Crush/Repeat 2022

Crush/Repeat 2022 called for us to reinvent ourselves yet again. The pandemic wore on, and we still weren’t ready for the big in-person gallery show that has been our first love. We were also Zoom-fatigued, and the drive just wasn’t there for a third virtual show. Instead, we listened to our own energy and allowed a simple show to emerge: Anyone who wanted to share their work through the month via Instagram was invited to do so, and anyone who made any amount of work during March could submit to our web gallery. That’s it.

A new magic arose from this format which was the connectivity we saw grow between artists supporting each other via Instagram as they made art. Artists cheered each other on as they maneuvered creative blocks, shared resources, and even made art inspired by each other's art! We’re so enamored with this community of artists and their support for one another. We love the depth and joy present in these projects, and are so honored to be sharing them with you now.

Andrea Paz 

Andrea Paz is 27-year-old bisexual femme who works in mixed-media--from drawings to poetry, all entangled into zines. Andrea worked on a project she calls "Fear and Loathing" as she tries to work through creative anxieties and block.

To see more of Andrea’s work you can check out her Instagram @musaapollinis

Bernadette Wright

Bernadette is a self taught artist who loves playing with abstract work and learning in new media. This year for crush repeat, they decided to try watercolors and had a blast for approximately one week, after which they were distracted by real life. All of their work from this year is available locally (Seattle) with a donation to the TWOC Solidarity Network!!

Bernadette’s work is for sale. For details check out @femme_craft on Instagram.

Carrie Brazil

Carrie is an emerging abstract artist living in the beautiful PNW. She enjoys the freedom of abstract art and finds meaning and growth in her creative journey. She works full time in public service and safety and steals as many moments as she can to study, practice and play with art. Carrie's project included trying new stylistic challenges and adding lots of color and emotion to lead her Crush Repeat 2022 work. Her paintings included collage, mixed media and watercolors.

Carrie’s work is for sale. For details check out @carriebcreative on Instagram.

Danielle Morgan-Scharhon

Danielle is a queer filmmaker who recently moved back to beautiful Bellingham Washington with their spouse and tiny dog after 15 years in Brooklyn. This year Danielle wanted to be a little more free and abstract, seeking inspiration from the meditative daily practice of walking in the woods of the PNW. Using a combination of watercolors, acrylics, pastels, pens and pencils, the focus was on the impression and memory of the scenery and the process of making space and time to just see what happens. She bought a 30 page watercolor sketchbook which seemed perfect for this project before realizing there are 31 days in March. So the final piece was done on the back cover or that sketchbook.

Danielle’s work is for sale. For details check out @stellazdynamite on Instagram or morgan-scharhon.com.

Elva Bennett

Elva is an artist and climate scientist from North Carolina who lives in Seattle, Washington. Elva creates functional sculpture with their pottery which explores the inner space of transition. Their abstract faces cry thick bulbous tears and invite the viewer to consider the luxury of a body which is able to demonstrate its emotions freely. Elva began experimenting with clay at Seward Park Clay Studio in Fall 2021.

Elva’s work is for sale. For details check out: @elvabennett on Instagram or elvabennett.com.

emily stern

emily is a mom who spends her days teaching, writing, and making art in the desert. She felt drawn to making earrings because they remind her of her mom. Since she passed, when Emily thinks about her, she often pust on earrings. She finds them grounding because they make her feel connected to the enormity of her ancestry. These wearable art pieces intend the same for all who seek to own a pair. In the way that our roots connect us to truth beyond systems and love beyond what we can imagine. And each of these earrings has that intention and invitation. My religion is to participate in building the kind of world that I want to live in and making these is part of that for me.

Emily’s work is for sale. For details check out @thisiswhatitsoundslike on Instagram, Etsy or emilystern.com

Hannah Chapin

Hannah Chapin is a curious person. For this year's project she leaned into simple pen lines and focused on a loose theme of familiar plants. With some days left at the end of the month, she created accordion books that will become her sketchbook projects over the next year.

For more of Hannah’s work, follow @noticings_ on Instagram.

Hansheng Lee

Hansheng is a gay Taiwanese artist, chef, and translator living in Richmond, VA and can often be found planting in the garden with his husband Chris, or in the kitchen testing new recipes. The main focus of this art is nature and gardening with a few landscapes. Each piece shows a multitude of studies with watercolor and inks as the main mediums an focus on the process of flowers, spring blooms, and fungi in the region.

Hansheng’s work is for sale. For details check out @leehanshengstudios on Instagram.

Heidi Denkers

Heidi is a human who is passionate about passionate about the power of the arts for healing & creating change. She only managed 5 days last CrushRepeat so she planned to simply do one thing a day on a canvas this year & it worked. She found that she was dancing with perspective, connecting with grace, and showing herself there is love with each touch of the brush or pencil. The creature she ended up painting is vibrant and full of love. 

