Phranc: The Butch Closet

In the multi-media installation The Butch Closet, artist Phranc illustrates her life stories as a queer artist, Jewish lesbian folk singer, and "cardboard cobbler." By meticulously re-creating personal objects and pieces of clothing out of paper, cardboard, thread, and paint, she revisits her own history, contextualizing her experiences as an iconic performer, and maker, constructing, reconstructing, and re-imagining her image against a larger historical context of second-wave feminism and queer activism. The institute's presentation of The Butch Closet is the second iteration of the project, offering a more intimate and immersive engagement with Phranc's sculptural works. As part of the installation, visitors can peer into a closet built in the center of the gallery designed by the artist. Conceptually, the space shifts from inside to outside, public and private, and explores themes of visibility and that which remains inaccessible or unseen.

The personal narrative of multi-disciplinary artist Phranc (“soft ph with a hard c”) plays like your favorite adventure series, the spinning tale of a super-heroine of lore, with twists and turns, quests and gauntlets, a technicolor rainbow, and the sometimes elusive pot of gold.

She is the self-described all-American Jewish butch lesbian folk singer, surfer, Tupperware lady, cardboard cobbler, the one-woman band reminding us to be true to ourselves. That is our superpower.

Born in 1957 in Santa Monica and raised in Mar Vista, LA, Phranc “dropped out of high school to become a lesbian” and first found her community at the Woman’s Center on Hill Street in Venice, CA where she attended a lesbian feminist rap group meeting. Soon after, she cut her hair in her signature flat top, changed her name to Phranc, and the rest is history.

As a musical artist influenced by the great folk anthems of the ‘60s, she became an iconic openly queer performer in the hetero-male-dominated punk and folk/rock scenes. Phranc played out with Exene Cervenka from the band X, and Alice Bag from the Bags, just to name a few cult legends. She toured with international bands like the Pogues, Morrissey, Violent Femmes, Hüsker Dü, and the Smiths.

In addition to her wholly original music and performance, Phranc has always been a working visual artist, best known for her inventive paintings and constructions first made out of cardboard. The humble material allowed her the freedom to make art at any time because it was easy to find and inexpensive.

Stepping away from the music scene in the mid-'90s, Phranc became known as the “cardboard cobbler,” meticulously handcrafting, sewing, and painting sculptural facsimiles of shoes, clothes, and ephemera out of cardboard and then kraft paper.

Phranc’s Institute for the Humanities Gallery installation, The Butch Closet, is the second iteration of her multi-modal memoir, presented first in its original format as an exhibition at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica, CA in 2023. The U-M installation includes the addition of a build-out of Phranc’s closet, further exploring public and private, an inside and outside view, the intricacies of self, and her butch lesbian identity.

The artist revisits her own history, contextualizing her experiences as an iconic performer, and maker, constructing, reconstructing, and re-imagining her image against a larger historical context of second-wave feminism and queer activism.

Phranc’s artworks appear almost animated by vivid colors, dizzying details, and endless patterns, punctuating memories. Their expressiveness brings her stories to life, and disarms us.

Perhaps, the sublime of Phranc’s visual work resides in the deftness of her balancing act, the juxtaposition of her pop aesthetic and exuberant palette as a California artist with the gravity of a life lived so authentically.

Phranc the artist, musician, and performer in all her incarnations is the stuff of dreams … the persona of wishes, the maverick, the trailblazer, and the girl/boy next door. Phranc is charming, fierce, nostalgic, contemporary, the personal and political, glorious and defiant. And brilliantly funny. In 2024, the revolution of Phranc still hits close to home.

–Amanda Krugliak, IH Arts Curator

Phranc is a jewish lesbian folksinger and queer artist who uses song, painting and sculpture to champion personal identities and illustrate the struggle, survival, and victory of the queer individual. An internationally acclaimed and award winning performer. Phranc’s work integrates humor and a butch lesbian aesthetic. Her current project, Phranc Talk: The Butch Closet, is a multi-media memoir that spans her 40-year career. Phranc lives and works in Santa Monica, California and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Phranc is the 2024 Jean Yokes Woodhead Visiting Artist at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities.