Mante Koliakinaite
Fruity Poetry Night is put on by thems. art collective.
A Phoenix-based arts collective is hosting an open mic night on Wednesday. But it’s not just any open mic night and not just any arts collective.
This week’s Fruity Poetry Night at There Space is part of the mission of thems. to support artists from the LGBTQ+ community.
Francisco Diaz is an artist in the Valley, and the founder of thems. Diaz joined The Show to talk about where the idea to put together a collective like this came from.
Amber Victoria Singer/KJZZ
Francisco Diaz in KJZZ’s studio in Tempe.
Full conversation
FRANCISCO DIAZ: So it’s kind of a long story. But in short, I was renting a studio on 16th Street at the Hive on 16th. And it was supposed to be my sewing studio where I would go and create garments. But I really just started to look around and be like, I have this incredible opportunity that I’m able to afford a space. So what can I do to bring the community in? And so from there, I started to invite different artists that I was meeting at markets or just meeting around town to sell their work there.
And then that evolved into them hosting workshops during the weekend. And they started at like five to 10 people per workshop. But we had one workshop that was a collage class and that was the first time that we really saw the demand for queer programming here in Phoenix. We couldn’t fit everybody into the space. We had to have people outside in the middle of summer, and we had to turn some people away. So it started really small with like these me just inviting my friends like, hey, do you want to teach some people what you do? And then it’s just grown and grown throughout the year.
MARK BRODIE: And what kind of arts do you have there? Like you obviously sew and you make clothing and garments. What are some of the other things that, that folks who are there do?
DIAZ: So we, every class that we do is a partnership with a local queer artist, sometimes from Tucson as well, but mostly here in Phoenix. And so we’ve had classes where we do a floral bouquet. We’ve done classes where we use upcycled frames and paint on the glass. We’ve had poetry workshops, writing workshops. So it’s really specific to what the artist is teaching. And kind of like who’s available to partner with us at the time.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that you saw a demand in the LGBTQ community about, you know, needing a space for arts and, and classes. Like what is that demand? Like how, how big of a demand is there?
DIAZ: I think we’re still barely touching the surface of what that demand is. We’re also all volunteers. So we’re donating our time to put all these events on. So we are kind of limited to the amount of events we can host per month. So for example, our Fruity Poetry night is our monthly open mic night for queer writers, poets and storytellers. And that one really started with maybe 10 to 15 people in the audience. And we just had our last one, and that one hit close to 200. So in the span of one year, we’ve seen that kind of growth. And I think each event that we have, especially the Fruity Poetry Night, we see more and more people coming every time.
BRODIE: What do you think it is that draws that many people to one of these events?
DIAZ: I think it’s like a mixture of just curiosity. I think there’s a lot of queer people here in Phoenix who are just looking for something new and something that centers their voice and their story. But it’s also a place where the the people who are reading their work, but also the audience members, have the freedom to express themselves and to share their stories to an audience that can sympathize with them and have experienced a lot of the same things that they have.
BRODIE: Do you find that that artists who are members of this community, like, do they encounter discrimination? Do they encounter issues with producing or showing their work or trying to teach other people sort of in other spaces?
DIAZ: I think, yes, I think we’ve all as queer artists experienced some kind of discrimination or we felt like tokenism where a lot of organizations or a lot of opportunities are only afforded during, during like a Pride month or during, a Pride festival. So we’re kind of pigeonholed into these certain spaces. But I think what we try to do is really focus first on the art and the person and just invite the community to engage with them that way.
BRODIE: What do you hear from the artists after their classes? Like, what are their impressions of what the workshops are like and the attendance and sort of, just sort of the overall vibe of the place?
DIAZ: Yeah, I think that’s been one of the most rewarding things I didn’t even anticipate. Like being able to provide a platform to the artists to feel confident that the people who are going to attend are people who will be respectful, who might understand a little bit of their story and who at least have the commonality of one thing in common. Like we both have either, we’re part of the LGBTQ plus community or we’ve experienced certain things that are similar to each other.
But also a lot of the artists are first time teachers, like they’ve never had the opportunity or they never thought that they could teach this to somebody else. So most of the time once the classes are over, they’re like, I can’t believe I did that or like that was so amazing. Like, when can we do the next one? It’s something that, I think being able to share your passion and your artwork with community members is very rare and just something that they want to keep doing over and over.
BRODIE: So I want to ask about your background because you were born in Phoenix, you moved away, you came back, you moved away and now you’re back. So I’m curious how you, how you see this community, how you see the arts community here, how you see maybe the LGBTQ+ community here? Because you’ve been other places and you’ve been here also in the past.
DIAZ: Yeah, I think that before I moved to LA, I was trying to sell mostly paintings and some of my, so my work that I had created mostly at events like First Friday and I think there, you’re exposed to the entire Phoenix community and for a lot of people that can be really scary. And so I didn’t really ever feel like my personality could be in full display or like certain parts of myself, I had to hide for safety or just so that I could engage with these people in a way that I felt safe.
And so whenever I moved away for a bit, I was able to experience places in LA like Junior High LA, which is a queer-run space where they host programming similar to this, or there was a store there that was specifically selling art from different queer makers in LA. So I was introduced to these spaces for the first time and I’m happy that I was able to bring some of that back with me, bring some of the things that I learned and bring my own experience as an artist here in Phoenix into thems. and into the future.
BRODIE: So what are your goals for thems.? Like, what would you like it to ultimately be?
DIAZ: Yeah. So, I should say that it’s a community, it’s a community-led collective. So I work with Eric Cadette, who is a fashion designer and also a poet; Mante [Koliakinaite], who runs a photography studio here; and then also Jerard de Leon, who is our social media manager. So we’re really working together to figure out where we want to go. I think every time we have an event we’re like, OK, no one’s going to show up, but it’s going to be OK, it’ll just be us and we’ll have fun. And every single time we’re blown away by the amount of community support that shows up and is willing to participate.
So I think it’s a big question mark. We don’t really know where we’re going to go. We’ve spoken about maybe developing it into a larger collective or possibly becoming a nonprofit organization. But just stressing that we’re doing this all as we go and none of us have these backgrounds. We’re just artists from the community who like, wanted to make something happen and it’s happening a little bit faster than we thought.
BRODIE: How would you say, if it has impacted, how is being around all these other makers impacted the art that you make?
DIAZ: I would say that it’s influenced a lot of the way that I interact with people and it’s interacted my worldview and also my interests. I’ve never been interested in poetry before until I was exposed to all these incredible poets here in Phoenix. I think it hasn’t really made its way yet, at least in a way that I can identify, into the clothing that I create. But it’s been such an eye-opening experience for me to learn different worldviews, learn from different makers here in Phoenix. So, yeah, I’m excited to see how it changes me in the future.
BRODIE: Yeah, that is really cool.
KJZZ’s The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ’s programming is the audio record.
