Fynn Edmund Wadsworth
Illustrator | Writer | Comic Artist
Hi, my name’s fynn!
I’m a multi-media artist and writer from Iowa. My work is inspired by both the fantasy and horror genres, blending my love of magic, mysteries, and history all into one. Much of my personal work is inspired by my love of classic literature, and I try to include queer characters wherever I can.
Contact me at any of the links below!
“Tulips and Pansies: A Queer Hisotry of Central College” SJST Capstone
My 8 month long labor of love! This project was a Social Justice Studies minor capstone project that I extended into a much bigger project via securing a Summer Undergraduate Research grant through my college.
This project involved interviewing 4 notable LGBT+ alumni from Central in an effort to preserve their stories through a mixture of oral storytelling, archival research, and my own flair for narrative building and graphic novel writing.My alumni included Charles “Buck” Rogers (Class of 1970), Brad Clark (Class of 2003), Zachary Steward aka Miss Ivy LaVoix Principle (Class of 2017) and Sharden Boggs (Class of 2023).
This project was drawing on not only the alumni’s experiences being queer on campus, but also my own journey with LGBT+ history and a want (or even need) to see queer elders in the communities around me.The format also draws on queer history, being inspired by zine culture in early queer scenes throughout the 1900’s, and using a personally beloved motif long associated with queer people: pansies. This imagry was used to bring together my roots in queer communities as well as the Dutch community of Central through the flower tulips, and my own hometown’s connection to both pumpkins and famous landscape painter Grant Wood.My goal for this project was always accessibility to these stories, and while the print run was limited, you can download the full PDF file here for free.
This Kid Is Gonna Die Before Me. and Why Does Your Face Look Like That?
Senior Seminar Thesis Exhibit 2025
In these pieces, I’m drawing on my experiences existing as a chronically ill person through the intersections between illness, grief and family. These pieces together draw on textile traditions such as crochet, weaving, embroidery, and sewing in ways that evoke guts, skin, body parts, and surgical techniques. I wanted the repetition and slow-building nature of textiles to aid in a sense of intimacy, with an affronting presentation that gives a view into the complicated reality of being a sick child who made it into adulthood unexpectedly.In “This Kid Is Gonna Die Before Me.”, the chair is literally gutted, having textiles overlap, interweave, grow, and ultimately fester inside of each-other. While the chair serves as a stand in for my own body, the textiles serve as a simulation of gore, calling to the dissonance between my limited understanding of growing up sick and the visceral reality of my illness. The chair is presented as it would be in a home, giving a sense of familiarity and normalcy that is quickly ripped away as the back of the piece comes into view.
In “Why Does Your Face Look Like That?” I have put the textile gore on display, calling to both the physical and visual aspects of my illnesses, as well as the way my illness often went unspoken around me unless it was being scrutinized. The textures created by the stitches, buttons, and glitter evoke the textures found on my own body, and the canvases droop to one side to mimic the paralyzed side of my face when I look into a mirror. The visual connections between the innards of the chair being put on display in this piece considers the way by illness is neither visible nor invisible, but a frustrating mixture of the two.These pieces ask the viewer to consider what they see as “familiar.” The horrifying aspects of these pieces evoke aspects of my childhood, body, and identity that often shock and scare people, while to me they are as intrinsic to who I am as who raised me and the home I grew up in. These part of me are genetic, sewn into me, and will be carried with me until I die.Mills Gallery, Central College April 16th - May 9th 2025
Pella Historical Society Klokkenspel Restoration Project
2025 MLK Day “In Plain Sight” Gallery Show
Curated as an Art Collections Intern with
Dr. Susan Swanson, Professor Emerita of Art History at Central College
