We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful August Mendez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with August below.

August, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on was my thesis titled “Cuniculture”. I created this body of work between 2020 and 2021, largely during the covid lockdown. This body of work explores conceptual overlaps between women and rabbits. While navigating feelings of displacement and isolation, ceramics became my stability. During this time my work shifted to be less covert to more unapologetic in the subject matter. I delved into escapism through extensive research and constructing a personal dictionary of symbols. This work combines layering personal imagery with fantasy elements to allude the farming of rabbits to the mistreatment of queer women throughout time.

August, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a nonbinary lesbian artist from South Florida. I’m influenced by my upbringing in a Spanish-Cuban immigrant family. As a ceramicist and illustrator, I navigate lust and shame through re-appropriating playboy imagery combined with fantasy elements. As I mentioned, my work overall explores conceptual overlaps between women and rabbits.

Further about my practice; I’m concerned with power dynamics, LGBT history, and utilizing animal symbolism alongside imagery of women to discuss our positioning in the world. I use rabbits, prey animals, to discuss various types of predation on women. I use imagery of jackalopes to represent queer people as magical, sacred, and able to protect themselves. Rabbits are also symbols of rebirth, traveling through portals between worlds, from a world full of danger to utopia.

I briefly worked with clay for the first time in childhood then returned to it in my sophomore year of undergrad in 2017. I committed to studying ceramics in 2018 when I realized how intuitive it felt to create directly with my hands. Illustration and ceramics inform each other in many ways, but especially in the sense of being able to draw via throwing and sculpting. The more I learned, the more I realized there was more to learn, and that expansiveness has excited me ever since.

Aside from my personal work, I make custom illustrations and ceramics by commission. I’ve made wedding favors, utilitarian wares, wall, and sculptural art, and specialize in portrait work.

What makes me unique is that I communicate my specific perspective and contribute to conversations with other queer contemporary artists currently living through history. I make my work in celebration of queer ancestors of the past and queer family of the present. I use my voice for those who may not have or have had the safety to live openly as I do.

I’m proud of my identity and my commitment to learning. There is a lot of humility that comes with working with clay and I am proud to embrace that fully. I want people to know that my work will always be first and foremost for my community and that I feel a personal responsibility make work that will exist for thousands of years telling the stories of unabashed queer love, intimacy, and existence.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I believe society needs to empower and educate artists and creatives, both inside and outside of academia. Education and resources must be made more accessible to those who need them. It is a massive privilege that I was able to attain higher education. It is another privilege to meet faculty members that looked like me or shared similar heritages, but I know many of my peers did not have the same experience. Institutions need to better reflect the expansive, diverse communities that populate them.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most enriching part of being an artist is getting my hands dirty, connecting to the earth, and creating an idea in tangible form. I feel my most authentic when I’m covered in clay. It is equally rewarding to me to be able to share my work with fellow artists, but especially with the matriarchs of my family. Because of all they sacrificed for their dreams, they provided me the chance to work and live as an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://augustcmendez.squarespace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/augustcmendez_/

Image Credits
These images were taken by myself.