Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonah Welch.
Hi Jonah, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I would say age 19 is when I really started making art, which was coincidentally the same time that I figured out I was a transsexual. This was 2011.
Transition itself was, of course, a catalyst for my turning towards art. It has also characterized a lot of what I have chosen to do with it since then.
For the first three years of my “career,” I drew almost entirely with the free pens at my bank. I drew nearly every day. Generally for hours. The line became a place of research. I delved into surrealist methods – trying to keep my hand ahead of my conscious mind to see what forms would emerge. Art was a place for me to look at and distill the incredible array of experiences I was having from a position of marginality.
At this time, I was getting a degree in Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying queer theory where it intersected with visual culture, and the profound history of images and their role in human life, under the mentorship of a professor named Jill H. Casid. I was living in a pro-POC, pro-Queer, and pro-trans cooperative house called Audre Lorde and developing my roots in cross-cultural organizing and liberation movements. This is the time when my spiritual practice began to coalesce as well.
I recognized the possibilities held by art and by every person’s inherent connection to Spirit – for myself, for the uplift and celebration of the trans community, for affecting public spaces, for communicating important but nuanced concepts to broad audiences, and seemingly much more…so I kept going.
I moved to Austin shortly after getting my degree. I was working full time but snagged a studio space at the Museum of Human Achievement. For another few years, I continued to try and produce as much work as I possibly could. Drawing late at night. Always motivated by the root principle that if I just kept going, and stayed focused on the nuances of my practice, that things would work out the way they need to. I participated in a number of shows, both local and around the country in these. This was the time when I started seeding my ability to support myself only as an artist.
I tried and failed at that a couple of times and was experiencing intermittent food and housing insecurity. I found again and again little hints of encouragement in the world that I was on the right track, so I kept going.
At this time, I was continuing to solidify my beliefs around the sacredness of trans life – by delving into old history, the tomes of the occult, ancient spiritual practices and gods and angels and saints – searching for clues and remnants of our existence. And with people, I witnessed again and again the way that gender transition seemed to serve as a spiritual initiation for some – cultivating strong faith in the care and guidance we receive from the immaterial world, even as the material world seeks our demise.
It’s 2021 now and things have continued to shift. In 2019 I raised my first billboard in Detroit, Michigan which proclaimed “Trans People are Sacred” high above the roofline – this concept is an indigenous thought form that is very old, that was spoken to me by my friend Dakota Camacho when we lived together at the Audre Lorde Coop. This message, this billboard, this image spread like wildfire.
Last year I got the opportunity to do something a little bit bigger with public space with the same organization (SaveArtSpace) so I independently coordinated a National level billboard campaign, fundraised $35,000 in six weeks, and paid 14 BIPOC trans and gender non-conforming artists to make public artwork about the divinity of trans people and put it on billboards across the country.
At the same time, I began a prayer group explicitly for trans people, which is still operating today with a strong core group of participants who come from around the world.
These days I am a graduate student at AOMA – studying traditional East Asian medicine so that I can treat people in my community (one that has been medically underserved for potentially centuries. I am paying my way through school with art and community support (and many loans…) I am writing more these days – especially poetry, but also theory and philosophy and prayers. I draw, but I am also oil painting now. I am continuing to expand. But the same little fires keep me going – the magic of the art itself, and the magic of my community, and the ways both of these things can shift the world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think that as things go, my path has been pretty typical of a dedicated full-lifestyle artist. Lots of not having money, food, resources, savings for years. Lots of taking big opportunities and risks and attempting them even if I didn’t necessarily feel qualified. Lots of travel, and exploration, and scrappiness, and problem-solving along the way.
