Cristy Road

Last updated
Cristy C. Road
BornCristina Carrera
1982
Miami, Florida , United States
Occupation
  • Artist
  • author
  • musician
Education Fashion Institute of Technology
Genre comics, punk, memoir, zine, illustration
Notable worksIndestructible, Bad Habits, Next World Tarot
Website
croadcore.org

Cristina Carrera, otherwise known as Cristy C. Road (born May 26, 1982) is a Cuban-American illustrator, graphic novelist, and punk rock musician whose posters, music, and autobiographical works explore themes of feminism, queer culture, and social justice. She primarily works as an illustrator and graphic novelist, but also published a long-running zine about punk music and her life as a queer Latina. She performed on the Sister Spit roadshow in 2007, 2009, and 2013 and was the lead vocalist and guitarist for the queercore/pop-punk band, The Homewreckers. She currently sings vocals and plays guitar in Choked Up. She has published three books and one collection of postcards, as well as numerous concert posters, protest flyers, book covers, and logos. Road has worked as a professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. [1]

Contents

Early work and influences

Road's queer and Cuban-American identity are central to both her art and her political refusal to assimilate into mainstream or straight culture, and as an emerging artist she was inspired by the "queer punk scene in San Francisco/Oakland, CA." [2] From 1997 through 2004, she published the zine Greenzine, which started as a fanzine about the band Green Day and eventually focused more on Road's identity, politics, and ideas. [3] Her early artistic influences included John Kricfalusi of Ren and Stimpy, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Kathe Kollowitz. [4]

Music

From 2008 to 2017, Road played guitar and sung in queercore pop punk Brooklyn band The Homewreckers. [5] Road currently sings vocals and plays guitar in pop-punk band Choked Up. [6] In 2021, Choked Up announced they signed to Don Giovanni Records. [7]

Next World Tarot

In 2017, Road successfully raised nearly $30,000 on Kickstarter [8] to fund the Next World Tarot. The hand-illustrated tarot deck features colorful portraits of queer and POC bodies in a post-apocalyptic existence. While producing the deck, Road also earned her master's degree in fine art illustration at Fashion Institute of Technology, where she focused her thesis on the history of tarot. [9]

Critical acclaim

Bitch magazine listed Road as a "Bitchlist" pick in 2005. [10] Curve said of Indestructible: "So powerful is Road's candid portrayal of growing pains, it provides the perfect comfort for angsty, self-loathing youth and sends older readers back down memory lane through their own adventures and mishaps of young adulthood." [11] Road's memoir Bad Habits was nominated for a LAMBDA Literary Award. [12] In 2012, Flavorwire named Road one of 50 "up and coming New York culture makers to watch in 2013," describing her as "a fixture in feminist, LGBT, and punk zinester circles." [13]

Published work

Bibliography adapted from Road's website. [14]

Books:

Works included in:

Related Research Articles

Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaginal Davis</span> Musical artist

Vaginal Davis is an American performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, filmmaker and writer. Born intersex and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Davis gained notoriety in New York during the 1980s, where she inspired the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn's prevalent drag scene as a genderqueer artist. She currently resides in Berlin, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom Jennings</span> American artist, computer specialist (born 1955)

Thomas Daniel Jennings is a Los Angeles-based artist and computer programmer, known for his work that led to FidoNet, and for his work at Phoenix Software on MS-DOS integration and interoperability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Team Dresch</span> American queercore punk rock band

Team Dresch is an American punk rock band originally formed in 1993 in Olympia, Washington.

Sister George were an English band from London, recognised as being significant in the 1990s queercore scene, who formed in 1993.

Chainsaw Records is an independent record label run by Donna Dresch that is devoted to Queercore bands. The label is in Portland, Oregon.

<i>J.D.s</i>

J.D.s was a Canadian queer punk zine which started in 1985 and ran for eight issues until 1991. The zine was co-authored by G.B Jones and Bruce LaBruce and is credited as being one of the first and most influential queer zines. The zine's content was centred around anarchic queer-punk themes and heavily discussed queer-skewed punk music from the late 1980s.

Microcosm Publishing is an independent publisher and distributor based in Portland, Oregon. Microcosm describes itself as having "a reputation for teaching self-empowerment, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging conventional publishing wisdom, influencing other publishers large and small with books and bookettes about DIY skills, food, zines, and art."

Donna Dresch is an American punk rock musician, perhaps best known as founder, guitarist and bass guitarist of Team Dresch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha</span> Canadian-American writer

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Canadian-American poet, writer, educator and social activist. Their writing and performance art focuses on documenting the stories of queer and trans people of color, abuse survivors, mixed-race people and diasporic South Asians and Sri Lankans. A central concern of their work is the interconnection of systems of colonialism, abuse and violence. They are also a writer and organizer within the disability justice movement.

