On June 5, 2021, Second Street Gallery presented a live watercolor painting exhibition with ROYGBIV artist Sarah Kahle and disability justice advocate Jess Walters!

For the duration of this 2-hour live painting exhibition, artists Sarah Kahle and Jess Walters combined forces through live painting, performance, and dialogue to demonstrate the ongoing struggle for access to healthcare for the LGBTQ+ community and the long-term “trickle down” impact of sexual stigmas and gender stereotyping on quality of life. The live painting took place immediately outside of Second Street Gallery and was free to the public to watch/attend.

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Sarah Kahle (she/her) is a Washington, D.C.-based painter depicting the LGBTQ+ community through the lesbian gaze. Her watercolor paintings expand how we understand femininity, represent the diversity of womxn, and allow the audience to experience the fluidity of LGBTQ+ sexuality. Each painting involves an intimate discussion and collaboration with her subject, specifically meant to negate stigmas and sexual regression and create a space of sexual belonging in art-making. Sarah Kahle’s work is currently exhibited in the “ROYGBIV” exhibition in the Dové Gallery.

Jess (JD) Walters (she/they) is an independent scholar, disability justice advocate, and emerging multi-media artist from Charlottesville, Va. She earned a degree in Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2014 and is fascinated by the interconnecting mechanisms between neurology, nephrology, and non-verbal communication, which she explores throughout her research, advocacy, and art. Jess works locally and internationally to educate patients, medical experts, and policy-makers about the impacts of implicit bias and the limitations of deficit-based perspectives in healthcare. Through multiple visual mediums including collage, textile, sculpture, film, performance art, poetry, and photography, Jess attempts to share the lens through which they perceive the world as an Autistic, Deaf-Queer human.