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Looking to the past: closeted feelings of queer longing and desire

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Looking to the past: closeted feelings of queer longing and desire

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Looking to the Past:
Closeted Feelings of Queer Longing and Desire

by

Sophia Alana Stevenson

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF
ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(FINE ARTS)

May 2022

Copyright 2022 Sophia Alana Stevenson
ii
Acknowledgements

I have been proven over again and again that I chose the right grad program for me. I would like
to thank my thesis committee that has been supportive through this whole process, my committee
chair Andy Campbell, and my committee members Jennifer West and Patty Chang. I am grateful
for their insight and their encouragement; I couldn’t have done it without their support and
guidance. I would like to also thank the other faculty members who have helped my work grow
in ways I never imagined, they include Nao Bustamante, Suzanne Lacy, Mary Kelly, Edgar
Arceneaux, Karen Moss, David Kelley, Ruben Ochoa, Anuradha Vikram, Thomas Mueller, and
Jenny Lin. I am eternally grateful to my cohort, we bonded as colleagues and became friends
even through our first year of remote learning they include Lainey Racah, Jessica Bellamy, Erin
Eleniak, and Franchesca Flores. I want to thank my other colleagues for their friendship and
support they include Lauren Guilford, Leah Perez, Nahui Garcia, Hings Lim, Danie Cansino, and
Jose Guadalupe Sanchez III. I want to thank my queer mentors who have welcomed me to a
flourishing queer community they include Nao Bustamante, Marcus Kuiland Nazario, Heather
María Ács, Andy Campbell, and Patty Chang. I want to thank the love of my life, Ashley who
has supported me through my last year of grad school and who has shown me love, patience and
generosity. I am truly honored to have gotten to know such beautiful people; I couldn’t have
done it without all of you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Sophia Alana Stevenson
iii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iv
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... v
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Southern Hospitality ....................................................................................................................... 3
Constant Craving ............................................................................................................................ 5
Recovered Memories ...................................................................................................................... 7
Uprooted ....................................................................................................................................... 10
Spice of Life .................................................................................................................................. 14
Bad News ...................................................................................................................................... 21
Masochism .................................................................................................................................... 23
A Very Queer Happy Ending ........................................................................................................ 31
Concluding Reflections ................................................................................................................. 31
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 37
iv

List of Figures
Figure 1. Bonneville Salt Flats ...................................................................................................... 12

Figure 2. Mind Map ...................................................................................................................... 18

Figure 3. Monument for Edith (Lot’s Wife) ................................................................................... 20

Figure 4. sweetbitter ...................................................................................................................... 28
v
Abstract
By looking to my past, and the pasts of others through films or novels, this thesis explores the
process of introspection with the aim of unveiling something of the present/future. This research
is crucial to my art practice and my objective is to continue the tradition of sharing one’s story in
my own way through narrative and metaphorical video art. There is a history of LGBTQ+ folks
telling their own story, and this is a reciprocal act, in the hopes of queer readers inheriting their
words to help define themselves.

1

Introduction
What can we learn about ourselves by looking at other people’s experiences and stories?
Looking to my own past, as well as looking to others, I aim to reveal something of myself that I
have yet to recognize. This historical exchange becomes a healthy way to reflect on my own life,
and to accept the constant flux of change. In this paper, I explore points of tension from growing
up queer in the conservative South to the decision to remain in a closeted relationship. In this
thesis I use Jenn Shapland’s memoir My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, as a structure for
my thesis. She clarified for me why I had been endlessly searching for answers in pasts that were
not my own.
Interweaving my own personal narratives, starting from being raised in the South, and
then to my journey to Los Angeles, within a canon of historical queer stories that I have
discovered and then researched, show how I started recognizing my queerness in a broader
context. I explored salt as a material, metaphorically and how it is essential to support life and
then through my illness, not being able to process sodium because I was reading the historical
lesbian novel The Price of Salt at the time while I was traveling and stopped at a geological
landmark, the Bonneville Salt Flats. It became about the collection of connections, like a mind
map starting with one word and expanding out: the personal, historical, and metaphorical, all
having an important role. My art practice is rooted in researching historical archives while also
observing and taking in what is around me. This process reveals that I can make connections that
present themselves, but it requires investigating deeply and relies on my resources to take me
2
beyond the surface. It was through the stories of others that made me look back to my past. Their
words, whether that be expressed through a novel or through a film, impacted me greatly and
guided me through my own journey of self-discovery and made me feel less alone.
Jenn Shapland’s My Autobiography of Carson McCullers is a contemporary
nonfiction novel that began when Jenn stumbled upon love letters between Carson
McCullers, the famous American novelist and a woman named Anne Marie whom she loved.
Shapland detected a queer language that required someone who understood the experience
of being queer. The structure that Jenn Shapland used in her book by merging her own story
within Carson McCullers’s illuminates the many parallels of hardships that queer people
endure. Even though Shapland and McCullers are separated by the time they lived in and
where they grew up, there is a common queer language that Shapland identified when
looking through Carson McCullers’s written transcripts between her and her therapist Dr.
Mary Mercer. This language is not easily overlooked by a queer person and became
important to Shapland because in many of Carson McCullers’s biographies it is purposely
left out.
For closeted queer people there is a relevant journey of searching for yourself in
writings, music, and other art forms of other queers who have come before you, so that you
may validate your own existence and feelings that have been concealed. Shapland helped me
understand why I was drawn to stories of the past when seeking resolution and answers after
coming out.
Once I began my first semester as an MFA candidate at USC’s Roski School of Art
and Design I looked inward to personal themes because I began making my first works of
art being completely out as queer. Prior to coming out, the art I made hinted at a sort of
3
‘queerness’ but I never defined my work using the courageous term ‘queer.’ I used a coded
language within my aesthetics and subject matter but what I was actually getting at was
hidden by blanketed terms like ‘sexuality’ in my artist statements. I hoped someone would
recognize the queerness in my work and then in turn recognize something in me, that until
three years ago was very private and only shared among my close friends.
I blend genres of autobiography, memoir, and writing about my artwork to reconcile my
once closeted queer feelings and queer desires so that I may truly recognize the persistence and
fight to become (publicly) who I was all along. I had been subconsciously searching for my own
lineage in the greater LGBTQ+ history by collecting key figures who became teachers for
understanding myself. I desired a queer family that I could call my own and I had been searching
for not just acceptance but profound love that I had yet to experience. The connection to each
reference within my thesis, whether it be a film, musician or a novel are all imperative to my
own self-discovery.

