A trans Utah artist creates zines to explore the beauty in the ‘other’

In their exhibition “Monstrous,” transgender artist Lewis Figun Westbrook said they aimed to look truthfully at their life, from all angles, including the unsightly and the appealing.

The art Westbrook is showing at Art Access in downtown Salt Lake City, they said, has “been exploring and providing a more honest look at my experience and life, and the experience of other trans and marginalized people, and just being very ruthless in this idea of, like, ‘You might find this gross, but I find it beautiful.’”

“Monstrous,” as Westbrook put it in the exhibition’s program notes, explores these questions: “What is my gender? Other. Sexuality? Other. Ethnicity? Other. Disability? Other. This loose fit, similar to Queer, represents me better than any of the predetermined categories spread out in front of me. The truth is, I think I ‘other’ myself more than anyone else.”

Westbrook also has autism and ADHD, disabilities that affect their relationship with art, they said.

“I just have a funky little brain that I’m not always able to direct what I want to direct it,” Westbrook said. “So a lot of my exploration of art is me purposefully navigating how to make art approachable and fun.”

All of that makes “Monstrous” an appropriate choice for Art Access, a nonprofit that for 40 years has been helping increase access to the arts for artists and visitors with disabilities. The exhibition will be shown at Art Access’ gallery, in suite 110 of the Artspace City Center Building at 230 S. 500 West, Salt Lake City, running through Sept. 12.

“Monstrous” consists of original artworks from Westbrook as well as a workshop, held on Aug. 17, in which the artist was scheduled to talk about their journey, approach to art and the history and creation of zines — a self-published print work.

“To me, zines are one of the most, if not the most, accessible forms of art,” Westbrook said. “All I need to make a zine is a piece of paper and some form of writing utensil. I can make one in five minutes if I want, and I can spend two years on a zine if I want. I don’t feel the pressure as I do in other forms of artwork.”

Westbrook also said that the “importance that zines have played in different marginalized communities and revolution, means so much to me and has really changed the way that I utilize art in my creative endeavors.” (USA Today, in a 2021 article, contextualized the role zines have played in letting marginalized communities express themselves.)

Westbrook said they noticed “a huge shift in the art that I was creating” after their work was featured in another exhibition last year, called “Growth.”

“That one specifically uses the metaphor of nature, what is natural versus unnatural, as a way to explore my queerness,” Westbrook said. “Because we see queerness in a lot of animals, like across nature, but we as humans often deem it as unnatural, and I found that conflict to be very fascinating.”

Putting their work in the form of zines also relates to their disabilities, Westbrook said.

“As someone who has autism and ADHD — which means that, like I’ve adjusted a lot of points of art — zines are one of the things that are super-approachable to me, because of that low pressure and because of how quickly I can complete it,” Westbrook said.

With other projects, they said, “if I decide I want to make, like, a five-foot-tall sculpture, it’s going to take a minimum amount of time that is going to scare me away from it, because I don’t want to start something until I know that I can devote that time to it.”

Westbrook said Art Access has helped provide them with the “platform and structure to help complete my artwork.”

“Without this art show, I wouldn’t have 11 different pieces all exploring what being monstrous is like, because I would have made the first three or four, and I would have gotten distracted by another project. This show gave me the structure and deadlines,” Westbrook said.

Westbrook said they learned of Art Access when they met Gabriella Huggins, the executive director of Art Access, at Under the Umbrella Bookstore, an LGBTQ+ business a few doors north of the gallery.

“I was able to give her some of my zines, and we talked about the unique place that disability as a marginalization holds, because it’s one of the few forms of marginalization and hatred that often people are unaware of,” Westbrook said.

“If someone is homophobic, if someone is racist, they are aware of those concepts,” Westbrook continued. “A lot of the people who are most ableist towards me have no idea what ableism is, because so much of it is about infantilizing and pity, things that serve me no purpose as a disabled person and often hinder me.”

Huggins said Art Access’ mission — to increase accessibility in and to the arts — plays out in a few different ways. For example, the organization provides a training to other community groups, called Breaking Barriers.

“[It] provides cultural institutions around the state with actionable guidance, knowledge and background information about disability, in order to increase accessibility in their physical spaces and programs,” Huggins said.

Huggins said Art Access helps disabled artists through its Partners program, “where we pair an emerging artist with a disability in the community with an established artist in the community, and they work together over the course of 25 hours total, creating collaborative artwork together.”

In the Partners program, Huggins said, “the intention of that is professionally developing this emerging artist.” The artist can learn such skills as framing and presenting their works, practicing how to sell, and showing their work at local galleries.

After the artist participates in that program, they can join Art Access’ working group program, Huggins said. “We choose about five to six artists, [and] pay each artist to create work around a collaborative theme,” she said. This year’s theme is “joy,” and artists are working together across different media; for example, a disabled dancer is creating performance art.

Huggins said the broader goal with shows like Westbrook’s is to “emphasize that accessibility aspect of our mission.”

“The coolest thing about Art Access having been around for 40 years is that I meet so many people, from all types of walks of life, who used to be engaged [with us],” Huggins said. “There have been so many access points through which people have appreciated Art Access’ work.”

Westbrook said one of their favorite aspects about getting their artwork exhibited is seeing the behind-the-scenes work to make the exhibit accessible.

For example, hanging pieces lower on the walls so patrons in wheelchairs can see them. Or recording and writing audio descriptions of all their pieces, so those with visual impairments can experience the show — which helped them “explore feelings that I knew were there in the artwork, but they didn’t have the words for until someone asked me to write it down,” Westbrook said.

“It’s just been really fun getting to think about and consider all of the different ways to make sure that my art is accessible, not only for me as an artist, but for all of the audience members,” Westbrook said.

Lewis Figun Westbrook’s exhibition, “Monstrous,” runs now through Sept. 12, at Art Access Gallery, 230 S. 500 West, suite 110. Exhibition hours are: Tuesdays, 1-6 p.m.; Wednesdays 9 a.m.-2 p.m.; and Thursdays, 1-6 p.m.