Our Boundaries

An LGBTQIA+ community art project that aims to set a clear boundary against homophobic and transphobic protestors at Pride events.

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If you are interested in creating your own piece for Our Boundaries, volunteering to help at events, interested in starting your own branch of the project, or want us at your event, click on the "Participate" button below

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If there is a Pride themed event that gets protested that you would like to see this project come to, please click the button below and fill out the form!

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"First of All"

Artist: J
Pretty early on in the process, I knew I wanted to use flower language somehow. It's always intrigued me, and along the way I learned just how important flowers are to our community. A “florist” was one of the earlier "gay professions", where it was more acceptable for a man to do something considered womanly. When gay pride parades started, florists' work attracted and impressed the crowds, helping turn the tide of public opinion.The flowers represented in this piece and their meanings are:Black Eyed Susan - JusticeWallflower - Faithfulness in AdversityOak - Strength, and also its associations with Raleigh, the City of Oaks, where the project began.Green Carnations - used with a clever turn of phrase (of course!) By Oscar Wilde, he said that being gay was “As natural as a green carnation”Violets - Strongly associated with Sappho, the ancient Greek woman poet who wrote love poems to other women, violets represent sapphic or woman/woman oriented loveLavender - Another one associated with Wilde, lavender (A popular men’s fashion color in the mid-1800s) became associated with our community due to the “effeminate” nature of the men who wore it and Wilde’s “Purple hours” spent with rent boys - “The Lavender Scare” became the term for the McCarthy Era state-sanctioned homophobia
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*Since this project was my brainchild, I wanted to make sure to make a clear statement with my first piece. Setting as clear a boundary as possible seemed appropriate, given the circumstances and name of the project.First of All says loud and clear what I want everyone to know - we won’t listen to them. I made sure to keep the words unpainted so that they would remain legible from behind, and potentially glow with the late day sun toward the end of events. I used Impact font because I wanted the meaning of the words to be more important than the text of them. Impact has become so dominant in memes that the art of the text itself becomes the intended background to the meaning of it.The words are facing the attendees because it reminds us that we don't have to listen.It reminds us of our long, long history, from Sappho's violets to Wilde's carnations, and centers LGBTQIA+ people as the all important WE that makes up our community.Information on Angel Action can be found here.

"Untitled" (2022)

Artist: L
L’s corpus contains printings of political LGBT Political and Pride Art. It includes screen printing, relief printing, and lithography. Pieces include subject matter such as gay prosecution in concentration camps, the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, LGBT childhood sexual abuse, LGBT youth homelessness, and the artist’s personal experiences with homophobic churches. L hopes to share LGBT history as well as the current climate that LGBT community faces in the United States.This piece for Our Boundaries is a Pride piece with repeating rainbows using a screen printing method. It is a piece meant to be reassuring and protective of LGBT individuals in the midst of the protestors. LGBT individuals should feel safe and supported during pride events.

"Rainbow Love" (2022)

Artist: K
The intent of this piece is to counter negative energy with positiveK began her career working in abstract watercolor, but now works primarily in fiber, including shibori wearable art and wall hangings, as well as woven pieces using hand dyed yarn

About

Our Boundaries is an interactive, collaborative art project whose intent is to visually shield the LGBTQIA+ community from protestors at our events. It is composed of vertical cloth barriers, carried by volunteers, that will be set up between Pride event attendees and homophobic protestors. These barriers will be attached to poles in pairs, forming V shapes, and will parade through the festival carried by volunteers, who will pause and use them to block protestors when appropriate.J is the creator of Our Boundaries. Inspired by the “Angel Action” project, initiated by Romaine Patterson in 1999 as a response to the Westboro Baptist Church picketing Matthew Shepard’s funeral, ze decided to combine hir desire to bolster the local LGBTQIA+ art community with hir desire for a response to protestors that didn’t involve drowning them out with intense sound.

Blog

6.26.22
So Out!Raleigh was amazing!! Setup was a little hairy at first (got to the event, and realized I had lost my phone, which I later found; then I lost the screwdriver I needed to assemble the barriers! It was a mess, but it all went OK in the end) I learned SO much from the event, and was able to connect with a lot of folks who were/are interested in assisting!!Blocking the protestors worked AMAZINGLY!! As soon as we would show up and set up, three things would happen1 - The crowd went WILD! Cheering, screams of joy, you would have thought we were rock stars!
2 - They started taking selfies!! I feel foolish for not anticipating that a giant backdrop would be an ideal place to pose, but here we are!
3 - THEY LEFT! The most important bit - once they were done interacting with the art, the crowd moved on! The protestors completely lost their audience, and didn't even know it!Here are some of the best photos of the day, click here to see all the pics from Out!Raleigh!

6.26.22
Yesterday's debut went off with only a couple hitches, and I could not have asked for a better response!! I'm in the process of moving house, so I do have some literal housekeeping to do, but I'll soon be editing faces out of photos and posting what I've got!Thank you to everyone who came out (lol) to Out!Raleigh Pride yesterday and helped make this project a huge success, and a HUGE Thank you to St. John's Metropolitan Community Church, who supplied volunteers! We could not have done this without them, and we so appreciate them stepping up to shield our community

6.25.2022
Almost 3am, and just about set to debut tomorrow at Out!Raleigh Pride! I'm pretty pleased with how all my signage has come out

6.12.2022
Set up the completed barriers for the first time in Dix Park, they turned out fantastic, and I'm very excited for the debut of the project!!