Southern Hospitality
“Y’all should be hugging on men folk!” My 6th grade teacher scolded, condemning
my friend and I as we embraced each other for a hug. We just looked at her and laughed.
At the time we thought it was comical, not recognizing the homophobic nature of her
statement. Like many kids, I had an all-girl friend group, and we were inseparable. We
bonded over not fitting in and being misfits. We defended each other because we were
constantly made fun of, and this made our friendship strong. Unapologetically showing
affection such as holding hands, hugging, and playing with each other’s hair were only
some of the ways we conveyed the love we had for each other. We never identified our
behavior as “gay,” but our peers interchangeably called us “fags” and “dykes.”
4
Our affection towards one another concerned the conservative Christian teachers
and made them uncomfortable. It wasn’t that affection itself was bad, but the type of “girl
on girl” love we expressed to each other was unacceptable and wouldn’t be tolerated by
them. The teachers felt our behavior got so “out of control,” that they encouraged the
principal to call our parents in for a meeting.
During the meeting the principal said, “We should be concerned about displaying
certain types of affection.” Our parents tried to defend our behavior as normal for girls at
this age, but despite their efforts, the principal instated an “Arm’s length Rule”—enacting a
rule about how physically close we could be to one another. This punishment for showing
the wrong type of affection became a school-wide rule that didn’t allow students to be
closer than a full arm’s length from each other. This rule was instated as a direct
consequence of our “bad behavior” and its purpose was to prevent any more displays of
affection towards one another. The teachers and principal treated our behavior as though it
were contagious like a disease, a peril that would spread to all the students.
At the time, and now, looking back at this experience, the overt sexualization of our
girlhood tenderness and care for one another is upsetting. This embargo on physical
intimacy essentially shamed us into thinking that how we behaved was wrong. School
discipline models work from ingrained systems that aim to preserve social norms. Any
deviance, or aberration from heteronormative behavior (especially in the South) can be
seen as defiance, and then requires discipline.
Growing up in Nashville, TN, there were many instances when it felt as if we were
reentering the 1950s instead of the new millennium. Platonic affection is something that I
relearned as an adult with other queers. Hugging, cuddling, or showing affection through
5
touch should not have to be sexualized and should not just be limited to a romantic partner.
What my group of friends and I expressed in middle-school was healthy and loving, and it
is something I continue to value despite the restrictions that were placed upon us.

Constant Craving
I cannot reduce my decision to remain closeted as a queer person to a single
experience, because it was many instances like the one described above that communicated
that I hide certain feelings. These hidden or closeted feelings led to a longing, a “constant
craving” of something I once thought was unattainable.
1
When I was coming out, I
started reading historical queer novels and looking to other people’s histories so that I
could have some company, or I was looking for someone who knew the precarious feeling
of believing that you are not enough for someone you loved. These histories felt so far
away, but in actuality they weren’t so distant. I read novels such as The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde, The Well of Loneliness (1921) by Radclyffe Hall and The
Price of Salt (1952) by Patricia Highsmith. They became an escape to the current reality of
feeling isolated. I was experiencing a sort of queer loneliness or maybe I was just queer
and alone.
Originally my aim to read as many gay literature books as possible when coming
out was to pay homage to the groundbreakers who fought even more barriers than what I
had personally faced and to learn my own place in this rich history. I sought out wisdom
and strength, trying to be open and to be willing to learn every time I opened each book. I

1
“Constant Craving” by K.D. Lang was a staple song in my household growing up. Right before I came out, I used
to play “Constant Craving” on repeat in my car and it always brought me to tears because I finally understood the
meaning of this song.
6
was extremely isolated and alone, being in a closeted relationship right after coming out
left me feeling uneasy. I was looking for queer mentorship and community that wasn’t
readily available in Nashville. So, I turned to books, to help ease the pain and to see I
wasn’t alone in the fight. Not knowing at the time, I would find a thriving queer
community and queer mentorships from people who I looked up to once moving to Los
Angeles.
In my last relationships before moving to Los Angeles, I found myself frequently
feeling detached from or misunderstood by my ex-partners. I had fallen out of love with
my long-term boyfriend, and I fell in love with my best friend. I ended the relationship
with him to enter a new relationship with her. Exciting as this was, I understand now that I
never experienced a stable loving relationship, so I sought out thrills or scandals within all
my past relationships. She expressed to me on multiple occasions that she had no intention
of coming out but also put pressure on me to come out. These comments made me feel like
I was never enough for her because in her eyes I would always be the wrong gender. I tried
being supportive and patient, but it left me with complicated feelings I couldn’t express
because I didn’t want to undermine her own experience.
I had been “just a friend” too many times before or used for someone’s sexual
curiosity, these encounters were all brief and mostly sexual. Each encounter never ended in
a real relationship; it was always fading once it began. Many of these “relationships'' were
with women who had no intention of being in a lesbian relationship. This led to never
feeling validated by anyone and it ended up making me feel more isolated in my feelings
and desires. One day when I was a teenager after giving my “friend” an orgasm, she said,
“I should really stop fucking people I would never be in a relationship with.” I was
7
devastated because I had true feelings for her. I continued to experience many moments
like that and so when I finally was in a relationship with a woman, even though it was
behind closed doors it gave me a feeling I never wanted to let go.
The journey to my authentic self was a long time coming. Still, this was
complicated by being in a relationship with someone who was not yet fully out to family
and friends. Shortly afterwards I came out to all my immediate family. I finally felt I could
be open with everyone and no longer be held back. But coming out wasn’t so simple, I had
publicly been with men, who at the time I was attracted to. I thought of myself as sexually
fluid, but it became hard when identifying myself, especially in a Southern state where
being gay was already frowned upon. Trying to explain my sexuality, even though it made
perfect sense to me would become something I would always have to defend.
Being in a relationship with someone who wanted to remain closeted brought up
closeted feelings I had experienced many times in my life before. The future I once
envisioned for myself living out in the open shattered. I returned to the longing and
daydreaming about a time that I would no longer have to hide certain parts of myself.

