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trans-gression is an artists' collective dedicated to creating opportunities to examine, play with and break gender stereotypes while building a safe space for artistic and personal exploration.  We provide support, mutual inspiration, and access to resources for individual and group projects. 

Founding member Laureen Grifin, has received grants from 5-County Arts Fund and the Leeway Foundation Transformation Award to support the collective and our Multidisciplinary Arts Festival at DaVinci Art Alliance, May 2008.

Membership - trans-gression accepts new members at the beginning of each year. Rates vary on a sliding scale from $10-$50 depending on what you can afford. Don't worry, we do not check your records but simply take what you feel you can give. All membership fees are due at the beginning of each year no later than 28 February.

Annual Membership includes:

• Personal trans-gression website and blog.
• Submission opportunities for all trans-gression exhibitions and performances, forums and monthly meeting.
• Project support and networking opportunities.
• Inclusion in trans-gression members list-serve.

Are you interested in supporting our work and don't have time for membership?

A genderqueer multidisciplinary artist, Thomas combines painting and drawing, printmaking, collage, and photography, and performing interlingual hip-hop inspired by historical songs of civil unrest from around the world. Thomas' poetic work explores themes of body image, body reflections, depersonalization by magnification of the body through media, body commercialism and bodily injury. Thomas' journalism has documented over fifteen years of practical nonviolence, civil disobedience, and civil conflict; Thomas is a former prisoner, a surviving witness to mass torture, and a legal activist for human rights.

A recovering computer programmer, merged and acquired, out-sourced and off-shored, Tally is happy to be back writing full time.

She has published non- fiction in various newspapers including the Philadelphia Inquirer and fiction in ‘The Other Side,’ ‘Room of One’s Own,’ and ‘Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly,’ as well as current issues of ‘13th Moon’ and ‘PMS/poem-memoir-story.’ She is a recipient of a Leeway Foundation grant for study in fiction writing.

Using imagery and text Laureen reflects on, reenvisions and rewrites the history of a gender-centric society. Through processes of digital media, printmaking, encaustic, and sculpture her work contemplates and questions censorship and collective memory while examining sociopolitical discourses. Approaching art-making as subjective, not objective, Griffin, questions the meaning of female and/or feminine in society throughout history and within various cultural contexts. Laureen restructures imagery and texts to reflect contemporary ideologies on gender. Stylistically, the final pieces range from abstract surrealism to documentary.

Committed to her creative desires as an artist and to confronting her own subjectivity, she is intrigued with society’s ability to displace women and feminine identity. She attempts to create work that translates her personal perspective while also including biographical and historical truths. Currently, she is exploring how society represents and displaces gender queerness and femaleness vs. how we experience our own image of self. In Griffin’s artistic endeavors, works of art are created as community projects, works on paper, sculpture, digitally manipulated photography and video.

Being especially intrigued by the women who are little known and/or misrepresented by popular culture, Laureen’s research in herstory has revealed how censorship functions as a means of oppression. Most recently her research is focusing on stories from gender queer individuals. Her goal is to substitute apriori assumptions of gendered behavior and personal aesthetics with a belief system open to new possibilities.

Originally from Germany and trained as an architect, Martina has taught design for six of her ten years in practice and is currently pursuing her interests in object theatre. She creates puppet theatre for adult audiences to address contemporary issues and advocate social change and awareness.

Martina has designed puppets and prototypes for Mum Puppettheatre; Philadelphia, Slingback Productions; New York City, The Children’s Theatre Company; Minneapolis and the International Opera Theater; Italy. Her masks have been in juried exhibitions. In 2006 she earned a prestigious two-year Theatre Communication Group grant; New Generations: Future Leaders Round 6. The Saskatchewan Craft Council and International Turning Exchange awarded Martina international residencies for 2006 and 2008 respectively. In June 2007, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center showcased Martina’s “from the shadows” piece at their puppetry conference. Her experimental short film, mantra, was granted participation in the 2006 Philadelphia International GLBT Film Festival. She is a founding member of the artist collective transgression.

A free-lance photographer and occupational therapist, living in Philadelphia PA, Ellen works mostly with black and white film, printing in traditional darkroom, but has recently incorporated color and digital into her newest bodies of work. She is a member of National Association of Women Artists and InLiquid, both juried membership organizations. Her work has received recognition through exhibitions and juried competitions throughout the country.

Rosenberg’s photographs examine a relatively invisible subculture, bodybuilding. The audience is exposed to a world of highly defined muscles, and gender bending ambiguity. Body builders blur the lines of gender. Rosenberg shoots on black and white negative film. To maintain the natural aspect of her work, she pushes 400 speed film to allow the required light to reflect on the muscles and enhance the contrast. The photographs are taken during competitions on stage and do not involve any formal posing or special lighting.