Leslie Mah is an American musician and performer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Tea</span> American writer

Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and has identified with the San Francisco, California literary and arts community for many years. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their exposition of the queercore community.

Elen Orr, known as Fly, is a comic book artist, illustrator, activist, and teacher whose art has been published in various magazines and fanzines, including Slug and Lettuce, Maximum Rock 'N' Roll, World War 3 Illustrated, and The Village Voice, among others. She is also a former member of New York queercore punk band God Is My Co-Pilot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Favianna Rodriguez</span> American artist and activist

Favianna Rodriguez is an American artist and activist known for her work in political posters and public art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meredith Stern</span> American drummer

Meredith Stern is an artist, musician and disc jockey living in Providence, Rhode Island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicole Georges</span> American illustrator, writer, zinester, podcaster, and educator

Nicole J. Georges is an American illustrator, writer, zinester, podcaster, and educator. She is well known for authoring the autobiographical comic zine Invincible Summer, whose individual issues have been collected into two anthologies published by Tugboat Press and Microcosm Publishing. Some of her other notable works include the graphic memoirs Calling Dr. Laura and Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home. In addition to this, Georges creates comics and teaches others how to make them, produces the Podcast Sagittarian Matters, and illustrates portraits of animals. She currently divides her time between Los Angeles, California and Portland, Oregon.

G. B. Jones is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, musician, and publisher of zines. She is best known for producing the queer punk zine J.D.s and her Tom Girls drawings.

Marie Lyn Bernard, known professionally as Riese Bernard, is an American writer and digital media executive. She is best known as the CEO and co-founder of the lesbian and queer women's interest website Autostraddle. Bernard received a 2017 GLAAD Media Award nomination for her article, “105 Trans Women On American TV: A History and Analysis”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzy Exposito</span> American music writer

Suzanne Exposito, is an American writer. She has worked as a music reporter and columnist at the Los Angeles Times and previously as Latin music editor at Rolling Stone. In May 2020 she became the first Latina to write a cover story for the magazine, which was a profile of the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny.

Queer Appalachia began as a zine founded by Gina Manone for the Appalachian region and the South at large, and transitioned into a larger project allegedly focusing collaboratively on mutual aid. Established in 2016 after the deaths of Bryn Kelly and Amanda Arkansassy Harris, Queer Appalachia distributes its art, writing, and other work through an Instagram account and a publication called Electric Dirt. According to the magazine Esquire, the collective "seeks to unify the queer people of Appalachia by capturing the variety of races, abilities, genders, religions, and addiction statuses of an area that is largely believed to be straight and white".

References

  1. "Cristy Road Carrera | Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University". documentarystudies.duke.edu. Retrieved 2023-03-25.
  2. "Queer Latina Punk Artist Cristy C. Road: The Interview | Autostraddle". autostraddle.com. 25 January 2013. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  3. "Green Zine #14 | Microcosm Publishing". microcosmpublishing.com. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  4. "Interviews: Rad Women Who Make Rad Art #5: Cristy Road | Punknews.org". punknews.org. 5 November 2013. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  5. "Polemic | Cristy Road Carrera". www.abcnorio.org. Retrieved 2023-03-25.
  6. "Demo 2017, by Choked Up". Choked Up. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  7. "Don Giovanni Records". Don Giovanni Records. Retrieved 2023-03-25.
  8. "THE NEXT WORLD TAROT". Kickstarter. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  9. Pu00e9rez, Miriam Zoila (2018-01-11). "Next World Tarot is the Tarot Deck of Your Apocalyptic Dreams". ColorLines.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  10. "Sm{art}: Diggin' Deep With Cristy C. Road". Bitch Media. Retrieved 2023-03-25.
  11. "Indestructible | Microcosm Publishing". microcosmpublishing.com. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  12. ""Passing for Black" and Cristy Road's "Bad Habits" are up for Lambda's Lit Awards in 2008 - AfterEllen.com". afterellen.com. 18 December 2008. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  13. "50 Up-and-Coming New York Culture Makers to Watch in 2013 – Flavorwire". flavorwire.com. Archived from the original on 2014-05-06. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  14. "Roads resume". croadcore.org. Archived from the original on 2018-08-31. Retrieved 2019-05-06.
  15. "Justseeds: Josh MacPhee: Celebrate People's History!: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution". justseeds.org. Retrieved 2014-05-06.