Recovered Memories
At that moment I was thinking about the future in a one-dimensional sense, I
wanted to present the deep-down desires of my heart to the world. Kara Keeling’s Queer
Times, Black Futures describes “futures” as a plural, intentionally addressing how art
forms like music, film, and literature might be used to imagine a very different world in
8
which people of color and queers might look forward to a future.
2
The present is filled
with injustices and systemic racism and violence that creates precarity for people who fall
in the margins, and Keeling’s work articulates how artistic practices combat feelings of
isolation and despair.
Keeling’s Queer Times, Black Futures contemplates the possibilities of Afrofuturism
and queer time, incorporating film, articles, and musicians (such as Sun Ra and Grace Jones) to
explore themes of speculation, futurity, Black existence, and queer temporality. Keeling argues
that Black culture is “antifragile,” and this resiliency is crucial in realizing Black futures.
3

Keeling explores this in the second chapter of their book, in which they examine three different
films: Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien, 1989), The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye,
1996), and Brother to Brother (Rodney Evans, 2005). All three films are set in their own
present, but look to the past as a guiding force and source of inspiration.
4

I was heavily inspired by Cheryl Dunye’s, The Watermelon Woman, in particular,
because I had been subconsciously collecting and viewing literature, films, art, and music
made by queers who were also looking to the past. Cheryl Dunye directs and stars in The
Watermelon Woman (1997) where she plays a role not too different from herself. Her
character is a young Black queer filmmaker who is working at a video store but aspires to
make films about Black women. Cheryl rents movies that take place in the 1930s and 40s
with Black actresses, most famously Hattie McDaniels and Louis Bevers. But she stumbles

2
Kara Keeling, Queer Times, Black Futures (New York: New York University Press, 2019), 81.
3
Keeling 21-22, 163. Kara Keeling adopts the term “antifragile” from the contemporary philosopher Nassim
Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. “Antifragility” is the concept that something
flourishes when surrounded in disorder instead of being weakened.
4
Keeling 90-96
9
upon a (fictional) character who is relegated to a mammy role and who is known not by her
real name but as “The Watermelon Woman.”
Cheryl searches for her real name, and to find out everything she can about her. She
ends up finding her real name “Fae Richards.” While searching through archives, films,
and interviews she finds out that Fae was a lesbian, and the film suggests that Cheryl
subconsciously might have recognized this within her. While continuing her research, she
begins seeing a white woman named Diana who Cheryl first describes as, “not her type.”
Cheryl discovers almost simultaneously that Fae Richards was romantically involved with a
white lesbian named Martha Page. She directed the race films Fae was in but would only
cast her in subservient roles.
I was originally drawn to this film because it was queer, and I was trying to take in
as much as I could from queer creators. I am now drawn to this film because of its
complexity. It reveals Hollywood film’s racist past of trying to erase Black actresses. As
well as exposes the subservient roles Hollywood films would relegate to Black actresses.
But it also shows Cheryl’s own history and its own complexity as it intersects with her
discovering a past that is not easy to find.
5

Keeling’s analysis of the iconic film posits this relationship—toggling between
past and present—as a fundamental part of queer black livelihood and thriving. They
observe:
Explicitly constructing an imagined past, even as it plays with conventions of
documentary realism, The Watermelon Woman posits a fictionalized past, a condition of
possibility for the film’s construction and valorization of a Black lesbian identity in the
film’s present. Although they evince the concern in different ways and with varying
degrees of nuance and complications, each of these films is fundamentally concerned

5
The Watermelon Woman. (Cheryl Dunye and Dancing Girl Productions, Inc.: Film, 1997)
10
with questions arising from production of past calibrated to meet current demands for a
cogent, viable, and recognizable Black queer existence to the present.
6

Uprooted
Much like Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, the act of looking back—both
literally and figuratively—is integral to my practice. What would end up being the
inspiration for my thesis art show first began with the road trip from Nashville, TN to Los
Angeles, CA, I embarked on with my closeted ex before beginning my graduate studies. At
the time we had hoped that I would get into a school in New York City where she lives,
and so I applied to four schools there and received a rejection letter from each one.
I did receive a full ride to Alfred, which is in upstate New York and would mean
I’d only be a few hours away from my ex in New York City. Originally, when I graduated
from undergrad, Alfred was my top pick because of its prestigious sculpture program. The
more time I spent out of school I realized I wanted to leave the South to transform not only
my art practice but myself. I started realizing that a sculpture program would not be the
best fit because I was already extremely confident in my three-dimensional building skills.
It also meant that I would be leaving the South to move somewhere that mirrored where I
grew up. I was told by my friend who studied there that she would see confederate flags
waving in the small town of Alfred, New York. USC was the only school that I applied to
on the West Coast and when I got accepted, I knew that it was the best option for me. It’s
funny how things work out, at the time it was so hard to leave the relationship that was also
causing me so much pain but distancing myself and doing what was right for me has been
the best decision I have ever made.

6
Keeling 91
11
A month into quarantine I decided to pick her up in NYC and bring her back to
Nashville so we could spend the summer together before I left for LA. Her father asked her
why I was planning to drive to NYC just to bring her back to Nashville, “You guys are just
friends right?” He asked. I had hoped that that would be the moment she would come out,
because she was set up so perfectly. I hoped she’d describe me as her ‘prince charming’
coming to save her, the princess in distress, because she was still living with her
conservative republican parents who drove her crazy.
She assured her father that we were “just friends,” but I think her father knew the
truth she was concealing. He was trying to give her an out. I tried to be sensitive to her own
closeted feelings because I had only recently come out myself.
We spent the beginning of quarantine taking care of each other and supporting one
another, but we still fought almost every day. She made jokes about how I could live in
NYC because my classes weren’t going to be in-person, but sometimes I didn’t think she
was joking. As our time was coming to an end, we decided to make the road trip to Los
Angeles as the last hurrah of our relationship. We embarked on a journey West, a symbolic
trip of our final days as a couple. Starting from Nashville and ending in Los Angeles, we
added thirteen stops along the way.
12

Figure 1. First time visiting the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, August 3, 2020. Image by Sophia Alana Stevenson
13
The Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah was one of the last stops we made. This
landscape became a significant place for me. Immediately upon seeing the broad, flat,
desolate expanse I knew that I wanted to shoot a performance piece here. At this point we
had been to many national parks, witnessed many different terrains and landscapes but the
Salt Flats were isolated, off the beaten path. We had to discover it through directions my ex
found on reddit by looking for a rest stop in the middle of nowhere. I had witnessed so
many people during the trip, who had their phones out and who disrupted the landscape.
The Salt Flats made you feel like you were on a different planet, you would see other
people in the distance, but they would look like tiny ants. My ex walked off and took
photographs, I instead took in the landscape by witnessing it, breathing in the air that
smelled of salt and laid on the rough salty terrain.
Lake Bonneville was a prehistoric lake in the Pleistocene Era. It slowly diminished into a
dry lake and what is known now as the Bonneville Salt Flats. The Great Salt Lake is what is left
from Lake Bonneville, which was one of the largest pluvial lakes and was once a thousand feet
deep.
7
Surrounded by the salt-incrusted dry lake, personal connections to salt started to come up
for me.
A friend told us to go to the Salt Flats during sunrise or sunset because that is when
it is most beautiful. We had just gotten back from Yellowstone Park and were staying in
the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. I was exhausted because of the amount of driving I
had been doing and it felt as if the moment we stopped somewhere, we were packing back
up and leaving. I like to linger, take time where I am to get an understanding of place and

