I make art because the alternative is believing none of it matters, and I’m not willing to go there anymore.

Lil Butterball grew out of years of learning, sometimes the hard way, that creativity isn’t a luxury. It’s how I stay tethered. It’s how I reach for people when words fall short. It’s what I did as a queer kid who made cards for everyone I loved because I didn’t always know how else to say “I see you.”

For eight years I co-owned a ceramic studio. It wasn’t about the paintings people made. It was about what making space for art makes possible. Grief, birthdays, families showing up for each other, strangers becoming regulars. It was where I fell in love with the healing and community of art. Our work neighbors ran an independent bookstore and showed me that even something as joyful and silly as a Drag Queen Storytime could be quietly radical. Protecting space for something joyful is its own kind of activism.

When COVID took the studio I lost a big piece of myself with it. For years I barely made anything. Then in 2025 a friend asked me to paint something for him, sent me a handful of NASA pictures and said the rest was up to me. For the first time I asked if I could do it fully in my own style. I was nervous. He said yes. And when it came together, true to what he wanted and true to me, something cracked back open. Not just because it worked, but because of that specific electricity when two people are genuinely excited about the same thing. That’s the moment I remembered what this is all for.

I’m a queer artist in San Diego, California. My younger self needed to see that. Maybe yours does too.

If you found your way here, I’m glad.