Art to Everyone: Jeremy Novy Shares Examples of Queer Street Art From Around the World During Palm Springs Pride

Global Queer Resistance Through Street Art, a short-run exhibit at Impell Gallery during Greater Palm Springs Pride, will feature works by renowned queer street artist Jeremy Novy.

The exhibition shows how queer street art has historically served as a form of rebellion against discrimination and violence, while also expressing joy and optimism.

“Queer art has always been an oppressed art form,” Novy said. “We are not taggers—we are street artists. This is for social change. It’s about doing something better.”

In addition to showing Novy’s own work, Impell will display more than 50 pieces from Novy’s extensive collection of queer street art, including works by Keith Haring, FAILE, Shepard Fairey, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gran Fury, Queer Nation and ACT UP.

Impell Gallery owner Mark Pellegrino said Novy’s collection represents a range of international artists. Novy will be on hand for impromptu art talks about the history and ongoing impact of queer street art.

Novy travels often, doing commissioned work and meeting up with street artists throughout the country and abroad. When we spoke over the phone in early/mid-October, he was in his hometown, Milwaukee, to paint a rainbow crosswalk.

“I went to art school here, so people kind of appreciate my art,” Novy said. “I’ll be going down to Chicago to hang out with some street artists down there. We’ll go out and paint some posters. Then, I head to Austin for a couple of days and go out with some friends who are street artists there. We’ll put up posters and do stencils before I go to Brenham, Texas, and then I’ll be back to California.”

Considered one of the pioneers of the queer street-art movement, Novy is credited with opening up space for queer artists to exist and create within the larger world of street art. He said the current political climate around the country is concerning, mentioning the targeting of drag queens and the removal of rainbow sidewalks in cities he has visited.

“Queer visibility is a really, really important thing,” Novy said. “I do stencils of drag queens, and I see that as art, but putting out that image can confront someone who may be homophobic. I think that queer street art can be a protest to the removal of our rainbow crosswalks, and to the lack of murals. … When it comes to queer murals, we don’t have them, because cities consider them too controversial to the variety of people who live in their city.”

Novy pointed out that anti-LGBTQ sentiments spread well beyond the U.S.

“I have two murals, one in Sydney, one in San Francisco, and both of them were defaced at different times, specifically by religious groups who said that it was their religious right to not have to see this,” Novy said. “It was really sad, because the Sydney (incident) happened the day that Australia allowed for same-sex marriage to happen. Someone was upset that had passed, and they went to deface this mural.”

More than 15 years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded Novy with a grant. With the funds, he curated an exhibition, A History of Queer Street Art, which premiered in San Francisco in 2011, and later traveled to pop-up galleries in Los Angeles and at Yale University. The exhibit that will be on display at Impell Gallery has roots in that 2011 show.

“I used the grant to start this collection,” said Novy. “I was trying to (say), ‘Look, I’m not the only one. There are all these other people, and it’s an actual art movement.’ At that time, it was really hard for me to find other street artists, because street art wasn’t (viewed in such a friendly way), like how it is now. You can really show your face, and it’s trendy, and it’s not looked at as graffiti so much anymore.”

You likely have seen an instance of Novy’s most famous creation, the floating koi fish. They are ubiquitous, appearing in public and private spaces, both indoors and out. Novy has stenciled koi in numerous cities across the country and on three continents, with the San Francisco Bay Area having the highest concentration of koi per square mile of any region in the states.

Novy said street art is special because it uses public spaces to send messages. The typical art-gallery visitor may be educated or wealthy, while a majority of the population may never intentionally seek out art. In contrast, street art brings art to everyone, regardless of income or background.

Novy said Yale University was interested in the connections between contemporary street artists and the protest/queer art from previous generations.

“Yale University, as a part of their queer studies program, was interested in the new artists making street art, and thinking about the older street art that started out with the AIDS epidemic (that was) telling the government that they needed to pay attention to the queer community—how they needed to react to this crisis that’s happening,” Novy said. “Even Keith Haring, (he) was definitely part of the hip hop scene. He was like a DJ, and part of a band, and a lot of different things with the downtown New York crowd of artists at that time. Yale was really interested that there are new artists with similar ideas about expressing their existence.”

Novy said he’s proud to have helped build a street-art community around the world, which today can use social media to make instant connections.

“Some of them said that I was kind of unionizing queer artists, or making it so other queer artists knew (each other), and were able to connect to specific queer street artists, which was kind of amazing,” he said. “I was in Barcelona two years ago and ended up meeting a queer street artist there. I’ll just go onto a street, and if I find something that has a queer image in it, I’ll look them up online, and then I’ll literally reach out to them: ‘Hey, I’m in your city; I’m this artist. Would you like to go out and do art together? Or would you just like to meet and have a talk?’ In that process, I’ve been able to trade posters with these artists. I’ve been able to purchase their art to support what they’re doing and really turn it into a larger collection.”

Novy moved to Cathedral City two years ago, and Global Queer Resistance, his first local show, is in line with a tradition of activism in the city. In 2016, Cathedral City installed the first rainbow sidewalk in Coachella Valley.

Novy said the weather here is good for his work; the dry heat helps his canvases dry faster. He also finds that the Coachella Valley offers him a respite from his travels.

“I really just find it a relaxing place away from my travels to major cities. It’s quiet and it’s nice,” he said. “Some places I go, there is homophobia, not necessarily blatant, (but) a certain censorship that you realize has something to do with a deeper meaning, rather than just homophobia.”

Global Queer Resistance Through Street Art will open with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 6, and will be on display from 2 to 7 p.m., Friday through Sunday, Nov. 7-9, at Impell Gallery, at 610 S. Belardo Road, Suite 1000, in Palm Springs. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.instagram.com/impellgallery. Learn more about Jeremy Novy at jeremynovystencils.com.

Edited to correct a date error in the endline.