7
William Wyckoff, and William Cronon “DRY LAKES.” In How to Read the American West: A Field Guide,
(University of Washington Press, 2014.) 58–59
14
time. My ex on the other hand, wanted to maximize the trip and see everything we could
see within a couple of weeks. The Salt Flats were one of the places she really wanted to go.
On our way there we passed Salt Lake City and as we got closer and closer the terrain
turned into a salty substance. Along the highway there were broken glass bottles sticking
out of the ground and they casted colorful shadows. We passed salt mining factories for
Morten salt, extracting the salt into huge piles.
To access the Salt Flats, you must take an exit for a rest stop along I-80 West, a few
miles from Wendover, Utah. We bickered at each other in the car because I wanted to
know how exactly to get there, and the online instructions weren’t very clear. We kept
trucking along the quiet I-80 West. The surreal terrain made me start questioning why
Patricia Highsmith titled her lesbian pulp fiction novel, The Price of Salt, the novel I read
on and off when I had a moment to myself on the trip. I looked everywhere for the actual
saying, “the price of salt” but it never appeared in the book.

Spice of Life
The Price of Salt (1952) by Patricia Highsmith came into my life by randomly one
day coming across a film about a lesbian romance(footnote). My obsession with this
lesbian pulp fiction novel started by watching the film Carol (2015) directed by Todd
Haynes which is the film adaptation of The Price of Salt, I watched it in Nashville right
before leaving for Los Angeles for grad school. I was already a fan of Todd Haynes' work
after watching All That Heaven Allows (1955) Directed by Douglas Sirk in a film class I
took in undergrad. After watching it I decided right away it was my favorite movie. We
then watched Far from Heaven (2002) directed by Todd Haynes that directly references
15
Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas. It was through the connection of All That Heaven
Allows and Far from Heaven that led me to investigate further into the book that Todd
Haynes was inspired by for the film Carol.
The Price of Salt (1952) was originally published under the surname Claire Morgan that
Patricia Highsmith went under until 1990 when it was republished as Carol. This lesbian pulp
fiction novel was different than most of them published during the 1950s. The ending is distinct
as it hints at a (possible) happy ending but leaves the reader unsure. Lesbian pulp fiction novels
would often feature on the cover of the novels’ a stereotypical butch-femme lesbian relationship.
They were often read by men and even written by men and if a lesbian reader came along, it had
a moral tone of judgement that many of the lesbian characters would be killed off.
8

Andy Campbell discusses the contradictions of lesbian pulp fiction novels in his
book Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of
LGBTQ. Andy points out even though the covers and stories might be comical today but
there were greater more appalling themes at play, he informs,
Joining other popular genres such a mystery, romance, and western, lesbian pulp fiction
was once standard fare, available for purchase at bus stations and corner stores. The lurid
covers of the novels dramatized the common stigmas attached to mid-twentieth-century
lesbian identities – featuring a butch, more masculine-presenting woman guiding,
leading, and even preying upon a more feminine-presenting woman. While such
compositions may seem comic or campy today, these women were visualized as both true
gender aberrations and titillating eye candy for assumed male readership. But if these
covers appealed to men, the moral messaging inside the covers was aimed squarely at a
female readership. These novels often ended with the couple in dire straits– death was
common, and condemning, plot device. As titillating as they were, the message was clear:
disaster unquestioningly follows sexual deviance, and no homosexual could reasonably
expect a happy ending within their lifetime.
9

8
Andy Campbell, Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ. (New
York City: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2019.), 13.
9
Campbell 13
16
The Price of Salt is a story of two women who kindle an unlikely romance, Carol
who is a housewife and mother of a young child and Therese who is a saleswoman who
dreams of making money through her passion for set designing. Both leave their mundane
lives to set on a road trip to be able to start a passionate love affair. Sadly, their adventure
comes to a halt when Carol’s husband has her followed by a private detective and makes
her choose between being able to see her daughter or her lover Therese.
“Salt” is referenced in the whole text only twice. Once when Carol and Therese
were apart from one another, Carol had to return home and Therese’s every waking
thought was of Carol who she missed dearly:
In the middle of the block, she opened the door of a coffee shop, but they were playing
one of the songs she had heard with Carol everywhere, and she let the door close and
walked on. The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day,
she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come
back?
10

The second time Patricia Highsmith mentions “salt” is in the same chapter when
Dannie is visiting Therese before he leaves for California. She considers the difference in
her feelings toward Dannie and Richard, "She felt shy with him, yet somehow close, a
closeness charged with something she had never felt with Richard. Something suspenseful,
that she enjoyed. A little salt, she thought."
11
Salt is used here as a metaphor of a
connection between two people. She first compares Dannie to her ex, Richard, who she had
no intention of staying with, even though he proposed to her. Even though this relationship
is not romantic it was different from her other relationships with men, where she felt
isolated and detached.

10
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 2015), 225.
11
Highsmith 233
17
I decided to return to the Salt Flats to shoot a video piece, at the time thinking it was only
going to be one piece, yet as the project unfolded, I realized I needed to dedicate more time and
energy to this work and place, so I decided to make it a key component of my thesis. I asked my
ex to fly to Los Angeles so that she could serve as my camera person for my performance. We
traveled to Wendover, Utah a second time. Towards the end of our relationship lines were
blurred and we were struggling to remain friends due to our complicated history. I was interested
in what it meant for my ex-girlfriend to shoot me in such a vulnerable state. I decided to isolate
the gesture of “looking back,” I imagined myself as Edith (Lot’s wife) in the biblical story of
Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.
12

In the video we shot, my body enters the frame from the side, my back is to the
camera, and I am running into the distance. Suddenly, I turn around and gaze into the
camera. I wanted to implicate the audience by making eye contact with the viewer and
emphasizing the act of looking back. I titled the work Monument for Edith (Lot’s wife),
because I wanted to celebrate her, like most women, in the bible she isn't even given a
name.
I started this research because I was thinking of the Salt Flats every night before I
fell asleep and every morning when I woke up. I knew I had to shoot a performance there,
but I didn’t know what. I began to research salt and its many connections. Salt became the
topic I talked about most and through talking about salt I heard other people’s connections
to salt. That is how I found out about the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah while
talking to my mom about my project that was only in its beginning stages. I created a
diagram connecting my research from many viewpoints.