For more of Heidi’s work, follow @therarewildheidi on Instagram.

Jess George

Jess George lives, works and crafts from Louisville Kentucky (and not always in that order). Inspired by her growing love of anything to do with silicone molds, Jess spent her Crush/Repeat making resin dice and dominoes. She quickly found that the variety of resin techniques and YouTubes is seemingly bottomless. Thankfully, this project is only one month and by now her craft/life balance may be restored again.

Jess’ dominoes are for sale until her resin supply runs out. For details check out @_jaygee__ on Instagram.

Jupiter Bacchus

Jupiter Bacchus is a 32 year old agender banana artist in Seattle. Jupiter Bacchus utilizes bananas as a canvas for several reasons, their favorite being for the sheer silliness of it.  Finding it to be a silly yet unexpectedly functional canvas while also discovering that there is something freeing in art that expires.  Jupiter finds inspiration in spreading art and joy by getting to give the people of their community small edible art pieces.  They will do custom works locally.

Jupiter’s work is for sale. For details check out @agenderbanana on Instagram.

KAI

Kai is a self-taught artist based in the South Bay Area who believes in creation as play and tries to incorporate that into every aspect of his life. Kai kept seeing wedge painting reels on Instagram and honestly did not like them. So instead of hating something he had never tried he decided to embrace it and attempt the art form for Crush Repeat. He used a Princeton Catalyst Wedge-06 and some cheap acrylic paints from his local buy nothing group on mixed media paper. Every day was an exploration in choice and freedom to try new things and be bad at it. Turns out he likes it, immensely, and had fun teaching friends during the month as well.

Kai’s work is for sale. For details check out @audrey_ha on Instagram.

Kylie Rench

For this year's Crush Repeat show, Kylie created a series of small landscapes and a set of icons. The landscapes are exploring the idea of being inside looking out and how there are aspects of nature we miss from interiors while the icons are also being used in a work project for outreach and education materials. Kylie found the combination of digital and traditional mediums an accurate representation of their skills; in a way combining their work and personal arts to take a closer look at our aquatic environments and their inhabitants.

There will be copies of these works available for sale, the paintings as prints and the icons as stickers. Contact them for specific pricing on Instagram @kylinarench14, their website or via email at kylina.rench@arts.cornish.edu.

L.M. Zoller

L.M. is a bisexual nonbinary white Midwesterner, writer, zinester, and artist living on Coast Salish land. They have been creating collage art off and on since childhood. Their set of collages (digital, analog, and combination) for Crush/Repeat 2022 focuses on sapphic literature, including the works of Sarah Waters, Yoshiya Nobuko, and Ann Bannon, as well as 19th-century botanical illustrations and flower dictionaries. Zoller is also the co-author of the zine The Queer Language of Flowers (2018) and is currently working on a second volume.

L.M.’s work can be experienced on Instagram @illmakeitmyself, Patreon, their website and Etsy.

Laila Suidan

Laila Suidan is a Palestinian-American arborist and educator in Seattle who finds tons of joy in greeting furry pets and observing nature intently. For this year's Crush/Repeat, she picked up watercolors for the first time since childhood, and painted trees or scenes with trees. Sick of screen-time, she avoided online tutorials and enjoyed a strict trial-and-error learning approach, with its benefits and limitations. She's happy to be reunited with watercolors and excited to play with them more in the future.

For more of Laila’s work, follow @noticingnature on Instagram.

Leah Radecki

Leah Radecki dabbles in many medias and is never happy with their art, but genuinely loves yours. This project is an intersection of the rage they feel facing systemic issues as a disabled and queer human. Midway through the month they started the Instagram page @end.conseratorships because conservatorship is unethical when alternatives like Supported Decision Making exist. 

Leah’s main Instagram handle is @seattle.leftist and they started the Instagram @end.conservatorships because they were inspired by the daily art practice encouraged by Crush/Repeat.

Lee Bess

A year into the pandemic, Lee Bess moved from Seattle to rural Ontario to work as a scientist on a farm. To their surprise, deep winter would be weathered in an icy fog of ceaseless lockdown. Despondent and filled with longing for signs of life, Lee clung to their curiosity; armed with their iPhone, they braved the world outside of their converted garage apartment to document the tedious thaw of midwinter as it turned to late winter.  Little did they know, in Ontario, spring starts in the summer.

For more of Lee’s work, follow @_lemony_cricket_ on Instagram.

