love’s galaxy

St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US, 2023.

Love’s Galaxy is a series of works that acknowledge, illuminate, and celebrate new discoveries in the queer heritage of North Country, New York. The title is from a line in a poem published on 21 September, 1894, in the Plattsburgh Daily Press (a newspaper from the North Country). It was a poem titled The Lesbian Poets by C.A. Kelly (below). There is varying opinion on when the term "lesbian" took on its modern meaning, but it has been cited as far back as 1736 in The Toast, a heroic poem by William King. One key line in Kelly’s poem is “Sappho's rainbow robed Desire". Sappho, an ancient Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, was known as a symbol of lesbian love when the poem was written. What is most notable though, is the queering of the rainbow with “Sappho’s rainbow”. Research suggests the earliest known queering of the rainbow was in 1915 through the novel The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence which features a lesbian relationship. Kelly’s poem precedes this by more than 20 years so it could be one of the earliest known examples of the rainbow being queered.

SAPPHO’S RAINBOW ROBED DESIRE

Sappho’s Rainbow Robed Desire is a series of works that acknowledge, illuminate, and celebrate the discovery of The Lesbian Poets by C.A. Kelly. The transcript of the poem is as follows:

THE LESBIAN POETS.

Erewhile they flashed Love’s galaxy among,

Strewn gems, soul shrined, scarce saved from

Time’s wan pyre

Of regal Sappho’s rainbow robed Desire

Where those impassioned warblers, vainly

strong,

Æolian art availed not to prolong?

The nightingales who knew Terpander’s lyre,

Who glowed with Aphrodite’s arduous fire,

Who throbbed responsive to Alcæs’ song?

Their splendor glimmers still o’er wave and

height,

Dream imaged in the veiled voluptuous air,

Though now no eager Eros exquisite

Gleams through the grove, ecstatically fair,

And quenched the Lesbians’ luminous delight,

Their amorous hope and eloquent despair.

- C. A. Kelly.

The first work, Sappho’s Rainbow Robed Desire I, explores Sappho’s voice through the recreation of a barbiton, the ancient stringed instrument Sappho holds in one of the earliest images of Sappho painted on the side of a vase by Brygos Painter c. 470 B.C. The work extends the two-dimensional text of the poem in the original newspaper into three-dimensional space, seven strings reflecting the seven colours of the rainbow. This form is then expanded, reconfigured, and tessellated into fictional queer artifacts.

The next work, Sappho’s Rainbow Robed Desire II adds motion and sound to one of the fictional queer artifacts produced in Sappho’s Rainbow Robed Desire I. The barbiton form is tessellated seven times into the seven colours of the rainbow, spinning like a globe on its axis. The colours change over time as seven different light filters (the same seven colours of each barbiton) are applied following the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The different filters absorb different wavelengths in the visible spectrum, erasing particular colours.

The sound component is an edited version of the audio recording I'm Going Back To My Used To Be, recorded in New York in 1923 with vocalists Bessie Smith and Clara Smith. Bessie and Clara were not related but both have been described as leading queer figures in blues. This audio recording could then be one of the earliest recorded queer duets. Bessie and Clara were born the same year in 1894, which is the year The Lesbian Poets by C.A. Kelly appeared in the Plattsburgh Daily Press. Specific sound frequencies have been removed from the original track to uplift and centre the vocals, similar to the process of colour absorption that occurs in the accompanying visuals.

Audio source: I’m Going Back To My Used To Be, Smith, B., Cox, J., Henderson, F., Smith, C. & Cox, J., 1923, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, US.

The next work, Sappho’s Rainbow Robed Desire III, presents another fictional queer artifact. It is a three-dimensional object made from the 26 characters in Kelly’s line: “Sappho’s rainbow robed Desire”.

The final work, Sappho’s Rainbow Robed Desire IV, adds colour and movement to the transcript of Kelly’s poem.

ASTERISMS

Asterisms is a series of works that consider challenges and opportunities raised in using AI to generate queer heritage and its future possibilities. The works show same sex intimacy in front of campus buildings at St. Lawrence University from the late 1800's to the 1920’s. They appear to be documentation of queer life from the distant past in Canton and were co-developed with artificial intelligence (AI). Novak obtained heritage photos from the St. Lawrence University Owen D. Young Library and asked AI to add same sex couples being intimate to each photo. These images were further edited by Novak in a separate image editing program. Each image is given a title using a coding system that links it directly to Novak’s project Velebit. This also helps to identify that the work uses AI.

Image sources (in order of appearance):

• Early Campus From Park Street, Unknown Photographer, c. 1880, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US.

• Campus From the Back of Richardson, Unknown Photographer, c. 1900, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US.

• The Campus, Peck, H.N., c. 1913, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US.

• "Long Walk" From Behind Hepburn, General Electric Co., 1929, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US.

THROUGH GOLDEN EYES

On October 24, 1969 (the year of Stonewall), the UCA Film Committee at St. Lawrence University screened the film Reflections in a Golden Eye. It was about the adventures of an army major and his wife and the repression of homosexuality was one theme in the film. One review in Hill News (St. Lawrence University’s student newspaper since 1911 now called The Hill News) stated "we discover that the Major is a latent homosexual attracted to a virginal enlisted man. Unfortunately for the Major, the solider would rather spend his days sunbathing in the woods or riding horses in the nude". The original release of the film used a gold filter over all scenes that almost rendered it monochromatic, however, particular reds and greens were still visible.

Through Golden Eyes I is an edited image of St. Lawrence University taken in 1972 not long after the screening of Reflections in a Golden Eye on campus. Same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults was illegal in New York at this time, and homosexuality was still classified as a mental illness, so queer repression was prevalent. This is embodied through the application of a golden hue and subsequent desaturation of colour to the original colour photo obtained from the St. Lawrence University Owen D. Young Library.

Image source: 1970’s Aerial of Complete Campus, D.P. Church, 1972, Special Collections, Owen D. Young Library, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, US.

There was however, a light emerging just around the corner. The following year in 1973, the Hill News published an article titled “Coming Out at St. Lawrence: Mentioning the Unmentionable” which signalled a positive change in attitudes to queer communities. Through Golden Eyes II is a hypothetical sculpture made of two walls. One is black with three-dimensional text installed on one face. The other is a wall of golden yellow transparent glass. The text on the black wall is a key paragraph direct from the article in Hill News that includes all the imperfections (dust and crease marks) from the original scans. When the viewer looks at the work through the golden yellow glass, the blue text disappears, similarly to the method of colour desaturation used in the film Reflections in a Golden Eye. This transforms the paragraph into something that reads more positively, so flips the use of a gold hue to embody homosexual repression (as in Through Golden Eyes I), to instead embody queer liberation.

1973 was also the year the trustees of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. Homosexuality was listed in the DSM-II: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second Edition) under the heading “Sexual deviations”, its code being 302.0, and this was changed in a reprint. Through Golden Eyes III takes the same approach as Through Golden Eyes II, but incorporates the original classification as it appeared in the DSM-II prior to declassification. The golden yellow glass liberates the text by removing the classification name and codes.

The final work, Through Golden Eyes IV, merges the timelines in Through Golden Eyes I, Through Golden Eyes II, and Through Golden Eyes III into a hypothetical sculpture that acknowledges and celebrates 1972 - 1973 as an important juncture in queer heritage for North Country (and beyond). It was a significant moment in time that signalled a new era of queer liberation.