We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cris Jackson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cris, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I actually wanted to be a professional dancer for most of my life before switching career paths to visual art. I was practically raised in dance studios, where I was professionally trained in ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical, contemporary, musical theatre, hip hop, and a number of other styles. I don’t remember exactly when I started being serious about it, but by the time I was in middle school I was treating dance like a job. Most dance professionals are very young, meaning that for those who want to make dance a career they have to start training in their childhood. I was dancing 13 hours a week on top of school and homework by the age of 13. It was an intense, demanding lifestyle, but I lived and breathed it because I was passionate.

Unfortunately, this rigorous routine caught up to me and I burned out a few years later due to the pressure. I was also struggling with severe mental health issues as I questioned my gender and sexuality at the time. I was constantly comparing myself to girls in my classes who I thought were better than me, both at dancing and at being girls. I quit dance due to my own pent up resentment and self doubt, then I began searching for a new purpose during what felt like my rock bottom since I had nothing else to fall back on… besides art!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hey yall! My name is Cris Jackson (they/them), also known as my brand Gendeerfluid online. I’m a nonbinary butch lesbian from Houston, Texas that was once a former dancer now a current comic artist and illustrator! I moved to Georgia with my spicy cat, Paprika, to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2016. I received my B.F.A. in Sequential art in 2021 and I am currently in my second year of my M.F.A. in the same program.

I strive to perform kinetic storytelling through dazzling stories, illuminating sapphic tales with poise and inclusivity. Through my comics, I pirouette across the pages to showcase narratives that pay homage to the fairytales and adventures that enchanted my childhood. As a long-time-lover of dance, musical theatre, video games, magical girl anime, and animated films, these inspirations lie at the core of my artistic and narrative aesthetics.

Currently I am preparing to work on my thesis for my M.F.A. Although it is very early in the works, I plan to tackle the ways in which dance can be used as a storytelling method. By crafting a story with dance as the narrative, visual, cultural, and historical core theme, I will examine the ways in which dance enhances story. When all is said and done, I hope to have a compelling and unique graphic novel pitch that I can present to potential publishers.

Post graduation I aim to become a professor while working freelance in comics and selling merchandise at conventions. While my dream is to work on my own graphic novels and one day be my own boss, I also aspire to do issue based comics and covers. Whether in the indie market or the mainstream, I want to be where the comics are.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Growing up, I really struggled with my identity. I grew up in a large city, but I only knew a handful of other queer kids who went to school with me. I didn’t even know trans people were a thing until I was in high school when I reunited with a childhood friend who transitioned, and didn’t even consider I could be gender queer myself. I always had known I was different than my peers, that I didn’t feel like a girl and wanted to be like the boys, but the only representations I saw of queer people were either caricatures or watered down gayness absent of gender queerness. I spent a lot of years falling into despair because I felt so alone and misunderstood. I didn’t see people like me in media, and I feel like if I had seen positive representations of lesbians and nonbinary people, or even trans people at all that I would have realized sooner in life that I was queer.

Growing up as a sad, lonely, isolated queer teen sucks. I want to show queer youths, and any other underrepresented minorities that they can find themselves in the same stories and media as their more represented peers. Creating inclusive stories and art that empowers and celebrates diversity is paramount to me. If I can make one less person feel alone, one more person feel seen, my work has done its job!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most heartwarming and meaningful parts of being a comic artist is seeing the response from the people who read my work. Some of the best comments I’ve ever received came from the reception to my mini-comic “Breaking Pointe: A Lesbian Dance Diary.” In this mini-memoir, I explore my relationship to dance, sexuality, and gender as well as the journey I took to discovering my identity. I had a transmasculine person respond saying he resonated so hard with the line, “I didn’t understand why femininity interested my so much, but felt so wrong on me,” expressing how it was hard for him to let go of the little girl he was only pretending to be.

Later, I had a trans woman reach out and express her appreciation for my experience and how ours echoed each others: She borrowed her sister’s ballet uniform one day and was punished for it, barred from being the pretty girl she always wanted to be. We celebrated her ability to take dance classes now as an adult, years into her transition.

Both of those moments of community, of shared experience across different axes of oppressions, are exactly the kind of response I hope to evoke for all who engage with my work. I want to create space in my narratives for voices not often valued in the mainstream and give equal opportunities for representation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gendeerfluid.wixsite.com/crisjackson
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gendeerfluid/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cris-jackson-1a824720a/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/gendeerfluid