow at conventions in the future. This year's Visions Gallery accumulated work from 12 artists from as far away as Los Angeles and New York.
'What we're asking people as they come in and see [ the Visions Gallery ] is to get in touch with who we are as transgendered men and women,' said Lorie Fox, a featured artist in the exhibit who also helped organize the exhibition along with Leeta Lake and Jaidee Campbell.
Be-All, which attracts around 400 people from around the country and took place from June 6-11, is one of two major U.S. conventions for transgendered people. The other is Southern Comfort, in Atlanta each September.
The idea to include an art exhibit showcasing transgendered art was on the minds of many participants of Be-All and Southern Comfort, which broke the seal with its first transgendered art show in 2005.
'It was a parallel thought,' said Lake, who is a frequent Be-All participant who had her work displayed in the Visions Gallery. Among her work at the Visions Gallery was a piece entitled 'High,' which is a computer-enhanced image of a sculpted woman emerging from a stiletto high-heeled shoe.
Lake had played around with the possibility of a transgendered art show and asked friends if they knew of any such exhibitions. When friends told her that Southern Comfort was having its own showing, she jumped at the chance to submit her work but with some regrets.
'I was like 'Oh man. I thought I had an original thought,'' she said. 'We're a community that should really stick together and work with each other, but there is a competitive edge that's between one convention and the next.'
Word of Southern Comfort's art exhibition caught on to the organizers of Be-All, who were also toying around with a similar idea. Months before this year's Be-All conference, Campbell, Lake and Fox embarked on a massive e-mailing campaign to inform conventioneers that they could have their artwork displayed during the conference—a first in Be-All history.
One of the 12 artists whose work was included in the Visions Gallery was Tony, who is now in his 40s and living in the Chicagoland area. Among the many pieces Tony had on display was a portrait he did of his personal hero, actress Katherine Hepburn.
In the late '90s, he created the rendering using graphite pencils mailed the piece to Hepburn once it was completed. 'I got a nice thank-you note back from Katherine Hepburn,' he said. 'I thought it was very sweet because I know for a fact she doesn't send notes to many people.'
Tony refused to give his last name due to an experience he had when he came out as being a transgendered man while working in San Diego. 'I told my boss … and he kept it in his desk for some time,' Tony said. 'He had to tell the higher-ups, 'Tony's leaving,' and they wanted to know why. He told them and they said, 'OK, [ but ] if you're late one day for work, I don't care if you're smeared up and down Highway 8, you don't have a job. Let the ambulance driver take you home.''
While he faced not only unemployment but also being blacklisted from his profession, Tony was also seeing a therapist who wanted to 'fix' him. 'The only thing that was going to fix me was a surgeon,' Tony said. 'Having a psychological background, this was not what this person felt. So I can be a very private person.'
Tony does not create as much artwork these days due to Graves' disease, a hyperthyroid disease that causes his hands to shake. But Tony said he doesn't mind. For him, art was a way to cope with the frustration he faced with being a transgendered male.
'I did art for the same reason I was an actor for some years,' he said. 'It was not to produce anything; it was to let something out. As I got more and more comfortable with who I was, I stopped doing it.'