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Southern Equality Studios (SES) is a special project of the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE), an Asheville-based non-profit that promotes full LGBTQ equality across the South. The mission of SES is to explore how the arts can help achieve that equality.

“Artists have always been a catalyst and force for change in all kinds of social movements across the South, across the county,” said Al Murray, the Director of Engagement and Organizational Development for CSE. “[But] it’s still true that LGBTQ artists in the South are largely invisible on a world stage.”

After several successful “pop-up residencies” last year, CSE decided to expand the project to a full summer residency for two artists while also engaging other queer artists from the area. The hope is that the project increases the visibility of LGBTQ artists in the South. “Even in organizing this we found that we didn’t know each other very well,” said Murray, who is also one of the artists in residence this year.

Murray and fellow artist-in-residence, Liz Williams, spent four months interviewing other artists and hosting a panel discussion to discuss topics of identity, politics, creativity and healing trauma.

The result is their collaborative multimedia project “Up/Rooted,” an exhibition on display at REVOLVE in Asheville from August 23 to September 3. Murray’s kinetic sculptures contain items that express the queer, Southern and artistic roots of artists and people from the panel. Williams created photographs of the artists she interviewed, placing them surreally suspended in mid-air.

Come to the opening reception on August 23 from 7-9 pm at REVOLVE Gallery, 821 Riverside Drive, Suite 179 in Asheville.

Listen to the full interview here:

Photos courtesy: Campaign for Southern Equality.

More Posts for Show: Asheville FM News Hour

Asheville FM and The Media Arts Project partnered together to bring the most recent REVOLVE Sound installment on August 7th, with a live show featuring Shane Parish, Isabel Castellvi and Wes Tirey at REVOLVE.

Shane Parish is the guitarist for the celebrated avant-rock band Ahleuchatistas (Tzadik / International Anthem / Cuneiform). His electric guitar works are intense environments, exposed to the elements, and populated by assorted creatures. As an acoustic soloist, he creatively interprets and deconstructs folk music and jazz tunes, plays original cutting-edge poly-rhythmic and contrapuntal works, and transforms the instrument, via preparations and detuning, into a mini-percussion ensemble, banging out pulsating rhythmic trances reminiscent of John Cage’s prepared solo piano works. Parish’s 2016 collection of folk interpretations Undertaker Please Drive Slow (Tzadik Records) was described by composer John Zorn as “reminiscent of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, at times of John Cage and Morton Feldman, Shane uses these beautiful songs as launching pads for his creative flights of fancy, at times boiling them down to their very essence. A spiritual project that will keep you riveted from first note to last.” His latest releases are Child Asleep in the Rain (Nullzone Tapes), December (self-released), Autodidact (Humanhood Recordings), and a duo album with guitarist Wendy Eisenberg called Nervous Systems (Verses Records).

Isabel Castellvi is a cellist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, songwriter, and composer. As a versatile musician you can find her collaborating with musicians from around the globe. These collaborations span many genres, including world music inspired projects, indie rock bands, her own solo projects, free improvisation, performance art, western classical music, and music for dance and film. Isabel is grateful to share music all over the world through performances, recordings and teaching. Her musical travels have taken her throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East. These experiences continue to be a great source of inspiration, deepening her understanding of music’s powerful ability to connect people and communities. She received a Bachelor’s in music performance at DePaul University and a Master’s in the Contemporary Performance Program at Manhattan School of Music. Isabel has studied North Indian Classical Music with renowned vocalist Rajyasree Ghosh in Kolkata, India and Falu Shah in New York City. She currently lives, teaches and performs between Asheville, NC and Brooklyn, NY.

The canon of cosmic American songsters has long been marked by a wandering authenticity. Wes Tirey, a song and son from Ohio now in North Carolina, comes as true as the wind cutting down a city street on No Winners in the Blues. His wrought iron baritone vocal delivery, maybe a few too many grits, but this is no husky tumbleweed, it is a humid and sly tender night on the town. His impressionistic lyrics are glistening and dusty visions of a vivid past life lost in beer room jukebox stories; to say, “Wes is just a singer and these are just folk songs,” is to deny Wes a place around the campfire with the likes of other cosmic Americans like Ed Dorn, Fred Neil, Tom Robbins, Bill Callahan… not too afraid to be a little silly but totally wise and rascally like sparks cracklin’ or a flickering neon sign. Telling stories, maybe true, but ultimately belonging to this complicated American nightlife folklore. Tirey’s wonderful and curling acoustic guitar and narrative story song shavings remain the ground to stand on, lost among the atmospheric dusky accompaniment of ghostly electric guitar work from Shane Parish. A shuddering and sweet denim blue pocket full of stories and songs, a fingered pick worn sharp, a pen vivid and a voice low, boot the cobblestones and roll tired but trying in the alleys. A candid blues vision.

Shane and Isabel’s Performance

Wes’s Performance