Asheville-based artist Harley Burns discusses their transition from a career in public health to a full-time painting practice centered on trans and gender-nonconforming identity in the American South. The interview focuses on Burns's triptych "Buttoning Back Up" (2025), which translates a vulnerable public performance of chest-binding into a series of oil paintings that explore the hypervisibility and invisibility of non-binary bodies.
Burns’s trajectory highlights the significant role of craft schools like Penland and Anderson Ranch in fostering artistic career pivots and providing safe spaces for risky, identity-driven work. By framing trans subjects as heroic and sacred, Burns contributes to a growing movement of Southern queer artists using traditional portraiture to claim space and document lived experiences of authenticity and community collaboration.