ARTIST STATEMENT
When I look back on those crucial, adolescent years, a phantom limb part of me tingles. For the entirety of my teenage-hood, I was in a complicated relationship with my best friend of ten years–not quite romantic, not quite platonic. Undeniably intense and life-altering. It was this relationship which made my lesbian identity clear to me: and it was this relationship which prevented me from seeing myself, understanding myself, and feeling autonomous. Even now, I find myself processing the grief and incoherence a relationship like this can bring–especially after it ends. Years later, I’m still picking up fragments of these memories I share with her–tilting them in the light–trying to understand how they fit into who I am now.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Evie “Ted” Roth is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago, where she has earned a Creative Writing BA. Her work has been included in several publications, including Phi Theta Kappa’s 29th edition of Nota Bene, Allium, Graphé and Regina Taylor’s Black Album Mixtape. Ted’s work, of which includes prose and scripts, portrays themes of alienation, queerness, surrealism, and humor. Current projects of hers feature a queer cadaver lab love affair, a ceramic leprechaun’s existential crisis, and one man’s romance with a slaughterhouse sow. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her woodworking, building dioramas, painting, and reading.
© Ted Roth