Hi everyone. As usual, I hope you are doing well wherever you are. So far everything is going okay with me. My aunt visited me this past weekend and we did a day trip to Guangzhou where we visited a few locations that my family had lived in a long time ago. As a result of this visit, I have some ideas jumping around in my head and maybe will start something new soon. I will keep you updated.
For today’s episode, I am chatting with Jeffrey Augustine Songco, a multidisciplinary artist exploring the complexity of self-portraiture. As a gay American man of Filipino ethnicity, Jeffrey’s work is a place of representation — an opportunity to playfully cast himself as the protagonist of a postcolonial queer narrative. Jeffrey got his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. While our paths did not cross in Pittsburgh, we connected in other ways and there was a shared sense of familiarity as I talked with Jeffrey. Jeffrey also revealed our hidden connection via Reading Rainbow, which was a pleasant surprise. We also discussed Jeffrey’s beginnings as a child actor, the creation of his secret society, and how he ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As always, stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you enjoy this.