My recent paintings pose 1940s nursery school books and Steife puppets with language from the sex advice columnist Dan Savage. Pairing anthropomorphized animal characters with labels pulled from back-page weekly advertisements and intimate advice, I ask my audience to connect the dots between childhood memories and adult situations. A girl rabbit holding her umbrella is tagged “Golden Shower” and a prim cat in Sunday finery is elegantly labeled “Faggot.”

My petting zoo is nostalgic and stationary, made of eroded stickers activated by underground jargon and projected scenarios. The sweet images provoke simple questions that require complicated answers. Have the animals been sexually identified or are they proclaiming their sexual identity? Are we observing victims or advocates? I trace shapes in a way that hovers between pride and protection, dropping fine lines over layers of pigment.