MASS Gallery is proud to present a pride month double exhibit featuring Butch Is Not a Dirty Word in the main gallery and Artemisia Tridentata: From Rugged Soil in mini mass.
Opening Saturday, June 6th, 6pm—9pm
On view Saturdays from 10am—3pm until July 11
Curated by Beth Schindler, Butch Is Not A Dirty Word is the work of Esther Godoy, an Australian-born artist, photographer, and creator based in Los Angeles, California. Her project is a decade-long portrait and narrative study examining contemporary butch identity. Working to build a legacy of butch history, Butch Is Not A Dirty World creates an intimate record of the lives and experiences of butches of different ages, racial backgrounds, and socioeconomic status.
As a first-generation child of immigrants who has lived across three continents, Godoy’s sharp capacity for recognizing social patterns was forged through a lifetime of moving between worlds, developing a heightened sensitivity to the social codes, cultural tensions, and systems that inform identity construction and belonging.
Godoy’s central line of inquiry dismantles the illusion that subcultures serve as safe havens from dominant cultural power structures. By intimately documenting these micro-worlds, she observes how alternative spaces often mirror the same hierarchies they claim to reject. Because she shares many of the lived dynamics of her subjects, Godoy is able to build profound trust and intimacy, earning invitations into highly guarded personal spaces. Through this deeply embedded lens, her photography documents how identity, belonging, power, and vulnerability are continually negotiated within contemporary queer culture.
Artemisia Tridentata: From Rugged Soil is curated by former Austinite Aubrey Edwards, who now lives in Laramie, Wyoming. Artemisia tridentata—the sweet-smelling sagebrush that stretches across Wyoming’s high desert plains and prairie basins—forms one of the most resilient ecosystems in North America. Rooting in harsh conditions, sagebrush thrives despite scarcity, temperature extremes, and winds that reshape the horizon daily. It is a symbol of endurance, adaptation, and the quiet force of life that persists against the odds.
So too do queer communities across Wyoming.
In a state of fewer than 600,000 people—where the suicide rate remains among the highest in the nation, where social services continue to be slashed, where no hate crime legislation exists, and where the legacy of Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder casts a long shadow—rural queer people continue to build connection, cultivate joy, and protect one another, finding and creating belonging in places often overlooked on the national cultural map.
Artemisia tridentata brings this lived landscape into conversation with MASS Gallery’s mission to support LGBTQIA+ artists, foster social action, and host creative work grounded in community. This exhibition centers contemporary queer artists from across Wyoming who create works grounded in questions and conversations with their local communities.
The resulting exhibition is a portrait of rural queer futurities, resilience, and imagination across distance—an offering from a rural state to a national audience; a gesture of connection between Wyoming and Austin; and an affirmation that queer creativity thrives everywhere, not in spite of place, but through it.
Participating Artists:
Isabella Buongiorno
Isabella Buongiorno is a poet, mixed media artist, and woodworker who resides in Laramie, WY. Through her experiences traveling and working in rural landscapes as a lesbian, as well as her current career in product management, Isabella found that her most fulfilling moments were when she could help others reflect on their own experiences and see something in a new way. She enjoys exploring and subverting the connections made between otherwise disparate concepts, as well as building realities and perspectives that strengthen the observer’s own relationship to the piece. In this way, the pieces are in a cyclical state of creation, building on themselves through the perception of others.
Courtney Cedarholm
Courtney Cedarholm is an artist and fashion designer based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design and spent over a decade working across the fashion and outdoor industries before founding her upcycle brand, Cowgirl Mermaid. Her multidisciplinary practice spans fashion pieces, large-scale textile installations, and painting. Her work explores themes of transformation, identity, and inner landscapes. Within her local community, she is known as “The Cowgirl Mermaid”, a living extension of her practice, where myth and aesthetic meet. @the.cowgirlmermaid
Leo Dion
Leo Dion (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Laramie, WY. He is an art historian currently transitioning into a studio arts degree in printmaking and photography. His printmaking work is ecological based, an homage to his upbringing on an organic farm in Eastern Montana. His photographic work focuses on connection and intimacy between queer peoples, orbiting around the exploration of artistic collaboration between model and photographer. Most of his time is dominated with schoolwork, but Leois also a proud member of multiple non-profit organizations, volunteer networks, and a touring band. He has exhibited his work in four states. @lleonardodavinkii
Kane Garrison
Kane Garrison is a transgender male artist who aims for aesthetics of whimsy through the usage of pastel and bright colors, as well as depictions of ideas and objects that typically are associated with childhood in today’s society. Many of these ideas are fantastical and fictional, as he also aims to create separate worlds from our current reality within his artwork. He also specializes in the usage of these whimsical elements and color relationships to create metaphors for real life experiences. One such instance is his identity as a transgender male. Art is an escape for him, and the whimsical worlds created within his art is where he finds the most comfort in that escape. @strawbie.soda
Billi London-Gray
