Bugging out with local artists

Ravon Yates has always loved bugs, worms, and other creepy critters.

The Peterborough artist spent their childhood exploring the forests near Bancroft and north of Peterborough, where they discovered a lot about the area’s flora and fauna. But they were always drawn back to worms and other insects.

“I wasn’t supposed to have an interest in worms. But I loved drawing worms and learning about them,” Yates said. “I found out they have really wild reproductive habits. They are intersex, so they both exchange sets of sex cells and they both lay eggs.”

From a young age, Yates has channeled their passion for grubs into art. Worms and other creepy crawlies have been a favourite subject for their drawings and paintings. And more recently, they’ve started sculpting them out of clay.

They said they feel a “kinship” with the “gross guys” — something they connect with their experience of queer identity. “There is something to be said about the queer relationship that I have with the weirdness of those particular critters,” they said. “They’re super freaky and they’re super queer. There is that parallel of stigma and all of the misconceptions … People think they know what it means to be queer and trans, and they don’t.”

Yates’ thriving artisan shop, Compost Craft, is featured at various local vendor shows throughout the year. They describe their art as “shining a light on the small and misunderstood and overstepped.”

Surrounded by their creations, Yates was all smiles at Peterborough’s Queer Makers Market last month. An earthy brown sheet was laid with hundreds of pieces including jewelry, paintings, and sculptures of worms, grubs, and one giant black earwig.

Some folks laughed while others squealed with discomfort as they passed by the booth. Some lingered to talk and learn about Yates’ work. 

“I would be sad if people thought that I do this for the shock factor, to gross people out,” Yates said. “I’m much more in wonder and awe of the little guys, and I hope that people get that the meticulous details, the time spent and the attention put in is a labour of love.”

“I’ve always called myself weird”

For Sheldon Storey, leaning into discomfort is part of the art-making process. Although his art features a broader range of subject matter, Storey’s studio is brimming with taxidermy pieces pinned with butterfly wings, glittering beetles under glass, and swarms of preserved insects seemingly congregating on rocks or driftwood.

It’s clear that Storey shares Yates’ deep connection with bugs, as both artists linked the public’s view of insects to the stigma and discrimination that queer people continue to face in society today.

Storey describes his work as “interdisciplinary found material installation art,” and he considers himself as more of a curator than a visual artist.

“I’ve always called myself weird,” Storey said. “It’s a word that a lot of people frown on, or they use it as an insult, but I think art should be weird. It should take your curiosity. It should take what you’re assuming to be normal out of that realm and make you think outside the box.”

Storey welcomed visitors to his studio, which he affectionately refers to as a “cabinet of curiosities,” during the 40th annual Kawartha Autumn Studio Tour last month.

“This was my father’s workshop so it was a space that I was already comfortable in,” said Storey, gesturing at the studio around him, now packed to the rafters with found objects he will use in future artworks.

Just like Ravon Yates, Storey’s fascination with insects began when he was a young child and now he uses bugs as a metaphor for his own queer identity and the queer community at large. 

“They’re seen as scary, yet they’re quite frankly harmless, just as queer folk,” he said. “A lot of insects will have these great molts where they’ll go through multiple different stages and mutations, which reminds me of how the queer body adorns itself as a defense.”

One prominent artwork in Storey’s cabinet of curiosities is called Chosen Family, and consists of hundreds of insects of all kinds pinned to a large rock. “It comes from this one image that I got obsessed with years ago,” he explained. “There was a flood, and multiple insects from worms to grasshoppers to ants to moths were all trying to hug this little pocket of dryness on a parking pillar.”

“That really got me overwhelmed thinking about how I was lucky to have most of my family members comfortable in my sexuality and my queerness,” he said. “However, when I went to art school I really found a community of like minded people and a found family that have been just as inviting as my own. From that place of shared understanding, you can find intelligence beyond anything that you’ll ever find within your family of origin.”

To learn more about Sheldon Storey and his art installations, visit his website at https://storey-sheldon-andrew.format.com/

Ravon Yates’ work can be found at their Instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/compost.craft/