12
Gen 19:1-26
18

Figure 2. Mind map of connections to the Bonneville Salt Flats. Image by Sophia Alana Stevenson
19
The title of my video installation, Monument for Edith (Lot’s wife), connotes the
conservative Christian-Right’s biblical interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis
19. Conservative biblical scholars believe God’s destruction of the twin cities were
provoked by men engaging in homosexual sex, and this activity is referred to as
“wickedness.” This verse is commonly and cruelly referenced on picket signs held by
people protesting gay pride events. In Holly Joan Toensing’s Feminist article,
Women of Sodom and Gomorrah: Collateral Damage in the War Against Homosexuality? she
shows us how hateful this rhetoric can be. She states, “one might see slogans such as
“Homosexuality = Death (Gen.19)” or “God Hates Fags” (Gen. 19:24-25),” written on placards
held high by Christian Right groups protesting at gay and lesbian pride parades.”
13

Instead of referencing the hateful way this story has been mobilized to shore up
anti-gay rhetoric, my piece is inspired by Edith’s act of defiance. She was told by the
angels not to look back when escaping the destruction of the cities but chose to disobey a
divine decree. It was this act of rebellion that led her to her death, as God killed her by
transforming her into a pillar of salt. Rather than taking this verse as a warning or as a
cautionary tale of God’s wrath, I am looking through a queer/feminist lens and want to
celebrate Edith’s act of defiance in the face of authority. I honor her within this work and
identify with her by embodying her simple act, associating it with my own subversion or
defiance of religious heteronormative patriarchal structures. Her story inspires me to hold
space for my own undoing and unlearning of structures of authority, leaving behind the
expectations of a normal life. I look back on my past with no judgment, but as an embrace.
I understand that every mis/step got me closer to who I truly wanted to be.

13
Holly Joan Toensing Women of Sodom and Gomorrah: Collateral Damage in the War Against Homosexuality
(2005) 61.
20

Figure 3. Video still from Monument for Edith (Lot’s Wife). Image by Sophia Alana Stevenson
21
Bad News
Salt also has a very personal meaning for me. When I was twenty-three years old, I
started feeling ill, my body felt as if it was slowly breaking down. I could barely eat, I was
throwing up almost daily, and sometimes it was hard to stand up because I would get dizzy.
I could never really tell what was making me sick and although these symptoms were
concerning, I ignored them. I had recently started a job and I was worried that if I took time
off that I would no longer be employed. I remember googling at this time, “Can you trick
yourself into being bulimic?” preferring to induce a diagnosis I thought I understood rather
than confront a medical issue I had no context for. I lost a lot of weight in a very short
amount of time. Comments via social media about how I looked great reinforced a
decision I now recognize as unhealthy. Maybe I didn’t want to face the fact that there was
something wrong with me. At that age, I remember I thought I was invincible.
There came a point that I could no longer ignore the intense symptoms. When I
finally saw my doctor, she thought the problem was with my gallbladder and scheduled an
abdominal ultrasound in her office for the next Monday. It required me to not eat or drink
anything for 24 hours. During the time of not eating or drinking I felt that there was
something extremely wrong because I could feel my body slowly breaking down. I called
my dad to take me to the ultrasound appointment because I didn’t think I could drive
myself. Walking from the parking garage to the doctor’s office was severely difficult, I had
to take many breaks and I was breathing hard from just walking a few steps. After the
ultrasound I asked the nurse to see my doctor because I wasn’t feeling well. She wasn’t in
yet, so I went home.
22
When I returned home, I began throwing up after having one sip of water. I
couldn’t keep anything down. I called my doctor, and she didn’t answer. I left a voicemail
describing what was happening. I got a call from her shortly after telling me to go to the
ER right away. While at the ER I felt as if I was going to collapse. That day was so busy
that I ended up in the waiting room for hours until I was seen. When I finally got a room in
the ER, a doctor came in. He was observing me closely, but I could barely keep my eyes
open and remain focused on what he was saying. The doctor said that my sodium levels
were extremely low and that my potassium levels were extremely high and that my blood
pressure was only five points away from seizure levels. At that point, he said he needed to
take some tests.
I spent the night in the hospital, not knowing what was wrong with me. Because the
nurses and doctor had hooked me up to an IV of saline solution and I was feeling so much
better than before because I was no longer dehydrated. During the next two days I was
pricked with needles for a blood test every hour, even in the middle of the night. The first
two days the doctors told me nothing, and it was a very strange feeling. My family was
scared, and I was too. I held it together because this was the best I had been feeling in
months. On the fourth day, my brother, who was visiting me in the hospital, remarked that,
“if it was really bad news, they would have already come to tell me.” Truthfully, I think he
said that to calm himself down more than me. While he was visiting, there was a knock on
the door. A doctor in a white coat, an endocrinologist named Dr. Snow, came in.
Dr. Snow informed me that the hospital had been working with him, and that he
came over as soon as he could. He told me that I had Addison’s Disease, or also known as
Primary Adrenal Insufficiency Disorder. He went on to explain that my adrenal glands had
23
stopped functioning, and this condition stemmed from my autoimmune system attacking
my adrenal glands. He prescribed steroid pills daily for the rest of my life to replace the
hormones my body no longer produces naturally. Dr. Snow informed us that they still
don’t know why autoimmune systems attack functioning organs, and the cause of
Addison’s Disease is still unknown. He then asked me when was the last time I felt
“normal.” The question shocked me because I couldn’t remember a time when I felt
normal.

Masochism
I confront my own masochistic feelings in my video piece, sweetbitter. The title is
taken from Ann Carson’s book Eros: The Bittersweet, where she explores the notion of
“Eros” as it relates to classical philosophy and historical literature. She starts off with
Sappho describing what eros meant to her. Carson explains:
It was Sappho who first called eros “bittersweet.” No one who has been in love
disputes her. What does the word mean? Eros seemed to Sappho at once an
experience of pleasure and pain. Here is a contradiction and perhaps paradox. To
perceive this eros can split the mind into two. Why? The components of the
contradiction may seem at first glance, obvious. We take for granted, as did
Sappho, the sweetness of erotic desire; its pleasurability smiles out at us. But the
bitterness is less obvious. There might be several reasons why what is sweet should
also be bitter. There may be various relations between the two savors. Poets have
sorted the matter out in different ways. Sappho’s own formulation is a good place
to begin tracing possibilities. The relevant fragment runs:

eros once again limb-loosener whirls me
sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up
(LP, fr. 130)
14

