Bonsack Gallery, John Burroughs School, St, Louis, MO

In this ongoing soft-sculpture installation, fantasy landscapes emerge through the amassing of plant, animal, and mineral imagery and texture. The Queer Garden offers us a world where the understanding of self becomes less human-centered and more dynamically interconnected to a larger living world beyond the boundaries of our bodies. Here we are able to focus on radical interspecies relationships, and ecosystems of collective care and nourishment. The Queer Gardens series is one that continuously builds upon itself. In every new iteration the garden is rearranged and reimagined with new areas of focused inquiry. In this newest iteration, Queer Gardens: Becoming Wild,  the boundaries between garden and non-garden, human and non-human, self and other begin to dissipate, and interdependency emerges. When we can acknowledge our interreliant existence with each other, and more-than-human beings, we see that another way is possible.

Queer Gardens: Becoming Wild

October 6, 2023-November 28, 2023

Current Exhibitions

Queer Gardens: Unruly

August 24 - October 22, 2023

Sliver Space, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta GA

Queer Gardens: Unruly looks towards ‘the garden’ as a potential site for radical reimaginings of family, work/productivity, time, green space, and nourishment. In the garden we can find our place in interspecies ecosystems of care and sustenance. We can move beyond the human measures of industry, blurring the lines between work and play. While we till and plant, water and mulch we find a direct relationship between our physical labor, space, ecology and future harvest. In the garden there is interdependence. This is a place that humans can learn from, but we must look critically towards current relationships between humans and the earth, cities and green space, home and garden.


Recent Exhibitions

Soft Touch

February 3 - August 31, 2023

The Malone Gallery, Museum of Museums Seattle, WA

Soft Touch is an immersive, tactile survey of soft sculpture and textile art featuring over 40 artists from the Pacific Northwest and far beyond. Audiences are invited to sit, stand, or recline in a gallery cushioned by a patchwork of futon mattresses, shag carpets, and curtaining as they explore work that interweaves themes of identity, humanity, and natural ecosystems.

“Holding Living Things”

“Transmagic”

“Held”

“Crying Eye”


Based in Denver, Frankie Toan (they/them) is an artist working mostly with craft and DIY materials and techniques to create large plush sculptures, interactive works, and immersive installations. Frankie holds a BFA in Craft/Material studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, with a minor in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s studies. Their current body of work consists of elongated or engorged body parts tied, arranged, and installed in conversation…


“Strange Familiars at Craft Alliance”

“Frankie Toan's new exhibition at Craft Alliance welcomes visitors into a ‘Queer Garden’”

“Craft Alliance announces Frankie Toan: Strange Familiars”