Rhea Ewing
A Room of One's Own 2717 Atwood Ave., Madison, Wisconsin 53704
media release: For fans of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Meg-John Barker’s Queer, Fine is an essential graphic memoir about the intricacies of gender identity and expression. As Rhea Ewing neared college graduation in 2012, they became consumed by the question: What is gender? This obsession sparked a quest in their quiet Midwest town, where they anxiously approached both friends and strangers for interviews to turn into comics. A decade later, their project has exploded into a fantastical and informative portrait of a surprisingly vast community spread across the country. Questions such as "How do you identify?" invited deep and honest accounts of adolescence, taking hormones, changing pronouns—and how these experiences can differ depending on culture, race, and religion. Amidst beautifully rendered scenes emerges Ewing’s own visceral story growing up in rural Kentucky, grappling with their identity as a teenager, and ultimately finding themself through art—and by creating something this very fine.
Rhea Ewing (they/them) is a comic illustrator and fine artist who graduated from University of Wisconsin–Madison with a BFA in drawing and printmaking. They currently live in California, taking artistic inspiration from the state’s diverse landscapes. Ewing calls upon personal and political themes of queer identity, finding connections to the natural world, and building safe spaces for all people. The value of art, by their reasoning, is the ability to create connections, question assumptions, and inspire others to do the same. To that end they work in a variety of mediums, including graphic novels, fine art, and illustrated books.