14
Anne Carson, Eros: The Bittersweet (London, England: Dalkey Archive Press, 2019), 3.
24
Many times, people refer to romantic relationships as “bittersweet.” I understood
the term differently after reading the first few pages of Ann Carson’s Eros: The Bittersweet
and it made me rethink my original interpretation of the word. Anne Carson defines the
term “sweetbitter” in its original sense. She Illustrates:
It is hard to translate. “Sweetbitter” sounds wrong, and yet our standard English
rendering “bittersweet” inverts the actual term Sappho’s compound glukupikron. Should
that concern us? If her ordering has a descriptive intention, eros is here being said to
bring sweetness, then bitterness in sequence: she is sorting the possibilities
chronologically. Many a lover’s experience would validate such a chronology, especially
in poetry, where most love ends badly.
15

This illuminated for me to look at my own queer romantic patterns. That not only did
sweetness come first but so did the excitement of being in a queer relationship. I held onto that
kind of “sweetness” because it was an experience I had never felt and so I tricked myself into
thinking that it outweighed the bitterness in the relationship. That push and pull between pleasure
and pain is what I wanted to act out in my piece sweetbitter. Placing my body in the video was
an active choice to place all my connections to salt as it relates to love and illness that I
experienced.
When I have presented this video in working progress or through showing stills, I have
received mixed views on the imagery that I am explicitly using. I have received criticism that I
am playing into a male gaze because I’m on my hands and knees or by putting salt in my mouth,
the salt becomes phallic. These associations made me upset and frustrated therefore I sought
insight from my queer mentors. Having queer mentorship is so important because amid
comments that viewed my work through a conventional lens, I was able to process these feelings
with people who knew what it felt like to be subjected to heteronormative world.

15
Carson 3-4
25
Hearing people interpret my work as objectifying myself through the male gaze first
upset me and then it challenged me to make sure I gave the framework in which it could be
viewed. My work is not through a heterosexual lens but rather a queer feminist lens that is aware
of sexuality and embraces this. This led me to use excerpts from many of the queer texts that
were in my studio that helped me not only navigate the world but my work. In sweetbitter, I use
a voiceover and the words spoken talk directly about queer love and its complexities. I included
excerpts from Anne Carson’s Eros: The Bittersweet, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, I
Prefer Girls by Jessie Dumont and an excerpt from the screenplay of the film Carol by Phyliss
Nagy.
I pose all my references that I collected with an excerpt from a letter I received from my
closeted ex, after we had broken up, we tried to remain friends. When we were just friends, I was
more candid about how hard it was to be in a closeted relationship and how I didn’t express my
feelings fully because I didn’t want to hurt her. She wrote me this letter after she realized how
much being closeted hurt me, and when she knew that even our friendship was precarious. I
don’t think she knew this would end up being a goodbye letter, but it became just that. It reads:
Sophs,
I don’t want to add to my list of regrets with you, so I want to put this in writing - so
that whatever happens from here on out you know where I am coming from, that this was
and is incredibly important to me, and that I love you more than you know. This is not
supposed to be an apology letter, though you can rest assured that I am deeply sorry for
hurting you and making you feel like a second choice - I really know how that feels and it
fucking sucks. I guess I’m just trying to memorialize a relationship that (because of me)
was so out of the public eye, lest we (you) forget why we were a force to be reckoned
with. I can easily remember the way you whined when you had to be up for my morning
calls, or your voice when you’d (jokingly) tell me “Shut up, bitch,” or how absolutely
terrible you are at peeing outdoors, but these things are all impressions more than they are
perfect memories. It’s kind of just how memories work, I guess. And I guess it’s why the
shit we’ve done together - things that have a story or something are things I’ll always
treasure.
26
I aim to complicate the narrative within my work by adding this intimate letter from my
ex. It’s not a single-narrative story, and I am not the only person who has been closeted or gone
through a closeted relationship. Much like The Watermelon Woman or The Price of Salt there are
many viewpoints in a story that can oppose one another but they’re all valid and they’re all part
of the story. I find myself relating to almost all the characters in a single novel at some point.
sweetbitter was the first video piece I made in the Salt Flats, and I originally
thought it was only going to be only one work. I wanted to focus on the action of taking in
salt from the ground and pushing it into my mouth, forcing as much as I could fit. When
this happened my tastebuds became overwhelmed, the taste became so sharp that it
immediately made me want to throw up. This was an interesting feeling because salt is
usually used to enhance and bring out the natural flavor of foods but when you add too
much it becomes inedible. For me it was as much about endurance as it was about control.
When I came back from the hotel after shooting my mouth had sores and cuts that were
bleeding. I couldn’t taste the food we were eating, it tasted as if someone had over-salted
the food.
In the video, I am wearing a vintage white negligee with a transparent, chiffon
peignoir to evoke the 1950s lesbian pulp fiction novel covers. I kneel on the ground at the
Salt Flats, and I maintain eye contact with the camera for most of the take. I take salt from
the ground, and I shove it into my mouth, trying to hold it in my mouth for as long as I can,
eventually spitting it up. Once I allow myself to lose control and spit up the salt, I start to
spit up as much as I can to try and expel all of the salt. There are moments when it seems I
am enjoying this “spit play” and it becomes hypersexual when I put my fingers into my
mouth.
27
Before I was diagnosed with Addison’s disease, I always had intense salt cravings,
and I learned later that this is actually a symptom to help identify the disease. In this video
I am gagging myself with salt creating a power dynamic between me and the camera and
audience, who is viewing this masochistic act. I am visibly uncomfortable, but I remain in
control because I am doing it to myself. I pushed myself for as long as I could go, and I
also decided when to spit out the salt.
This feeling of wanting to remain in control is something I’ve felt when I was
experiencing my illness before I was diagnosed. I pushed my body even though I was truly
suffering, and I tried to keep a smile on my face. This relationship of gaining control and
losing control is what I am exploring in this piece. Endurance is key to the video piece,
which started out as a performative act - the duration and pain of holding salt in your
mouth is a very important aspect.
People with chronic illnesses face a lifetime of complications, worry, stress and
uncertainty but being open and acknowledging these feelings help create understanding. I
can relate the experiences of being queer and having an illness to similar feelings of being
inadequate. When I came down with a chronic illness I first wanted to get back to “normal”
and I wanted to feel “normal” again. I slowly began to let go of expectations to be
“normal” and to accept that my life looked different from many young people my age.
Much like queerness, illness is something you might not be able to see but is present. My
illness and queerness are separate, but they relate to each other and create an understanding
of who I am and how I live outside (now proudly) of the notions of normalcy.
28

