Family By Water

Spotted: "Sam Ford" on Pinterest, after Pinterest and Google Image search

"Family By Water" is by Steve Walker, who was a prominent visual artist in the LGBT community. With this post, I'm veering off slightly from the June bride theme of liwaliw Visuals mainly in celebration of Metro Manila Pride, and in celebration of all kinds of Constitutionally guaranteed intimate, loving, relationships.

First encountered Walker's art on the cover of a novel, and subsequently in my non-profit work on HIV and AIDS and LGBT health and rights. I remember using some of Walker's works in a lecture I delivered about HIV-related stigma; I was already working in the government that time.

Walker was born in Ottawa, Canada (maybe 1962 or 1963), then moved to Toronto, initially to study theater. He passed away in Costa Rica on January 4, 2012, aged 50. It was kinda hard to look for Walker's birth, birth-family and childhood days information; he does not have a Wikipedia article (gasp!). His website has already gone offline, but there are backups of the site on Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Remaining online information of Walker, mainly as an artist (including statements and interviews), I found where his works are represented such as Gingerbread Square Gallery in Key West, Florida, and Lyman-Eyer Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts. James Lyman was mentioned to be Walker's art executor and trustee.

Lyman also featured Walker in the 13th edition of Art of Man, which I first found sampled in Google Books, and would later find out that what remains of this issue is in Amazon Kindle form. A more personal profile of the artist was written by author Jeffrey Round.

Digital Journal provides a quote from Walker: "I hope that in its silence, the body of my work has given a voice to my life, the lives of others, and in doing so, the dignity of all people."