For this year’s Pride month, Collective Arts Brewing are celebrating the talents and perspectives of LGBTQ2+ artists with a limited-edition run of Life in the Clouds. These cans feature the artwork of 4 artists from the global Queer community: Ethan Barry Murley, Matthew Willie Garcia, Gabriella Grimes, and Henri Campeã. The series was carefully curated by Queer artist Tim Singleton.

As part of our commitment to making the world a better place, the Brewery is donating to the National Center for Transgender Equality, an organization that advocates to change policies and society to increase understanding and acceptance of transgender people; and the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, an organization that empowers gender and sexually diverse communities through education, research, and advocacy.

ETHAN BARRY MURLEY FROM VANCOUVER, BC

Ethan Barry Murley is a visual artist based in Vancouver. His practice explores sexuality, identity, interpersonal relationships, intimacy, and the dialogues around them. Working both with figures and text, Murley explores these themes through the mediums of illustration, photography, painting, printmaking, and tattooing. His work explores ideas around erotica and breaking down societal norms through the lens of his own experiences both as artist and subject. Documenting the banal and everyday alongside the erotic, intimate, and explicit, Murley builds narratives in his work that welcome viewers to become voyeurs and project their own experiences and desires upon his work.

Follow Ethan on Instagram: @gaptoothb

MATTHEW W. GARCIA FROM SAINT JOSEPH, MO, USA

Matthew Willie Garcia is a printmaker born and raised in Tulare, CA, whose work moves far beyond the traditional print media – he specializes in what he calls 4d printmaking, which includes screen printing, projection-mapped animation, large-scale installation, and drawing. His work explores ideas of queer quantum mechanics, intersectional existence, and speculative/science fiction identity narratives through colour abstraction and nonrepresentational forms. He received a B.F.A. in Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute and his M.F.A. from the University of Kansas. Garcia has shown his work regionally though out the midwest, and recently his work was part of Queer Abstraction group exhibition at the Nerman Contemporary Museum of art. Garcia is currently Teaching at Missouri Western State University, and is the Print Studio Coordinator at the Lawrence Arts Center.

Follow Matthew on Instagram: @matthewwilliegarcia

GABRIELLA GRIMES FROM PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA

ggggrimes is a Black queer digital artist from the Bronx, NY, now based in Philadelphia, PA. Their work portrays queer people of colour living joyous, beautiful, and stable lives. ggggrimes’ work serves as a reminder to the queer community that happiness is possible in this world, and that everyone deserves access to it. Their main inspirations are loved ones, their colleagues, their supporters, and a boatload of anime.

Follow Gabriella on Instagram: @ggggrimes

HENRI CAMPEÃ FROM SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL

Henri Campeã is a Brazilian visual artist focused on illustration and animation based in São Paulo, Brazil. Throughout his career, he has worked in a wide range of projects with clients such as The New York Times, Coca-Cola, Quartz, Snapchat, GIPHY, Intercom, WGSN and many more. His designs incorporate vibrant colours, quirkiness, a bit of magic and surrealism. He enjoys working on challenging projects, expressing different topics, and portraying the client’s needs in an authentic way.

Follow Henri on Instagram: @henricampea

 

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.