I think the biggest struggle for me has always been finding my place in the art world. I’ve had a range of show experiences. The hardest have been when I have participated in shows as one of the only marginalized artists, where the audience was mostly cisgender, white, etc. Watching people pass by work bearing deep social/spiritual commentary, work that has helped me and others survive, and not notice it or understand it, sometimes just muttering “huh” and then walking away without speaking to me, was hurtful. I learned not to take it personally, to focus on making work for my community, and to be more discerning about how and where I share this work with the public — all that being said, I have a strong desire to be taken seriously in the fine art world and would like for my work to be recognized for something beyond the ways that it comes out of my particular embodied experience.
I have always had a huge amount of support for my work from my loved ones and community, and this has made things feel very easeful in many ways.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am known for making work at the intersection of occult(hidden) magical practices like alchemy, gnosticism, mysticism, etc. & trans experience. So I am an “artist” in the ways the alchemists of old were artists – hiding their spiritual knowledge in illustrations because words failed. In movements of mysticism throughout time, which came alongside the major religions and insisted that each person is a part of the Divine, I found a place for myself. And now, for us.
The community of trans and gender non-conforming people who are pursuing spiritual paths is growing. We have a need for prayers of our own. And spaces. And a reconnection with our ancient history – as we have been part of cultures across the world for millennia. I seek to make artwork that can help facilitate this relationship – between a trans person and spirit – in a modern world that has not only forgotten us but insists on our destruction.
Stylistically my work is often fairly minimalist. I try and do a lot with a little. For example, I recently released a small “grimoire” made out of a single sheet of paper with six poems for the spiritual uplift of trans people. The grimoire tradition is dominated by white men and giant, heavy books that are rare and hard to get. I took that and flipped it – making a magic book that was designed to be light as a feather, to travel, to be crumpled, dispersed, folded, stashed, hidden.
I love black and white – I love to draw with lines. I love to make forms with simple gestures and leaving a lot of room for the viewers eye to meet me halfway. These days I am finally breaking through on oil painting too and finding new opportunities for expression in the colors. As a young person, I was deeply moved by the practices of the emotional expressionists and feel myself following in their path.
I am most proud of the fact that I have been able to remain prolific for almost a decade and that that fire has not dimmed at least so far!
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I have lived in Austin for six years and have pretty much loved it since day one. I always had this idea that since so many people move here seeking something (some nameless desire, a better life, a community perhaps…), we end up leaving a lot of room for chance to coordinate magical, synchronicities things among us. I have met some people here that I just don’t think I could have met elsewhere, who have guided and rooted my entire life.
I have always felt a sense of luck here. Maybe its the sunshine, or the warmth of the community web, especially within what I would call the “subculture of Austin” (more and more sub- as the days pass) — the working artists and the People of Color, the trans folks, the mystics and tarot readers and performance artists and filmmakers. We’re all wandering here, finding each other, creating new things, trying to tend to wounds in the culture, trying to speak to what is happening. The art scene in Austin is one of the most accessible I’ve ever found and seems to be rooted in the joy and celebration found in the heart of art and its liberatory potential.
As larger corporations come into the city, I feel a sense of heartbreak at seeing the old cultural hubs getting leveled. I feel the strain of housing costs and know many people who have lived here for years, or even their whole lives, who are struggling to get by nowadays. This city needs to pour money into arts funding, and rent control, and rent relief, and in supporting long-term residents in buying homes, especially in the face of the growing homogenizing influence of wealth and tech. We need to reduce funding of our police system and pour money into structural resources for houseless people. We need to help preserve old communities, especially historic black communities, that are being wiped out by gentrification. I believe many artists in this town, in how we interweave with all layers of society, in how we seek to absorb and reflect and create, hold some of the answers for how to grow and maintain the rich, diverse culture of the city.
Pricing:
- Trans and gender non-conforming spiritual counsel – $90/hour
- Art mentorship $77/hour
- Individual or group guided rosary prayer $90/hour
Contact Info:
- Email: jonah.m.welch@gmail.com
- Website: https://www.jonahwelch.com/
- Other: https://www.saveartspace.org/tpas
Image Credits:
Portrait Shots by Montsho Jarreau Thoth https://www.mjthoth.com/
