LOS ANGELES — Courtney Trouble has graduated from the California College of the Arts with a Masters in Fine Arts, completing one of two planned art-related masters degrees.
This spring, Trouble was offered a significant merit-based scholarship to return to CCA for a second master’s degree. They will be entering the Masters for Visual and Critical Studies (an academic track) program in the fall.
According to a representative, the scholarship will not cover all costs and Trouble has accrued significant financial aid loans, so a donation page and Amazon wish list have been set up for anyone interested in helping. To view the donation page, click here.
“One of the biggest questions for me is how out I should be at school about being a sex worker,” Trouble said. “It never may be obvious whether I will be taken seriously in an art world space or not, so I really focused on making stuff that followed my intellectual questions and trusting my gut when I had to answer questions. CCA fully embraced my history and helped me turn my adult industry skills into teaching skills.
“I couldn’t be more amazed and inspired by the grace with which this institution embraced conversations around pornography and sex work,” they continued. “They also didn’t pigeonhole me. I ended up improving in so many techniques just by daring to rip things apart. Now I can talk about anything I need to, including my experiences in sexuality, in a lot of new languages. I particularly like abstract minimalism that looks at transforming digital pixels into physical elements like dust and threads.”
Trouble reports their fine art skills blossomed under mentorship across disciplines at CCA but particularly in alternative photography practices, printmaking, painting and installation. Trouble wrote a thesis titled “Queer Chaos,” which entwined research into chaos theory, biological diversity, ancient art and religion. They served as teacher’s assistant for Ignacio Valero’s Queer Attractors course.
They were selected for the “Gender in Translation Symposium and Exhibition,” highlighted by a lecture by Judith Butler. Trouble’s thesis exhibition, “Queer Porn Archive,” displayed 64 magazines featuring chaotic and lyrical collections of Courtney Trouble’s pornographic and queer cultural photography work, as well as a digital hard drive containing the entire Courtney Trouble archive, surmounting to “over 220,000 images and videos and meant to be preserved in hiding at an unknown location. “
Trouble works at the college and has planned events centered around wellness, including a sex work panel featuring Carol Queen and Chelsea Poe and a sex toy workshop with adult boutique Feelmore 510.
For more information, follow Trouble on Twitter.