Drag artist Louisianna Purchase carries a specific elegant yet emotional style to every project she takes on, whether that’s her live drag shows around Austin or their music video and photography collaborations with local artists. In her first gallery show in over 10 years, “MY HEART WILL BURST INTO A MILLION STARS,” that style infuses into 11 paper and pearl pieces hung around Feats of Clay’s Conroy Gallery – opening this Saturday, Nov. 15.
The first inklings of the show bloomed last December as a result of Louisianna using newly gained free time to take on art commissions. This was “mainly to see if I still enjoyed creating paper cuts,” she explains, “but also to see if there would be interest.” Having received a positive response from commissioners, Louisianna also found that in returning to paper cut work that “I missed creating visual art.”
Her work in paper has been a lifelong interest, specifically with silhouettes. “I’m drawn to the simplicity of silhouettes and how they can still tell such a story while leaving room for interpretation,” Louisianna says. “There’s room left for the viewer to emotionally connect in a way that’s powerful for them.” Through these evocative paper cuts, Louisianna says she most often explores trauma and “mainly how childhood trauma colors our lives and the languages we create to survive. How we create worlds to delve in, to keep us alive, and what we do when they crash down.” This was her inspiration behind the show’s title, which references “those extreme moments, happy or sad, [when] our hearts feel like they could propel our body through space.”
Despite the subject matter being one of Louisianna’s most well-trod, she did step out of her comfort zone in adding hand-pearling to each piece. “It’s made everything way more time consuming,” she says, “but has added a level of delicateness to the pieces that I love so much.” These nacreous details are meant to be tears, Louisianna explains, which tie into the show’s main theme of trauma’s effects. “We all carry a [sadness],” she adds, “and I can only hope to turn my sadness and pain into [something] magical.”
In addition to premiering these 11 pearled and paper-cut pieces, Louisianna’s current music project RIBBONS will perform a 20-minute set featuring visual projections. This acts as the show’s “soundtrack,” she says, that creates a world and atmosphere for visitors to experience. Having previously opened for and played on the records of other artists, Louisianna hopes to have RIBBONS’ own EP out some time next year.
“Music was one of my earliest loves,” Louisianna says. “RIBBONS is a celebration of my love of shoegaze, drone, dream pop, and ambient music.”
For Louisianna, returning to visual art represents her own inner growth. “I feel I’m a lot more confident,” she says on picking back up paper-cutting. “Having done drag for 12 years now, the confidence from that has spread into the other art forms I love. I feel completely assured in my vision and the world I’m wanting to create.”
