Storme Webber
“My grandmother set me on this road,” poet and interdisciplinary artist Storme Webber tells GO. It was her grandmother’s “insistence upon joy and creativity [that] made my life possible,” she says. “She taught me how to dream.” Now, Webber, a second-generation Two Spirit and lesbian, has built her life on the creative spirit her grandmother encouraged in her, and she sees a clear connection between family, heritage, and identity. “It was normal for me to be myself, and my Sugpiaq grandmother understood my Two Spirit nature,” Webber explains. “This way of being is traditional. I have always been both female and male, and was allowed to grow the way I was created.” Webber’s identity drives her cross-genre work, mixing poetry, performance, and photography to comment on themes related to decolonization, survival, and liminal identities. For her work, Webber has been awarded residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and the Banff Arts Centre, and recently, with the James W. Ray Award. She also presented her first solo exhibition, “Casino: A Palimpsest,” at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum. With this platform, Webber wants to spark discussion surrounding history that is often ignored, work which she views as restorative. “The knowledge that the work to honor our fierce yet neglected ancestors is healing our lineage and our future,” she says, is one of the most rewarding aspects of what she does. Going forward, Webber hopes to establish a safe, anti-racist creative haven for those in the Black and Indigenous communities. –AB
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