Pride Squirrels

The Pride Squirrels are a street art project I did in June 2023. The project consists of a series of spray-painted squirrel designs I pasted up around Washington, DC during pride month. Each squirrel character is accompanied by a unique positive affirmation for the LGBTQ community. The process was both fun and therapeutic and challenged me to literally put my art out there.

I love to anthropomorphize animals when I doodle and Washington, DC has a large black squirrel population. One day I was doodling  on the front porch and saw black squirrels running around in a tree. I had my eye on one squirrel who kept stretching its hands to the sky, trying to reach something on the branch above it. I sketched that squirrel, and then a few others, and next thing I know the squirrels in my notebook are holding megaphones, banners, and signs. They’re proclaiming that trans rights are human rights, dykes rule, and that queers are magical.