Nevertheless I Went Forth,
Gather Conference,
Lift + Love Foundation,
Utah Valley Convention Center, 2025

“Gather: A Lift + Love Event is dedicated to creating inspiring, educational, and affirming spaces for Latter-day Saint LGBTQ individuals, their families, and friends. Its primary mission is to foster a sense of belonging—to one another and to Jesus Christ” - Gather-Conference.com

In 2024 I was approached to work on an interactive experience for the conference that would be both faith and queer-experience affirming, based on my previous installation, Disparate Threads.

By necessity, all elements of this installation would need to be designed to work in a conference center hallway with only 2 hours of setup time. It was up both days of the event for conference attendees to wander through and interact with.

For the installation, attendees would enter a dark and quiet passageway. Throughout the passageway, there were lanterns that posed questions to reflect on, such as “when have you felt Divinely loved?” and “what have you gained that has helped you on your path?”

After making their way through, they would emerge into an enclosed, window-lit space with a real tree, dripping with rainbow and reflective strips, which cast rainbow light around the conference hall. Attendees would be invited to write their own “nevertheless” moment on one of the strips and add their story to the tree.

Nevertheless I Went Forth was made possible in collaboration with Javicci, as well as the wonderful volunteers on the Gather Conference Art Team.