Come walk through my gallery. See the boy I was. Meet the man I’m becoming. Laugh at the glitter. Grieve the dark paintings. Stay a while in the quiet room where two mugs sit on a counter.
Here hangs First Pride . It’s a riot of color—sequins and leather and a thousand rainbows. The crowd is a blur of motion. In the center, a boy with glitter on his nose is laughing so hard he’s crying. That’s me. For the first time, I am not the “gay friend” or the “disappointment” or the “sinner.” I am just a boy, laughing in the sun, surrounded by thousands of people who also used to be alone in a crowded room. gallery gay blog
Further in, the room opens up. This is the Joy Wing . Come walk through my gallery
The thing about a gallery is that it’s never finished. You don’t open and then close. You keep creating. You keep hanging new work. Some nights, you have to take down an old painting because you’ve outgrown it. Some nights, you just sit on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by the mess of your own history, and cry. And that’s okay. That’s curation. Laugh at the glitter
Coming out wasn’t a single event. It was the slow, agonizing decision to unlock the gallery doors, kick down the closet, and start hanging my own work on the walls.
Walking into my own gallery for the first time was terrifying. Because for thirty years, someone else had been curating the show. My parents hung the family portraits. My teachers installed the dioramas of “normal” futures. The church mounted a giant, gilded painting of a man burning in a lake of fire, labeled Consequences .
Not a museum—dusty, roped off, full of things you can look at but never touch. No, a gallery . The kind with big windows, hardwood floors that creak when you walk, and walls painted a color that changes with the afternoon light. A place where the art is alive. Messy. Sometimes still wet.