Figure 4. Still from sweetbitter, 2022. Image by Saul Singleton.
29
The work made for my thesis show is extremely cathartic, as it reveals my own
history of self-preservation as it relates to my queerness and illness, which I see now as
interrelated. It is imperative to my practice that I look to other people’s stories within my
community who have struggled with being able to define themselves against a normative
standard. A crucial text that helped me understand that looking to people who came before
us, we can then help define ourselves is Jenn Shapland’s My Autobiography of Carson
McCullers. In her text she navigates her own life and story through Carson McCullers fiction
and archive, Shapland suffers from a chronic condition that she was fully diagnosed with a
heart condition named hypovolemia and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome when she
began researching Carson McCullers. This is a shared point of connection with McCullers,
who also had a chronic condition that was constantly being misdiagnosed and she suffered
from many strokes.
16
Shapland connects queerness to a history of chronic illness, explaining
that not so long-ago queerness was thought of as a psychological disorder. She explains:
In the 1950s, queerness was understood as a congenital disorder. Up until the nineteenth
century, “sexual deviance” was seen as a sinful behavior, but when Western medicine got
involved, it became a symptom of a faulty body, a degenerate self. Medical or psychiatric
treatment was the solution to this “problem.”
17

Shapland goes on to explain that lesbians would often be faced with sexual conversion therapy,
she states:
...Lesbians in the 1940s and 50s would go to therapy for insomnia or anxiety and be
met with sexual conversion therapy. Pulp Fiction novels circulated but could pass
through the censors only if the protagonist chose a man in the end or was killed. Often,
she killed herself. The main cultural representations of women who loved women
depicted them as tortured, sick, and unfit for living. Queerness can still be construed as
a kind of weakness of will, an unfitness to live a normal life or to meet social
expectations.
18

16
Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications), 2019. 178.
17
Shapland 198
18
Shapland 199
30
The title of my thesis art show, a perpetual sunrise is an excerpt from a letter,
describing Carol and Therese’s love taken from Todd Haynes Film adaptation of the
lesbian pulp fiction novel The Price of Salt published in 1952 by Patricia Highsmith, when
Carol sends Therese (her lover) a goodbye letter, it reads:

Dearest,
There are no accidents, and he would’ve found us one way or another. Everything comes
full circle; be grateful it was sooner rather than later. You’ll think it harsh of me to say so,
but no explanation I offer will satisfy you. Please don’t be angry when I tell you that you
seek resolutions and explanations because you’re young, but you will understand this one
day. And when it happens…I want you to imagine me there to greet you. Our lives
stretched out ahead of us, a perpetual sunrise. But until then, there must be no contact
between us. I have much to do, and you, my darling, even more. Please believe that I
would do anything to see you happy. So, I do the only thing I can…I release you.
19

In Carol (2015), Cate Blanchett plays the role of Carol and there is a voiceover of her
reading the letter while Therese reads and then reacts to the letter. She is overcome with
emotion, and it brought me to tears listening to Carol’s words. When I watched this, my
relationship with my ex was already precarious and there was a part of me that felt I might die if
our relationship ended. There was also another part of me that wanted to be free of the misery
that us being together had produced. Now, I read this and feel the empowerment of leaving
something that caused me to suffer greatly. I am grateful to my ex and hold space for her
because I still believe she jolted me out of compulsory heterosexual relationship to now living
as a proud queer. I believe that she made me realize I could no longer suppress myself. Out of
misery there can be joy, an ending can also be a beginning to something else.

19
Phyllis Nagy, Carol Original Screenplay (New York City, NY: The Weinstein Company), 2016. 96.
31
A Very Queer Happy Ending
Experiences that are painful—a breakup, or growing up in the conservative South—are
the ground from which I have grown and become more resilient. Now I know from experience
that two women who are in love with each other can have a chance at a happy ending because
I’ve found someone that makes me the happiest I’ve ever been. I always thought love would be
hard and something you had to fight for. Sometimes I felt like I would always be alone, and I
would never find someone because it would mean depriving myself. Because life works in silly
ways, while working my written thesis, that looks to traumatic parts of my past where I disguised
myself. I am now in my first open queer relationship with someone who would never want to
hide our love to anyone. It might sound insignificant to someone else but being validated by your
partner has created not only acceptance but healing in never feeling good enough or not feeling
deserving of real love. A queer happy ending wouldn’t look like the many normative stories that
everyone grew up learning but instead is reimagined in our own way.

