This written thesis accompanies my thesis exhibition, Long Island Trash, presented at Cornell University’s Olive Tjaden Gallery from April 13 to April 17, 2026. The exhibition title carries several meanings. It refers autobiographically to where I grew up, my interest in self-deprecating humor, and the experience of being treated differently as a gay person in a conservative Long Island suburb. It also reflects the sense of abjection that followed loss and bereavement, when private subjects such as relationships, shame, grief, and desire began to feel both “trashy” and necessary to conceive in the pursuit of authenticity. The title invokes the camp sensibility of John Waters, while also describing the deconstructive and immediate quality of the exhibition itself, including works hung in provisional ways and works made with charcoal and soft pastel on cheap brown packing paper. In this sense, Long Island Trash names autobiography, suburbia, shame, humor, class, othering, camp, queer self-consciousness, and a desire to move toward a more immediate and less protected practice; all of which are reflected in the body of thesis works.

The Teacher’s Pet, The Jester, and The Mourner breaks down the introspection and references behind my effort to make work that is more authentic, vulnerable, and lucid. The title refers to three protective roles I began to recognize in my painting practice. The teacher’s pet seeks approval through legibility, the jester disguises sincerity through humor, and the mourner clings to loss. Together, these archetypes frame a body of work moving from allegory toward more direct questions of authenticity, vulnerability, and attachment.

Beginning with A Public Art Piece for Christine Jorgensen, an unsanctioned counter-monument to a historically significant transgender resident of my hometown, the thesis traces how questions of monumentality, local history, otherness, and fascist symbolism led to paintings organized around plinths, fences, theatrical spaces, and contrived memorials. Works such as Red at Morning and Better to Have More Lightning in the Hand critique how communities naturalize power, gatekeep history, and turn civic memory into spectacle. Later works in Long Island Trash, including Bear, So Confusing, Omphaloskepsis, It’s My Party 1: Arrested Development, and Heavy Feeling, turn inward to consider queer embodiment, attachment theory, grief, intimacy, and the thin veil separating sincerity and performance. The exhibition’s saturated color, stylized figures, historic and contemporary references, cluttered interiors, lucid stylization, and stage-like compositions become methods for making private emotional states public without reducing them. Ultimately, this thesis explores how sense, humor, and grief can stop functioning as defenses and begin operating as tools for authenticity, vulnerability, and change.