Billi London-Gray (she/they, b. 1982) is an intermedia artist who examines how we succeed and fail at living out the ideals of equality. Land use, discrimination, power dynamics, and fictional hyperbole fall within this purview. London-Gray makes installations, videos, sculptures, books, zines, buttons, mail art, sound compositions, social exchanges, photos, drawings, walks, forts, and Kid-Billi forms of play. They live, work, collect underwear-shaped rocks, and serve two cats in Laramie, Wyoming. London-Gray has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, including at 5th Base Gallery in London, EDA Project Space in Montevideo, Uruguay, Art Share L.A. in Los Angeles, Amos Eno Gallery in New York, and grayDUCK Gallery in Austin. Winner of a Puffin Foundation Grant, the San Marcos Arts Advocacy Award, the McDowell Center Innovative Project Award, and the Barnett Foundation Ideas in Art Award, London-Gray also co-founded the itinerant art space Zosima Gallery and the feminist collective Sister Death. They hold an MA in liberal arts from St. John’s College and an MFA in intermedia studio from the University of Texas at Arlington. London-Gray is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Foundations in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Wyoming.@billilg
Alice Pang
Alice Pang is a ceramic artist and community organizer living in Jackson, Wyoming. Her work draws inspiration from the granite and gneiss of the Tetons, where she spends long summer days climbing monumental peaks and admiring miniscule rocks. Her work is a meditation in noticing the overlooked and finding beauty in the commonplace. She has been awarded Arts for All Grants in 2025 and 2026, facilitated by Jackson Hole Public Art, for her community-led art initiatives. Having exhibited at the Art Association Gallery, Mystery Print Gallery, and the California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Arts, she is now preparing her first solo show in Wyoming. Her nonprofit work focuses on art education and access for BIPOC and LGBTQIA communities. She serves as the director of Eight Fires Creative Camp in Grand Teton National Park, an instructor at the Art Association of Jackson Hole, a board member at the Teton Climbers' Coalition, and an organizer for the Women’s Grand Scholarship. @eight.fires
Calla Shosh
Calla Shosh is a contemporary photographer and storyteller from Casper, WY. They have been creating art since childhood.Shosh’s work is grounded in the belief that every person and place has a unique story to share, if only we care to listen. Notably, they were part of the AVA Community Art Gallery’s On The Rise show and had their solo show Queer Voices in the University of Wyoming That student gallery. Currently pursuing a BA in Journalism and Studio Art at the University of Wyoming, they use their work to raise awareness of larger social issues by sharing people’s stories through digital photography. @callashosh_theartist
Rachel Watson
Rachel Watson is the director of the Science Initiative’s Learning Actively Mentoring Program at the University of Wyoming. As an educational developer, she facilitates holistic, sustained training that is informed by andragogical best practices and enables educators to develop teaching and learning philosophies that showcase active, inclusive pedagogical and assessment practices that align with their outcomes and their values. Melding together science, humanism, feminism, and queer theory, Rachel's research interests focus on learning assessment, active learning, the student and educator experience, and social and environmental justice as they inform curriculum design. For 23 years, Rachel was a professor and instructional designer of microbiology and biochemistry. She now teaches transdisciplinary health and environmental science courses for the Division of Kinesiology and Health. For twenty-six years, Rachel has been the co-coach of the Men's and Women's Nordic Ski Team, coach of Team USA at five World University Games and is a co-leader of the International Nordic Ski Training & Coaching Program.
Sylvie Polonsky
Sylvie Polonsky grew up in ceramics studios in Colorado and Minnesota, and is now based in Jackson, Wyoming, where she creates ceramic work and instructs classes at her local ceramics studio. Sylvie has worked as a studio technician, manager, and instructor in studios across these states. With a background in geology, she is always excited to talk about wild clays and the scientific process of ceramics. When not playing with clay, Sylvie is outside looking at rocks, throwing a frisbee, trying out a new craft, and adventuring with her partner. @sylvieraine.ceramics
Ella Gray
Ella D Gray was born in Vienna, Austria to Finnish and American parents. She works across and combines multiple mediums, including sculpture, video, painting, music, poetry and performance. Common aesthetic threads and working methods weave these mediums together into a cohesive whole. Gray earned a B.F.A. in studio art from Texas State University and an M.F.A. in sculpture at Texas Christian University. She is a persistent dumpster diver and believes that many of the best things in life can be found in the trash. @ellagraystudio
Auna Kaufmann
Auna Kaufmann is a multimedia artist from Laramie, Wyoming currently working primarily in textiles and silverpoint. She draws inspiration from Wyoming’s wild and rugged landscapes, which she studied as a wildlife ecologist before transitioning into her current career in natural resource policy and advocacy. When she is not creating, Auna can be found backpacking, hunting, and fishing in the wildest corners of Wyoming that she can find. @aun.the.road.again
Erin Bentley
Erin Bentley was born in Green River, Wyoming, and is proud to be a fifth generation Wyomingite. She recently attained her PhD in Ecology and Evolution at UW, where she is a transdisciplinary scholar of art, science, writing, and the idea of integrating your whole self into your work. She is working her way towards an art degree exactly backward, one class at a time.
William Bowling
William is a theatre artist, musician and educator based in Laramie WY. His practice is collaborative, devised and ensemble based, and mostly involves rolling around on the floor with friends until interesting ideas arise. Will is the Founding Artistic Director of the New Orleans based company, Goat In The Road, and spent 13 years in the Crescent City making devised theatre works before moving to Wyoming in 2021. In artistic practice, Will hopes to share the sublime experiences, and humbling lessons learned, from time spent in the natural world - both the swamps of the south and mountains of the west - to all audiences and exhibition goers. Will is an openly queer elected official of the Laramie City Council.
Luca Wilson
Born and raised in Worland, Wyoming, Luca Wilson is an undergraduate artist who’s building up their identity in their work as they explore topics of queer identity, religion and their connections to it, and figures. Wilson is working towards a BFA in Studio Arts at University of Wyoming. Wilson’s goal as an artist is to become an oil painting and drawing artist who represents religion and queerness in their view from their upbringing in a rural town. @lucaisntreal @humbleartspawn
