River Huston + Glammy Rose Spencer

Recorded on July 23, 2022 in Santa Monica, CA, this video features poet and visual artist River Huston in conversation with artist and art educator Glammy Rose Spencer. In an exchange that is by turns illuminating, hilarious, somber, and joyous, the two artists reflect upon a number of shared experiences, such as navigating care in the United States as HIV-positive women, reckoning with the aftermath of sexual violence, channeling grief for the loss of their loved ones into art, and using the power of comedy to both cope with and subvert systems of oppression such as sexism, transphobia, capitalism and patriarchy. River reflects on her decades of activism fighting for equitable treatment of women living with HIV and her documentation, via poetry, prose, painting and photography, of HIV-positive women’s narratives. Glammy shares how her practice as both an artist and an art teacher for young people in the Bay Area has helped her honor her ancestors while also positively contributing to the lives of future generations. The pair’s mutual admiration is electric and sincere, and models a framework for how to honor and hold space for one another against adversity.

River Huston

River Huston has been painting for 35 years. She is self-taught in basements, hallways, bathrooms, and several years living in a van.

She combines her artwork with her career as a poet, performer and writer. Besides both solo and group exhibits in art galleries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands and Mexico, she has shown her work at her performances which range from international conferences to a rural churches in the south.

River is the author of three books of poetry, Jesus Never Lived Here, The Bones of Susan and In Which I lost 1000 Pounds. She was awarded the Dorthea Lang/Paul Taylor award for A Positive Life: Portraits Of Women Living With HIV. She is the creator of Goddess: A New Guide to Feminine Wisdom and SEXED: Tales of a Textrix.

For 11 years River wrote a sex column for POZ Magazine and currently blogs at thebody.com and ontheedge.com. In 1990 she earned a BA in Health Education and Music from Hunter College and in 1995 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Albright College.

She has performed several solo shows including Sex, Cellulite and Large Farm Equipment: One Girl’s Guide to Living and Dying and SEXED in theatres, conferences and colleges nationwide. You can see more of her artwork at www.riverhustonart.com and see her other work from performing to motivational speaking at www.riverhhuston.com

You can view River’s artwork on the Visual AIDS Artist Registry here.

Glammy Rose Spencer

Glammy Rose Spencer is a 35 year old artist, Ashkenazi Jew, and proud HIV positive transgender woman. She has been teaching art and health to youth in the Bay Area for 7 years. She advocates for increasing trans-affirming STI testing and care, transgender representation in HIV research and education, and to transform the systems that put trans women at higher risk of HIV infection in the first place. Her art includes drawing, murals,performance, printmaking and bedazzling everything around her. "I create art to heal myself, turn my demons into superpowers, and pay respects to our poz elders and ancestors, conveying how much support they give to new generations of people fighting to survive."

You can view Glammy’s artwork on the Visual AIDS Artist Registry here.