I'm Kate–Kade Sawyer, my God! Nonbinary life. My name is Kade Sawyer. Art has always been a really central part of my identity. Growing up here, I feel like nature, and understanding that you're a piece of it was always instilled in me growing up. I studied anthropology and archaeology at Tulane; my senior year, I did an independent study that was themed around the nexus of art and archaeology and looking at the scientific aspects of it, but also how so much subjectivity is held within objects. I called it “Materiality and Embodiment in Art and Archaeology.” It was a lot about mark-making, meaning-making in material; just finding an object in its context and inferring all sorts of things about it. So just taking that idea of the importance of context in material and overlaying it onto contemporary art practices, thinking about the context of a room, a place where a person spends so much of their time; a place that’s supposed to be safe and comfortable, and that reflects the self in a way. 

So my show is really inspired by home and identity and a sense of place and belonging; what that means and how objects hold identity and how stories are told through objects. Moving back home into my parents house after living away for a long time, and the sense of a past self that was just so present in all of the objects and the structure of the space and all the memories there. So it was kind of a cathartic process to explore that and dig into it, instead of trying to separate my present self from my past self, sort of digging in, instead of pulling away. We looked a lot through old family photographs, and childhood art projects, and ones that felt like more of a reflection of my queer identity. Also, just some drawings that I did, I found one that kind of referenced gender at a young age: it was a crown, and the crown because I'm a king, not a queen kind of thing. And I was like, “Oh, that's interesting.” There’s something about queerness and looking back onto your past self, and seeing who you were before all the external influences kind of molded you into a way that probably you wouldn't have without them. I think there's a lot of pressure to be a certain way; so, having broken out of that, and come home, I've been able to reintegrate with the more authentic parts of myself. It was really, really lovely. Along with the idea of physically coming home, it was sort of an emotional coming home. 

I personally love collecting little treasures that I find all over the place. To me, they're just so attached to memories. And I think whenever I have time to be able to actually look for things and take in my surroundings with somebody or alone, they're just sort of symbols of a deeply engaged moment. The finding is fun, of course, but I think it's just more about the engagement that it requires and being able to look around and acknowledge that there are little hidden gems everywhere. There's this interplay of wanting spaces that reflect us and we try to reflect a certain culture or a certain way of being by the objects that we adorn ourselves with, the places that we inhabit. The dichotomy between animate and inanimate has always been like, “I don't know,” maybe there's just kind of this gray area in between that we all reside in, and there's this constant feedback between everything. 

My dad has always said, “Follow the glimmer,” even if you're not certain that something is right, if it's just kind of piquing your interest or calling you a little bit, just pursue it and see where it takes you. And if it becomes less interesting over time, you look around again, follow the next one. Just these little sparks: little treasures, one might say.