GIRLDRAG, 2026
photograph prints on silk, quilted to on binder and boxer shorts, cotton and silk embroidery on polyester bodysuit, vintage bra, and tap pants
In the years leading up to my medical transition, burlesque performance and sex allowed me to enjoy my body through the eyes of others. This dissociative performance of womanhood, femininity, and desire reframed disconnection to my body, both familiar and foreign, into a conduit of connection. The red costume, from a performance to Geraldine by Miranda Lambert is scrawled with the dissatisfaction and dysphoria of fucking someone whose desire felt less for me and more for how I allowed her to view herself. The white costume, from a later performance to Don’t Let The Good Life Pass You By by Cass Elliot represents a softer longing in T4T sex in which mutual dysphoria is woven into sexual and emotional distance and desire. The who-I-am in drag is printed onto the who-I-was of social transition, my body on the outside of the binder and boxer shorts rather than contained within. I have no desire to erase my body-as-it-was. Transition is an ongoing celebration of myself, past, present, and future.
White Costume Text: Touch me touch me touch me make my body feel like a body again. Fuck me with your clit tongue and fingers. Fuck my tits. Dress me up in your clothes and call me handsome. Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop touching me. Let me pretend my body is yours while you pretend your body is mine. Turn my hands to your hands, your jaw to my jaw your tongue to my tongue. Love me in confusion. Love me enviously. Let me touch you. Let me touch you. Nothing has to change.
Central Ensemble Text: (Binder) Friend don’t let the good life pass you by. (Boxer Shorts) How do women relate to their bodies? How do women relate to their bodies? I wish I knew. I wish I could be in the body of a woman as a woman and experience what it feels like. How much of this is normal? How much are they performing when they move, when they talk, when they fuck? I wish I could be sure that I’m not over thinking it. How outside of myself I feel, how unrecognizable to myself I am. Responses Welcome.
Red Costume Text: I know you think about him when I am inside of you. I feel like a bridge between you and the next real man. I feel like you drove a truck over me. I feel like you dated me to make your mother mad. I feel like you dated me because you were afraid of men. I feel like you wish I was a man. I wish you didn’t make me feel so good. Come back and fuck me baby. Let me be a woman for you. Let me be the girl. Now it’s your turn to be the girl.
T4T, 2025
mixed media woven, quilted, pieced, needlefelted, and embroidered cotton
Being transsexual in the United States of America often feels like a battleground. The current onslaught of cruel news coverage and hostile legislation, the fear and misinformation and uncertainty makes it feel like there is nothing safe, nothing sacred. I ache for myself, for my lover, for my community. Maybe things will get better. Maybe they will get worse. Regardless, we will continue to be ourselves. In our bed, beneath the covers, our arms around each other, nothing else can touch us. We drink cocoa and read books and inject hormones and it is normal, it is good, it is right. We let our guards down, we dream. She is my safety and my softness, she gives me reason to wake up and keep going.
Pillow text: you are my safety and my softness / tuck me in and say goodnight
Quilt text: if I was born again as Adam I’d eat unquestioning from your hand / no G-d nor garden could offer anything so sweet
Images by Gabrielle Gowans
Objects in Transition, 2024
cotton and silk embroidery thread, linen and cotton applique, PVC sequins on cotton fabric
Objects in Transition dialogue between old self and new, my grandmother and myself. The book began as an explanation of sorts to friends and family: why I had started medically transition, and why I had waited. It helped me to abbreviate a lifelong process that I have only recently really started to understand, to fill in with thread the places where words fail to reach.
The project of Objects in Transition is an ongoing series of mixed-media textile art chronicling and celebrating the material aspects of my adolescence and adulthood as a transgender person. It began with the book, and has since expanded to include a well-worn chest binder, a 2017 magazine cover, a breakfast table scene, and a series of burlesque costumes, tarot cards, and disposable syringes. The project is deeply personal and also, I hope, euphorically relatable to other trans and queer people. To a cisgender audience, I want to invite you into my body and my experience of it. It’s intimate and strange, but I hope you join me all the same.
Images by Gabrielle Gowans
lover's eye, returned
lover's eye, returned
lover's eye, returned
Lover’s Eye, Returned, 2024
cotton embroidery thread on cotton gauze, brass bezel, blue lace agate beads
A lover’s eye is a promise, a token, a talisman. Eye miniatures were popular as necklaces, broaches, and rings throughout the 18th century. Intimate, they allowed the wearer to bring their lover with them wherever they went. I embroidered my eye for my lover in 2022. She gave it back.
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, inside
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, first fold
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, outside
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, Folded
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, detail
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, detail
Victorian-Inspired Embroidered Puzzle Purse, 2023
ink, cotton and silk thread on cotton
The puzzle purse is a form of itogami, the origami of folded purses. In mid 19th century England and the United States, the puzzle purse became a popular form for love notes and Valentines because they could hold little trinkets (rings, miniatures, locks of hair) and did not require an envelope to seal. This one is reimagined in cloth: the embroidery is permanent, but the message can be ironed away and rewritten. A love that lasts because it can be changed and be made new.
Images by Rachel Curtis
Want to Collaborate?
Whether you are an artist, writer, designer, historian, researcher, or someone with an idea you want to reimagine in textiles, contact me to talk collaboration or commission.