Yellow Springs Pride Inc, is proud to have been selected to present LGBTQ+ awareness in a featured exhibit at the Yellow Springs Community Library. This installation, inclusive of supportive partnership of Michael Casselli (Chair Arts Division at Antioch College/Creative Director Herndon Gallery), presents a historical perspective of LGBTQ+ advocacy and history which centers around the balance of love and rioting - nodding to the 2023 YS Pride Festival theme LOVE RIOT.

With clean lines, focused imagery, and strategic splashes of color, this artistic piece provides a simplistic, yet fantastically creative presentation of both the struggle and the unity of the LGBTQ+ plight, and how art & freedom of expression continues to make its way to the forefront. Central to this display is a multi-media art piece entitled "Reali-T-Gurl" donated by artist and poet Iden Crockett, known for her daring style, and unique perspective.

Gay Liberation Front was the name of several gay liberation groups, the first of which was formed in New York City in 1969, immediately after the Stonewall riots. Similar organizations also formed in the UK and Canada.

The Stonewall riots, also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall, were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

Act Up is a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.

ACT UP’s first-ever demonstration in 1987 — as well as three others in 1988, 1989, and 1997 — took place on Wall Street, the world’s leading financial center, and targeted pharmaceutical companies that were profiteering from the epidemic.

The Radicalesbians was a short-lived but important group in the history of the lesbian and feminist movements. Its collectively-written "The Woman-Identified Woman" is a provocative manifesto that challenged all feminists to reconsider their conception of lesbians and lesbianism.

Protect Trans Kids & Let Them Play | Fight transphobia and stop discrimination in the doctor's office. Make your voice heard! Discrimination in healthcare is already illegal. Tell the government to enforce the law!

Meet The Artist+

Iden Crockett

"Reali-T-Gurl" | This piece is a testimony of sorts. It is a documenting of emotions. The title is a play on the popular slang term for transwomen “t-girl”.

Being a t-girl in today’s world means existing between spaces. It is a constant navigation of contradictions. It can be a very purgatorial existence. I no longer am able to occupy male space the way I once did and I am not able to fully occupy female space either. I am left to define and inhabit my own space, a prospect that is both thrilling and terrifying.

I have memories from a life that seems more and more like it belonged to another person. The mirror becomes a portal, a time machine. In certain light I see into the past and the male body I once occupied. Change the angle and I am looking into the future at the woman I am becoming.

Floating between past and future, between hope and regret, between fear and exuberance, trying to build a space of your own. That is my reality as a t-girl.

Artist, writer, and poet Iden Crockett creates intensely personal pieces of art. Her words and her pictures tell the story of her journey through ptsd, depression and the discovery of her identity as a transgender woman.

She is the author of Black, White, and Red All Over an illustrated volume of poetry available on amazon.com as well as the award winning monthly column “My Name is Iden”

She lives in Yellow Springs with her wife and three children.