feature: Franklin Vagnone
Your work in five words or less?
Throw-away, sparkly, subversive, pretty objects.
Where you live?
I have an apartment in Yorkville (New York City), and a tiny house built in 1767 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Queer credentials?
Brooch and scarf wearing, sexually fluid bi-sexual. Married to Laura (Together 20+ years) and married to Johnny since June 2020 (together 13+ years). We have a wonderfully blended, queer, modern family.
Turn Ons?
Spending time exploring with my hubbie Johnny. Dumpster-diving. Long Saturday afternoons in my art studio listening to music (right now I’m into to Amy Winehouse).
Turn Offs?
Nostalgia. Tradition for the sake of tradition.
Art Crushes?
Architects Turner Brooks, Plecnik, Kahn, Maybeck, Venturi, Scott-Brown – all of these people took history and inverted it.
Personal Crayon Color?
1940’s Kitchen Green. My rule is to paint everything that color and let the changing sun do its job.
Ideal place to display your work?
Historic House Museums. I dream for my work to be hung or placed in Mount Vernon and Monticello.
Favorite non-art pastime?
Re-arranging furniture. (Seriously!)
First memorable art project?
Creating a haunted doll house for Halloween. I put one of my Dad’s lit cigarettes in the “working” fireplace so smoke would come out of the chimney. Even back then I was into performance.
What’s next?
My practice is that I work on several different types of media at the same time. I start something, leave it on the table and go over and work on something else. I could have four things happening at the same time and each one informs the other. I am deeply invested in my “Secret Sexual Histories of Gay Men” series. They are powerful visual representations of written personal histories about life-long sexual stories. I am so lucky to find individuals who are willing to share such authentic stories. My hope is that these art pieces can hold meaning for a younger generation exploring their sexual lives. I am also working on a “Queering Frames” series, which ties basic historical precedents of decorative arts to the notion of queering aesthetics. Ultimately, I am very interested in the idea of creating site-specific exhibitions in historic house museums as a way to present these ideas.
Please show support by leaving your thoughts in the comments.
All work appears courtesy of the artist.
more projects in the dandy uncensored gallery
Franklin Vagnone
sculpture and collage website: FranklinVagnone.org
public history website: TwistedPreservation.com
etsy: HousewearsForHomos
twitter: @FranklinVagnone
instagram: @FDVagnone and @TheWorldStillFascinatesMe
