Scarlett in Towncar, 2020
Scarlett | In Conversation (ongoing) pairs drawings by Scarlett, an artist and writer based in Kansas, alongside photographs to create a biographical portrait. Collaborative portrait-making has become a ritual of this intergenerational friendship –– a tender storytelling tool –– a way to understand lived experience, alienation, expression, and belonging.
Moses Strikes the Rock To Open A Wall Of Water, 2016
Not in My Name, date unknown
Untitled, 2012
Scarlett’s prolific, ecstatic drawing practice describes the depths of her interior experience as a transgender woman in rural America. Scenes of exuberant dreamscapes, scathing political satire, dystopian terror, and anxious revelations are rendered with exacting visual density: equal parts sharp humor, delight, and despair.
Scarlett in Doorway, 2017
Migrating Birds, Cheyenne Bottoms, 2021
Scarlett (presenting as Robert), 2020
For most of her life, Scarlett presented as Robert. She was born and raised in western Kansas, drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, returned home to teach school, and then quit to drive a truck for the Coca Cola Bottling Company –– in this new occupation, she tells me, she “could wear a dress under [my] work-issue coveralls”. Robert married, had two children, and to most, appeared to have a conventional life, raising her family just outside my hometown of Great Bend, KS.
Scarlett, 2020
Migrating Birds, Cheyenne Bottoms, 2015
Surronded by Light, 2016
untitled, 2022
untitled, 2017
Scarlett, Bedside, 2020
For decades, Scarlett was someone few people knew, but she still found ways to express herself in public. In 1998 she wrote, directed, and starred in a play, staged in a former movie theater on our town square. The marquee of the Crest theater announced, The Peep Hole. Over each of the next four consecutive years she would go on to write, direct, and perform a new play each summer in the downtown theater– The Cloistered Blues (1999), Scarlett and the Time Machine (2000), and Scarlett in Space (2001). Even then, Scarlett recalls, many in the audience didn’t recognize their neighbor in the woman who floated across the stage wearing antebellum-style dresses, a straw hat, and a red feather boa. “Scarlett,” she frequently reminds me, “is not shy.”
Photographs From Public Theater Productions, 2020
Crest Theater, 2024
Scarlett, Self Portraits In Dress and Combat Fatigues, from Transgender Archive, 2020
Scarlett has amassed a vast collection of materials she calls the “Transgender Archives” including, newspaper clippings, stories and pictures from the internet, and numerous personal effects, that are filed into a collection of three-ring binders.
Seen on the left is a commercial studio portrait of Scarlett from the 1990’s. On the right is a portrait from the Vietnam War in combat fatigues. “Both pictures have a flair of performance,” she points out, as we look through the archive on her kitchen table.
Cheyenne Bottoms, Winter, 2022
untitled, 2017
I'm About To Open The Border, 2012
The Weeders Weeding, 2014
Migration, 2022
Scarlett, Tracing Former Air-to-Ground Gunnery Range, Cheyenne Bottoms, 2020
Cheyenne Bottoms, approximately 5 miles northeast of Great Bend, is the largest wetland in the interior United States. From 1943 – 1947 it served as an air-to-ground gunnery range for U.S. Air Force pilots, flying Kansas-made bombers. The 14,000-acre site Included a bombing range, rifle and machine gun ranges, and a chemical weapons training area.
In the 1980’s and 90’s, Scarlett would visit this landscape daily, feeling safe to briefly wear dresses in what is now a vast wildlife refuge. In a 1987 attempt to escape her internal conflict and save her marriage, she drove to this site at the southern perimeter of the refuge and dumped all of Scarlett’s belongings – clothing and other ephemera – from the trunk of her car. Shortly after, her marriage failed and she was divorced, with two daughters who she would take custody of and continue to raise as a single parent.
Cheyenne Bottoms, Summer, 2020
Scarlett, from Transgender Archive, 2020
No Poets Allowed, 2020
Cheyenne Bottoms, 2020
Scarlett, Cheyenne Bottoms, 2020
Cheyenne Bottoms, 2021
Watermelon Thief, 2018
untitled, 2012
untitled, 2011
Home, 2020
Scarlett and Marcella, 2017
Scarlett is now happily married to Marcella, a former nun who lived much of her life in a convent. Strengthened by the younger generation of queer people, the shifting balance in media representation of LGBTQ experiences, and a determination to be her authentic self, she is beginning to live a more open life. Only recently, at the age of 77, did she begin publicly identifying as Scarlett, no matter what she is wearing or how others perceive her identity.
Together, Scarlett and Marcella host tea parties and occasionally travel together, as they cautiously navigate a world that does not always feel safe.
Bedroom, 2023
Cheyenne Bottoms, Winter, 2022
Scarlett, Cheyenne Bottoms, 2020
Scarlett and Marcella Photographs, 2020
Welcome Aboard, Scarlett and Marcella, 2017
Scarlett's Closet, 2020
Scarlett, Bedside, 2017
Nadine Waits For Her Boyfriend, 2017
Who Littered Our Symbol Of Freedom, 2020
untitled, date unknown
Dresser, 2023
Scarlett, Bedside, 2022
A Version of What I'd Look Like at a Younger Age, from Transgender Archive, 2018
Robert Drawing, Barton County Community College Art Gallery, 2022
untitled, 2017
They Say There is No Such Thing As Global Warming, date unknown
The Last Supper, 2016
Scarlett, 2017
The Last Supper, Found Painting, 2022
Scarlett, Backyard, 2021
Marcella, Backyard, 2021
J. Ariaz, Scarlett with Self-Portrait, 2022
Weight of the Universe, 2016
Nadine Out, 2015
Sissy Sent To Heaven, 2016
Favorite Dress, 2020
Marcella, 2023
“Say she stooped breathlessly in her corset to lift up a sodden sheet by its hems, and say that when she had pinned three corners to the lines it began to billow and leap in her hands, to flutter and tremble, and to glare with the light, and that the throes of the thing were as gleeful and strong as if a spirit were dancing in its cerements. That wind!” - Marilynne Robinson, “Housekeeping”
Scarlett, Cheyenne Bottoms, 2020
Cheyenne Bottoms, Winter, Sunset, 2021
untitled, 2019