Designing San Diego's Pride Library Card: A Watercolor of the Central Library in Prism Light

Back in April, San Diego Public Library put out a call for artists to design this year's Pride library card. The theme was PRIDE Shines On, with language that stuck with me the moment I read it: we shine in our love for one another, in our audacity to exist and to thrive, in our resolve to foster pride, equality, and respect for LGBTQ communities everywhere.

I sat with that for a while before I picked up a brush.

What I ended up painting is the Central Library downtown, the one with the dome that everyone in San Diego recognizes even if they've never been inside. But instead of just rendering the building, I painted light breaking out from its heart in a wide prism, every color fanning out over the rooftops like the building itself was the one doing the shining. The library as a place that holds people, and the Pride flag as something that grows out from inside it rather than sitting on top of it.

I don't take on a lot of projects that ask me to put my own identity directly into the work. Most of what I paint is about place and memory, the kind of thing that holds space for whoever's looking at it. This one was different. As a queer artist, painting a building I've walked past for years and turning it into something that visibly shines was personal in a way I didn't fully expect going in.

I submitted the piece before the end of April. The library said they'd announce the winner in July, right around Pride week, when the chosen design gets printed and handed out at branches across the city. So now I'm in that strange in-between part of any submission. Checking email more than usual. Trying not to read into the silence. Genuinely unsure how it'll go, and okay with that.

I'll let you know what happens either way.