Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Most broadly, I am an artist who works autobiographically. I write and I make visual art and I do performance-based work (including hardcore porn), but it’s all autobiographical, including the rare work of fiction (like the short story I wrote for the Michelle Tea anthology, SLUTS). I just don’t have a brain for non-autobiographical work. Other things about me: I’m disabled, I’m a brown trans woman, and I live in Michigan with my spouse.

How did your interest in your work as an artist, writer, and pornographer begin?

I’ve always been interested in drawing and writing, since childhood. I grew up reading my dad’s extensive comic book collection, and both of my parents were big readers. I had it in my head from a young age that I would become a professional comic book artist. I’ve also always had an interest in sex and pornography (I also grew up reading my dad’s extensive porn collection, oops), but I didn’t feel at all like I could express that interest artistically until much more recently. My mom died in 2016, the same year that I came out as trans, and then my spouse and I opened our marriage in 2019. Letting go of monogamous shame, being out as a woman, and leaving my religious community all opened the door for me to seriously consider explicit work about my own life (as opposed to kind of abstractly or implicitly sexual work that didn’t show anything directly).

Is there a moment that you look back on as being formative to your identity as an artist?

My residency at the Tom of Finland Foundation in 2022 was a turning point for my work. I’d been making porn for a couple years and was just starting to get into heavy masochism, but hadn’t really figured out how to integrate all my interests into my artistic practice. Being at the Tom House and surrounded by unapologetic, gay pornography really opened my brain to possibilities I hadn’t seriously considered before. My initial project there was going to be focused on drawing, maybe sculpture, but I kept naturally moving towards performance. I ended up doing two public performances during that residency, and I consider it to be the beginning of my career as a ‘performance artist,’ rather than just as an artist who sometimes performs, if that makes any sense.

From your breakout work Napkin (2019) until now, your work has always had a performative component. What drew you to performance as your chosen medium?

My drive to create has always been about communicating my inner thoughts and experiences with an external audience. I grew up feeling very alone and misunderstood and longed for the ability to beam my thoughts into other people’s brains so that they would be able to understand me. I’ve groped towards that idea my entire artistic life and it’s drawn me naturally towards performance. There’s something very appealing to me about not only letting but kind of forcing an audience to see my process, to get as close as possible to an unmediated, shared experience. There’s always going to be separation and everyone gets something different, but when I can make myself vulnerable and authentically say “that’s everything,” it feels like I’m doing something that I can’t do in any other medium.

What kinds of things are influencing your work right now?

Jackass is often on my mind. Obviously I’m indebted to Bob Flanagan’s work, and I think of Samuel Delany as the gold standard when it comes to writing about sex. I just went to the Carter Johnson Library for the first time and seeing that archive is really setting my brain on fire.

Introduce us to your short film series, BLOOD.VIDEO.

BLOOD.VIDEO exists because I didn’t have anywhere to put a lot of my favorite work. Even relatively benign stuff kept getting taken down from pay sites and streaming platforms and I decided that it would be better to let people see my work for free than it would be to keep it to myself. Obviously I want to get paid for the work I do, but I’ve found that it’s so much better to let the people who want to give me money find me though my work, instead of hoping that people will pay sight-unseen for a link to something. Right now BLOOD.VIDEO updates when I have something to put on it. It’s like a portfolio of some of my more intense visual art.

Can you tell us more about your archival project, Carta’s Library?

Honestly the “Carta’s Library” Instagram account mostly exists because I wanted somewhere to put little excerpts of the stuff I’ve been uploading to the Internet Archive, separate from my other Instagram account. I wrote an article for LUX Magazine about how frustrated I get with Instagram resellers who tease archival materials at high prices without scanning or digitizing them, so I guess Carta’s Library is my way of setting an example. I’m not selling these things, you can go and read the entire magazine or watch the entire video. I’m very passionate about access to our shared queer history.

What is something you’ve always wanted to do and are working towards achieving?

I want to get better at writing! I find writing very difficult, honestly. I have to kind of turn off my brain in order to get anywhere, otherwise I just stare at the page and think a million thoughts and write nothing down. I’m good at talking and I can film porn really easily without this kind of block, but writing is hard. In college I would have to stay up all night, to the point where I was so tired that my brain couldn’t bounce around so much, before I was able to write my papers. It was a miserable way to live. I’ve since been diagnosed with ADHD (surprising nobody I’m sure, based on the description I just gave), and I take Vyvanse and it seems to help at least some. But writing is still difficult and it’s something I’m consciously working to get better at sitting down and doing. Right now I’m typing these words with my eyes unfocused, barely even looking at the computer screen. I really have to get to an almost trance-like state before I can get the words out.

Can you share a reaction to your work that has lingered with you?

When I was initially doing OnlyFans, a fan sent me the most incredible image. It was their hard dick, jutting out from the curve of their belly, and they’re standing, facing a tile wall (like a shower probably). The tip of their dick is squishing flat against the tile, like they’re thrusting into it. The image was sent along with the phrase, “I even fuck the wall think about you.” That’s just one of the most complimentary and funniest and hottest things I’ve ever been sent. Like my work is connecting so much with this person that they even fuck the wall think about me. I want my work to affect people like that.

Any upcoming projects?

I’ve been working on a big sexual autobiography for the past six years, on and off. It’s slow going because I find writing so difficult, and I don’t know when it’s going to be done, but I’m confident that people will really want to read it. I want to read it! There’s so much that I’ve never seen anyone talk about, and so many specific little experiences that I want to articulate. I’m going to get there!

What do you collect?

The majority of what I collect is vintage gay media, mostly pornography. I love physical media and I have a lot of books and magazines, some records, a few dozen cassette tapes, and way too many VHS tapes. I love Blu-rays and DVDs also, and have a decent number. I’m not talking like storage unit levels yet, but enough that it can be difficult to know where to fit everything in our apartment. I have boxes and boxes of gay porn under the bed. I’m lucky to have a very loving and patient spouse.

Interviewed by Seth Nguyen. Artist portrait photographed by Mark Hanauer at the Tom of Finland Foundation in late 2022.