Mackenzie Lew

Mackenzie is a distracted Asian American zine and comic maker excited by birdwatching and mundane daily joys. She wanted to buy a cool shower curtain but it cost $70, so she decided to make her own with acrylic paint (plus fabric medium) and a thrifted shower curtain. It ended up taking a lot longer than expected since she hasn't done much with fabric. Next time she'd choose an easier and faster medium to work with next time, like a cyanotype or spray paint or stamps. It was still fun, and now she has a shower curtain in her bathroom, but she'd charge like $600. 

For more of Mackenzie’s work follow @a.corn.acorn on Instagram.

Makenna O’Keeffe

Makenna is a queer, femme, jewish artist and designer living and working in unceded Duwamish Territory (otherwise known as Seattle). Makenna forgot to come up with a project idea till the last minute but luckily she found inspiration for her C/R 2022 project right in her house from a set of 1920’s anthropomorphic animal paper dolls which she’d had since childhood. Makenna had just gotten a new kitten the month before and decided to use him as her muse.

This project was a wonderful return to drawing for fun, which Makenna hadn’t been able to do in a long time due to chronic tendonitis and drawing for her job. She is so grateful for C/R for releasing her creative block and giving her an excuse to draw her cute new fluff baby in gay little outfits!

Makenna’s work is for sale. For details check out @makenna.okeeffe on Instagram and her website.

Mel Almanza

Mel is a queer, non-binary artist residing here in Seattle, WA. They have a degree in Art History and have always connected to creating and creation and more recently have unleashed their creative side by way of doodling, and abstract painting. Mel is a cool, calm, collected individual that meets no stranger and loves to connect with others. Mel's use of materials vary from piece to piece, but more often than not there is a mixture of acrylic, gouche, watercolor, pen/colored pencils and paint markers in each piece. Mel is inspired by bursts of color, abstraction of shapes and object, and often uses both hands to create. This project has given Mel a chance to express themselves authentically as an artist, and the confidence to keep creating.  

Mel’s art is for sale. You can reach out to purchase via their Instagram: @PeachyKeenScribbles.

Rachel McLean

Rachel McLean is a forty-something queer vegan crafter and public health nerd living in Vallejo, California (unceded land of the Karkin, Muwekma, and Patwin peoples). Rachel started this project after moving to Vallejo during the COVID lockdown. Craving connection, community, and art, she found the Second Fridays Art Walk in Vallejo’s downtown, where anyone can set up a table and sell things they have made. She spent Crush/Repeat 2022 making one card each day to trade at future Second Fridays for stories or vegan cookies and to get to know her new neighbors.

For more Rachel, follow @cookiesrnice42 on Instagram or check out her blog.

Ray Stoeve

Ray is a queer nonbinary femme making art and writing books in Seattle, Washington. This month, they used their existing film photographs to make collages and self-affirmations. They experimented with combining parts of photographs together to create visual portals, writing phrases pulled from their journals and poems over photographs as statements of self-affirmation, and making a 5-image Polaroid self-portrait sequence. Exploring new forms helped them process emotions and envision new artistic projects they are excited to undertake.

For more of Ray’s work, follow @jamesrowanray on Instagram.

ryleigh brimhall

ryleigh is a queer multimedia artist of color based in seattle, washington. "love is"  is a poetry series focusing on all the various opportunities of ever crucial but underappreciated of non-romantic/non-sexual forms of love. the artist pulls directly from their own life experiences and personal photos to create these cohesive and expressive visual poetry pieces. 

ryleigh’s work is for sale. For details check out @bigartnoodle on Instagram.

Sam Smith

Sam is a photographer who loves documenting the people in his queer communities. He snapped photos of everyone he spent intimate social time with all month long. Images were shot on a number of different film and digital cameras.

Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown is a queer math teacher and nature appreciator who was born and raised in so-called Seattle. She is seriously exploring a side gig as an audiobook narrator, and used the month to explore all facets of auditioning and recording within the truly remarkable world of self-published books. Thanks to what she learned and put into the world during this project, she has now been hired to narrate two real books!

Sunday H. Service

Sunday is a Seattle based Queer artist interested in sex, death & theology. For the Month of March, Sunday worked on dramaturgy for her videofilm: Rites of Spring/ Five More More More. This took the form of reading, watercolor reflections, instax, and engagement. Keen on recursive storytelling and the nastiness of Spring, Sunday enjoyed engaging both book and carnal knowledge on the theme.

Watercolor Images 1 & 2 are for sale. For details check out @sunday_h-service on Instagram.

Terry Newberg

Terry Is a 76 year old woman living in Bellingham, WA, who loves the artistic expression of nature. This is the only project I completed in March, inspired by seen water ripples on top of the acquafier on Sehome Hill. I just so happened to have one of my little improvised clips of the Glistening Bells voice in GarageBand that managed to match perfectly with it. 

Terry can be contacted at etnewberg@gmail.com.