I am writing to let you know about an exciting exhibition and community-building project scheduled for the first spring semester slot in 2025 (mid-January through the end of February).
Entitled Make Visible: North Country, the project is organized by Shannon Novak, an artist, curator, activist and director of the international Safe Space Alliance. This is a non-profit organization that aims to help people identify, navigate and create safe spaces for LGBTQI2S+ communities worldwide. Our North Country project will also dovetail with a statewide Make Visible: New York project.
Based on other iterations of Make Visible projects around the world, ours will rely heavily on community engagement from people of all stripes and ages. Some of the programming will be designed by Novak, and some can be generated by us. Shannon has done a community letter writing project, for example, in which “people can write an open response/letter to the prompt ‘Dear North Country.’ The instruction is, ‘What would you like people to know about what it’s like being LGBTQI2S+ in North Country?’ So it’s like an open letter to ‘North Country’ from local LGBTQI+ people. Visitors can write and draw whatever they like on little cards which are then strung up for people to read.” Such a letter-writing project can also be done online to engage our rural neighbors across the region.
Novak also designs beautiful rainbow installations in public buildings, and we are hoping to find one or more buildings in the area to install something like this.
Novak has already been digging through the gallery archives, Special Collections and North Country papers to learn more about LGBTQI2S+ history here. Another project he is designing is called Love’s Galaxy, which includes mention of “The Lesbian Poets,” a poem published in the Plattsburgh Daily Press in 1894. Novak also has copies of documentation from the 1991 “OUT ART” SLU Festival of the Arts, co-chaired by Val Lehr. This brought to campus some of the most influential artists, musicians, writers, and performers of the day.
If you would like to learn more about this project and become involved in any way, please let me know. I’d like to plan a Zoom call with Novak in the next few weeks. You may join at any level that fits your schedule.
Please also feel free to share this information with local and regional groups (church, K-12, veterans, etc.). Allies are also welcome. - Catherine Tedford, Gallery Director
