This art market is featuring trans and queer creatives

If there’s one word Miller Potoma would use to describe the Trans Art Market, it’s “kinetic.”

“It’s a space that’s full of so much joy and excitement,” Potoma said.

Potoma and other community members in the trans community have been organizing art markets twice a year, starting in April 2022, that predominantly feature trans and nonbinary artists. And the next Trans Art Market will be held Sunday, Dec. 10 at the Bok Building.

The purpose of the art markets, Potoma said, is “to provide an environment where trans artists can be surrounded by their peers, other trans artists and increase their access to buyers who want to support trans creatives.”

The art at this year’s market will range from clothing to soaps to ceramics. But what they all have in common is their representation of trans and queer communities, and their love and support for the people within them.

When Hunny Daniels sits down to create, they think of the first community that made them feel at home when they moved to Philadelphia in 2017: the leather queer community.

“It’s really a place that welcomes everybody,” Daniels said. “The core tenet is that … what unites us is our struggle to be accepted. For me, it’s definitely a group of outsiders and I feel very comfortable in that.”

Daniels’ homage to the community comes through a diversity of artwork that plays off of known symbols within the leather queer community, such as leather, handcuffs and locks. Some of their drawings are more “adult,” they said, with graphic portrayals of intimacy between people wearing leather. But others are two handcuffs in heart shapes interlinked, or a giant, fluffy, pink pillow in the shape of a chain.

“I really love the juxtaposition of something that’s seen as so hard and immovable as the leather scene, and the sweetness of a heart and a sparkle and flower,” Daniels said. “I really enjoy playing with that line between the hardness and the sweetness.”

And that juxtaposition, Daniels said, is representative of the leather queer community itself.

“There’s such a stigma to the leather community, that you miss a lot of the sweetness, you miss a lot of the tenderness and the care that happens within our communities,” they said.

Also selling at the market will be Kamil White, who is a first-time vendor at Trans Art Market, but has been a designer since he was 5 years old and didn’t like Charlie Brown’s shoes.

But it wasn’t until last year, when White lost his housing, that he found his passion and niche within artwork.

“The only thing that kept me going was I started making jewelry for myself,” White said. It quickly turned into jewelry for others.

White’s handmade jewelry is filled with vibrant colors and vivid textures. His necklaces, rings and bracelets feature crystals and stones that he digs up at golf courses, his chains are made of recycled silver spoons.

And all of it is an attempt to create a physical and sensory experience for his customers, especially at the Trans Art Market, where he’s been wanting to sell his jewelry since last year.

“Seeing how many trans people were there made me feel at home,” White said. “It’s comforting to be able to not have to mask, and be able to breathe. It’s freeing.”

Potoma himself is one of the 50 vendors who will be participating in the Art Market this year, with stickers and buttons that speak to trans experiences. Potomac’s art predominantly tries to debunk the idea that trans people are in the wrong bodies — “when the reality is that we are trans, and our bodies are trans, and amazing and beautiful in that,” he said.

“I create work I wish I had been able to see, that would have helped me feel seen,” Potoma said. “And I hope that other trans people feel seen when they experience or look at my work.”