Local queer artist and designer Makenna O'Keeffe is hosting the Pansy Palette, a new monthly offering at Northwind Art School at Fort Worden. Learn more and sign up at https://northwindart.org (select Take a Class). Participants are asked to sign up in advance to ensure this activity has enough people enrolled. This session from 6 p.m.-8 p.m. has all art materials provided — so it's an evening to make art, be queer, make friends and explore arts and crafts practices together.
Here's where “The Pansy Palette” comes from: Port Townsend is a Victorian era-aesthetic town, which led O'Keeffe to think about the Victorian queer code that came about during that time to help LGBTQAI+ folks signal to each other that they were “family.”
And in this day and age, we’ve all heard queers referred to as “pansies,” so O'Keeffe notes that in Victorian times, queer people used the pansy flower, the green carnation, and other secret codes and imagery to sneakily signal their queerness.
O'Keeffe also will host the Pansy Palette on April 9; the NorthwindArt.org site is the place to sign up for that session too. About Makenna: She/they are an artist, ex-architect and community arts organizer who loves to build community through creative expression, activism and mutual aid. Find out even more at https://makennaokeeffe.com. Pictured: Makenna O'Keeffe