Concluding Reflections

While working on my written thesis and the body of artwork for my Master of Fine
Arts exhibition, my professors often told me that because my work speaks to a time in my
past where there was real trauma, there is a need for me to show how I have used this
trauma to transform my present day. I never wanted to leave the audience with a feeling
that my past is unresolved, even though at that time it was. I was trying to make sense of
my past and the events that took place that left me longing and desiring for something I
didn’t have.
My artwork is inspired by film and novels because they are platforms in which
32
stories are told. The films and novels I read were placeholders to the queer community I was still
building and establishing. It was hard to make connections during my first year of grad school
because all our classes were through remote learning due to COVID-19. Being by myself most of
the time left me reflecting a lot on my past. I had to face myself and I contemplated why I made
certain decisions. Being in a constant state of reflection made me start thinking about the person
I wanted to be.
In the spirit of filmmaking or writing novels, I wanted to tell my own story. This
became apparent when I started reading My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn
Shapland in the summer of 2021, while approaching my last year of grad school. Through telling
a story about your life, you may reveal something about the reader’s life. The experience of
Shapland finding herself through Carson McCullers writing is something I related to. I wanted to
emulate this, but in my own way—to acknowledge the key figures who had gotten me to where I
needed to be. I not only found myself through Shapland’s work, but also through the work of
Patricia Highsmith, Cheryl Dunye, Todd Haynes, and Kara Keeling.
I wanted to contribute to the legacy that has been built by LGBTQ folks taking up
space and letting their voices be heard. The most valuable thing I have learned
from my queer ancestors is that I have found my own voice. Through making my
work personal, it has allowed me to fully process my past and to work towards the
future.
As my time in grad school is coming to an end, I have found myself daydreaming about
the future. At one point in my life, a radical queer future did not seem possible; living out of the
closet used to be a fantasy. Little did I know, everything I had been searching for was waiting for
me in Los Angeles. I had always sought out queer mentorship, a queer community, and queer
33
love, but only in Los Angeles would I no longer have to explain myself, and where I would find
people who would get the intricacies and nuances about growing up queer. Looking back now, I
realize that I manifested the thing I wanted most, a queer family. I placed myself in a program
full of immensely talented and caring queer individuals who I have learned so much from.
Originally, I thought my body of work titled: …a perpetual sunrise was about the
landscape itself, the Bonneville Salt Flats. Instead, it has come to be much more. My work is
about the many connections that being in the Salt Flats brought up for me: traveling with my
closeted ex across the country, reading The Price of Salt while in a closeted relationship, and my
illness that made me reconsider how the body mal/functions, and its connection to not being able
to process sodium without medical intervention.
The Salt Flats are a sacred place to me. It became a catalyst—a perfect storm to create
change—to make me transform into who I wanted to be. It created an urgency to put my beliefs
and values before anyone else, and to let go of people who no longer supported my growth.
The first time I visited the Bonneville Salt Flats, I was in a closeted lesbian relationship
due to my ex being closeted. It was one of the stops along the way to move to Los Angeles from
Nashville, TN. A chapter was closing; I was leaving the South and going West.
The second time I visited the Bonneville Salt Flats, I was shooting footage for what I
thought was going to be a single video piece. I returned to this location, with my ex for a second
time, but this time we were no longer together. Being with my ex at the Salt Flats still provoked
the same feelings of not being good enough that I experienced during the relationship. This
inspired me to make a body of video work surrounding these feelings.
In hindsight, I realize this was a poor decision to have her film such a vulnerable
piece. It became hard to look back at the footage because I could hear her condescending
34
tone. Her voice entered many of the shots telling me what to do. She wouldn’t receive
criticism and she had a hard time taking direction from me. I wonder if she realized that I
was putting her in a position that she took in our relationship: a dominant one—a dominant
position where my voice or needs weren’t often considered. I was holding onto a
relationship that was causing me to doubt myself, and because of this, it made me revisit
my own (recent) closeted feelings and to bring forward the personal within my work.
During filming with my ex there were technical errors that she made while filming. She
had a demanding schedule because of remote work that she prioritized over my project. This
made it difficult because we only had one day to shoot everything. Returning home to find out
the footage went in and out of focus was devastating; that is one technical error you can't fix. She
beat herself up about it, so I tried to make her feel better and pushed my own hurt feelings aside.
This required me to return one more time to reshoot the footage.
On my final return to the Bonneville Salt Flats, a year later, I returned without her. It felt
strange returning to a place that she introduced me to and ultimately led me to. But This time I
hired a young queer undergrad named Saul, who went to the cinema school at USC. I had
decided that it would be part of my practice to collaborate with young queer people and to
continue the queer mentorship I received. I also wanted to make sure I was paying young
queer people for their time and skills. Hiring someone younger than me and creating an
opportunity to make art together was a beautiful moment, and it showed me the importance of
creating healthy queer relationships.
Almost all the video footage in my show is from the second time shooting at the
Bonneville Salt Flats—all except for the video installation piece, Monument for Edith (Lot’s
wife). I decided to keep the original footage that my ex filmed because even after reshooting, the
35
original take was the best take. By including the original footage, I am better able to show the
progression of my work and my cyclical relationship to the site that I kept returning to.
Each time I visited the Salt Flats, I was a different person. It has allowed me to see things
more clearly and has helped me to not romanticize the past in ways that make me hold on to
people who have hurt me. This has allowed me to make space for people who really accept me.
For this body of work, I didn’t think that there would be a counteractive piece that would
bring resolution to the whole body of work. I believed that any resolution would come after this
work, separate from what I had already been creating. But as the semester continued, I decided to
play with a video that I had taken on the second visit to the site.
My mentor and professor Jennifer West gave me a crystal sun catcher right before
leaving for the Salt Flats. I took a few videos on my iPhone at the Salt Flats by placing the
crystal over the front-face camera. My face and body became fragmented through the crystal,
and it created a kaleidoscope image. Rainbows appeared in the footage when the sun would hit
the crystal just right. I originally took these playful videos and projected them on the wall, but
something was still missing.
I took the crystal video footage and then projected through a crystal lens by placing the
crystal lens over the projector lens. By projecting it through a crystal lens it transformed the
video and created an expansive, immersive, and vibrant video installation where the image is
fragmented a second time. The image refracted onto multiple walls in my studio creating colorful
images. I realized that I had produced a video installation that counteracted the previous work I
had made.
I decided that I would create a room in my art show separate from the other video pieces
that are dealing with issues of the past. I am placing this crystal video installation at the end
36
intentionally. The audience will view the final piece of the show that symbolically depicts
fragments of myself and my past that reconstruct and transform my present and future self.
It was a surprise that I found my resolution through my curiosity and by allowing myself to play.
A resolution found me without trying. I subconsciously presented myself with an artwork that is
propelling forward, rather than looking back.
37
Bibliography

Campbell, Andy. Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art
of LGBTQ. New York City, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2019: 13.

Carson, Anne. Eros: The Bittersweet. Champaign: Dalkey Archive Press, 2019: 3-4.
Highsmith, Patricia. The Price of Salt. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2015: 225, 233.
Keeling, Kara. Queer Times, Black Futures. New York City, NY: New York University Press,
2019: 21-22, 81, 90-96.

Nagy, Phyllis. Carol Original Screenplay. New York City, NY: The Weinstein Company, 2016:
96.

Shapland, Jenn. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers. Portland: Tin House Books, 2020: 178,
198, 199.
The Watermelon Woman. DVD. Cheryl Dunye and Dancing Girl Productions, Inc., 1997.
Toensing, Holly Joan. “Women of Sodom and Gomorrah: Collateral Damage in the War Against
Homosexuality?” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 21, no. 2, (2005): 61–74.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25002533.

Wycoff, William, and William Cronon. “DRY LAKES.” In How to Read the American West: A
Field Guide, 58–59. University of Washington Press, 2014: 58.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwn9xt.18.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract By looking to my past, and the pasts of others through films or novels, this thesis explores the process of introspection with the aim of unveiling something of the present/future. This research is crucial to my art practice and my objective is to continue the tradition of sharing one’s story in my own way through narrative and metaphorical video art. There is a history of LGBTQ+ folks telling their own story, and this is a reciprocal act, in the hopes of queer readers inheriting their words to help define themselves.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Stevenson, Sophia Alana (author)

Core Title Looking to the past: closeted feelings of queer longing and desire

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 04/07/2022

Defense Date 04/06/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag closeted,desire,erotic,film,Gay,illness,Lesbian,LGBTQ,longing,looking back,OAI-PMH Harvest,Queer,salt,video art

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Campbell, Andrew (committee chair), Chang, Patty (committee member), West, Jennifer (committee member)

Creator Email sophia.alana.art@gmail.com,Sophias8@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110886261

Unique identifier UC110886261

Document Type Thesis

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Stevenson, Sophia Alana

Type texts

Source 20220408-usctheses-batch-920 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu