Photo credit: Benson Kua
Queer street artist Jeremy Novy is back in town, however briefly. He’ll be installing a mural and, as he put it, “arting the city.” The former Milwaukeean and Peck School of the Arts graduate has garnered international recognition as a pioneer of contemporary identity art and of public art with queer political messaging in particular. He is best known for his LGBTQ iconography and, of course, his Koi.
Using the time-honored genre of stenciling, Novy has practiced his art for nearly two decades. Most readily, he is recognized for his Koi. Often encountered swimming on sidewalks in expected and unexpected places, the now ubiquitous Koi appear individually, in pairs or trios, often as murals, in schools. They also take the form of pins, stickers and emblazon apparel (if they haven’t been projected on building facades by now, perhaps one day they will). They turn up in major queer cultural centers like San Francisco and New Orleans, as well as in Madison, our own fair city (most recently at Kruz Bar and Black Cat Alley) and, however unlikely, in Birmingham, Ala., as well as at art events like Burning Man in Gerlach, Nev. For aficionados, they are as much a part of art consciousness as an Andy Warhol soup; perhaps more so, since they can be randomly encountered almost anywhere. In fact, they’re even forged. I’ve seen copied Koi on several local patios and private walkways.
But beyond the Koi, Novy’s images span queer identity from leather guys, cowboys and drag queens (including Divine and our own Dear Ruthie) to Rainbow Care Bears, bear traps and erotically charged sets of boot prints intimately facing each other. Then there are the murals, often grand in scale, of symbolic flights of monarch butterflies, geese and gulls.
Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s staid aesthetic has deprived it of a highly evolved queer art scene, street or otherwise, like those embraced elsewhere. For emerging LGBTQ artists of any discipline, fertile ground for their talents is lacking so they move on. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one artist like Novy may be regarded as misfortune; to lose so many looks like carelessness. Carelessness, indeed.
The thing is, our art institutions are restricted by certain entities that dole out funding for projects and programming. There are conservative forces at work within them. Especially in today’s politically charged environment, they are not disposed to promoting queer culture in a positive light. Then, there are audiences who expect to be entertained but not necessarily motivated to critical thought (at least not when it comes to LGBTQ issues). The theater scene is a perfect example. While one can cite occasional examples of a mainstream house staging works with relevant queer content, they still remain old school in their sensitivity with the theme or characters appropriately neutered for straight consumption.
This puts queer artists in the awkward dilemma of compromising their creativity to accommodate the limitations of local tolerance or, like Novy and others, of leaving. Sadly for Milwaukee, this loss negatively impacts not only LGBTQ life but the city’s intellectual and artistic progress, and those Koi just serve as a reminder.
