10 JUNE 20-26, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Colorful Colorado WAVING THE FLAG FOR DENVER’S 50TH PRIDEFEST. BY EMILY FERGUSON You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - Over and over announcing your place in the family of things. — “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver The poem fl ashed through Lonnie Han- zon’s mind as the legendary Denver artist began working on his ninth art installation for Denver PrideFest. Titled E Pluribus Unum, the sculp- ture will soar 26 feet high, fl ut- tering with silk fl ags in 27 colors representing the variety of Pride fl ags and their meanings. From a bird’s-eye view, the installation’s shape will emulate the protective evil-eye symbol, and Oliver’s poem will be printed in the center. At the base of the fl ags will be famil- iar phrases that remind us of the LGBTQ+ community’s diversity and intersectionality. “And the main message is vote, vote, vote!” Hanzon notes. Hanzon is known for pio- neering immersive art in Denver through such successful instal- lations as Camp Christmas and Cabinet of Curiosities, and has a talent for conveying stories or making sharp points through his work. The Pride installations he creates refl ect immediate issues confronting the community while also celebrating LGBTQ+ identities. “We started the art to try to get away from just chaps and drag,” Hanzon says, “because I was tired of that representing me and everybody.” His sculpture for this year’s festival could never be accused of leaving any- one out. E Pluribus Unum involves colors refl ecting every imaginable identity, from bears to demi-sexual to asexual and more, with the piece’s title clarifying the overall meaning. Pride “has included more and more and more people on the spectrum, and now I’m just saying: It’s E Plu- ribus Unum — ‘Out of the many, one,’” he explains. “That’s how this country was founded. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what this country is about.” This is Denver’s fif- tieth Pride festival, with 500,000 people estimated to attend the two-day event on Saturday, June 22, and Sunday, June 23. Although he grew up in Colorado, Hanzon never attended the annual affair until he was asked to do his fi rst installation there, in 2015. “My husband and I have been together 43 years now. But when we fi rst were together, we met each other six weeks before AIDS. Once AIDS was named, that drove us all back into the closet — you didn’t want to be seen in public. And so we really didn’t go [to Pride] as youngsters, and then we felt like we were too old. We were the trolls,” Hanzon explains, laughing. Of course, Hanzon is hardly a troll, with his warm smile, long silver hair and violet shirt with matching shoes — an ensemble that indicates his artistry before he has a chance to tell you what he does. But his art speaks volumes. For his fi rst Pride installa- tion, he created a 24-foot-tall wedding cake, an appropriate emblem for the major issue at the time: The festival took place four days before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. When the decision was made, Hanzon took the top of the cake to the Colorado Capitol for the celebratory rally. His 2016 installation also refl ected a timely issue...but instead of anticipating a celebration, it mourned a tragedy. The mass shooting at the gay club Pulse, in Orlando, Florida, happened just four days before Denver’s festival. The massacre killed 49 people, and a heavy police presence loomed over the Mile High event — a re- minder of very real threats the community faced. “We built a huge black box and put out gallons of chalk and little signs that said, ‘Bring your light to this darkness with a message of love,’” Hanzon recalls. By the end of the weekend, the black was barely visible under the refl ections of strength, resilience and pride. Hanzon remembers that as he and the Center on Colfax’s then- director, Deborah Pollack, strolled around Cheesman Park after the shooting, she turned to him and made a solemn observation: “This morning, I had to understand that I may die today. And I’m okay with that.” But the festival went on that year, un- deterred by hatred that has been aimed at members of the LGBTQ+ community since before the community itself even formed. And Hanzon kept creating: In 2017, it was an installation called Shrine to Humanity, a series of “Burning Man-style shrines” with a totem of the chakras at the center. “It was very sexual. We did that because of the religious right,” Hanzon explains. “This community is assumed to be atheistic, this community is assumed to godless or spirit- less. We wanted to make a statement on that.” Another installation, created for the fi f- tieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, “took fi fty moments of the human-rights movement, showing ev- erything from Anita Bryant to the National Psychiatric Society taking homosexuality off the diseases list, which didn’t happen until the 1970s,” Hanzon says. For the year of the pandemic, he covered Civic Center Park with the thirty-plus itera- tions of Pride fl ags. “That was the last time somebody yelled ‘faggot’ at me,” Hanzon says, recalling how a man shouted the slur as he was hanging the fl ags. “I had forgotten how that cuts — as a little boy, to be called a faggot, or queer. ‘Queer’ still bristles with me. I have a really tough time hearing that. It’s been reclaimed by the young folks, but…” he trails off. The festival is a surreal experience for Hanzon, something he couldn’t have imag- ined when he was a kid growing up in Pine. “It’s really interesting for me. It blows me away now to see all these young people and to see families coming,” he refl ects. But there’s more to it than that. “We have to really tamp down our PTSD, our feeling that we’re go- ing to get arrested or that we’re going to get beaten, or that we’re CULTURE continued on page 12 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Gay Pride Week in 1976 marked the fi rst Pride parade. Denver’s PrideFest is one of the fi ve largest celebrations in the country. THE CENTER ON COLFAX CHRISTI L AYNE
