Artist Talk With Silky Shoemaker

Please join us for an artist talk with Silky Shoemaker, whose 40 Artist Ancestors, portraits of iconic cultural figures, have come back from the great beyond to inspire our community with the examples of their brave, original, and idiosyncratic lives.

The Artist Ancestors were commissioned by ArtYard at the start of the pandemic to illuminate figures who inspire the ArtYard ethos while enforcing social distancing in the new McDonnell Theater. Visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy a concert, reading, film screening, or selfie beside departed luminaries such as Susan Sontag, Tolstoy, and Agnes Varda.

Shoemaker is a painter and performance artist from Central Pennsylvania now living in San Francisco who explores queer community in its many despairs and ecstasies, solitudes, strangeness, and epic iterations. She is the creator of the Queer Icons: ArtYard’s inaugural contribution to the Frenchtown Pride celebration. The Icons later struck out on their own when they migrated during two Covid induced gallery-closures to nearby shop storefronts and a local school.

Tickets cost $10, order them at artyard.org