After working together on photo shoots for Genre Latino Magazine in the spring of 2011, Dale Stine and I decided that we wanted to collaborate on a project that would allow us to apply our skill set to fine art pieces. Pridelines provided the perfect opportunity that winter when they asked Dale to shoot some photos for their website.

I began volunteering for Pridelines a few years earlier and when Dale told me about the photo shoot, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for us to work on something special together. We came up with the concept of ‘Pridelines for Peace’ shortly thereafter.

We asked six of the youths that were involved in the organization to pose for portraits that we would turn into digital photo collage pieces based on each of their ‘Proclamations for Peace’ to benefit the organization.

One of the most poignant was from Jamesly, who chose to honor the work of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in his portrait based on his experience as an immigrant living in the United States.

After we completed the six original portraits, we decided to add three more of our own design. Peace of Butter, shown in the center of the composite above, is a graphic representation of a butterfly created with a photo art deco styled stained glass we shot outside of Dale’s apartment in South Beach. For us, the butterfly represents the metamorphosis that is necessary for queer-identified youth to find peace and happiness in their own skin.

We debuted this portrait series at O Cinema in Wynwood in December of 2011 and the portraits have since been shown at Miami Beach Gay Pride and Pridelines’ Annual Gala. We donated a canvas print of Peace of Butter to the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Miami Recognition Dinner Silent Auction in the year that followed.

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