Rising Stars: Meet Iden Crockett of Yellow Springs OH

Today we’d like to introduce you to Iden Crockett.

Hi Iden, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My name is Iden. I am a 46 year old trans fem artist/writer/poet and activist as well as a parent of three and partner to my wife of 24 years. If you had asked 18 year old Iden where she would be when she was 46 she would have gotten it nearly 100 percent wrong.
I grew up in a family of artists so, naturally, I shunned art completely and went to flight school. I still enjoyed and appreciated art but I had no physical skills and no desire to make art. I was obsessed with airplanes and wanted to be a pilot so that was where I went with a quick side quest my senior year in highschool to become an EMT.
EMS was something that I loved and eventually that love overtook my love of flying. I began to work as a paramedic to pay for flight school and after graduating I put piloting on the shelf and began a career as a firefighter/paramedic.
That job was amazing but it came with a cost. My mental health took a big hit as a first responder. I developed PTSD, but like I did with all of the big confusing feelings I had, I ignored that. I ignored it until I could no longer ignore it.
By the time I reached out for help I was suffering pretty badly. I had an eating disorder and was cutting myself multiple times a day. My anxiety was making it difficult for me to be a parent and a partner and I was losing my grip on what was real. It was during that time that I developed a compulsion to make art.
I didn’t know how to paint or draw but i could make collages. So I did and I began to teach myself to draw with the help of youtube.
In the meantime, I found a therapist and she absolutely saved my life. My symptoms settled down and I began to listen to those big feelings that I had shut away. Chief among those was this feeling that I hated being a man. I wasn’t happy with my body, but more than that, I just didn’t feel comfortable hanging with dudes. I had a few friends but I always preferred to be with women. I loved everything about women, the clothes the friendships all of it.
I didn’t understand why, but when I was alone I started to try on my wife’s underwear and robes. It wasn’t until I was standing in front of the mirror, fully dressed as a woman, that it hit me. I was transgender.
I was 41 years old. I was married with three kids. I was a bald headed, hairy chested, fireman with a body like an NFL running back, and I knew absolutely nothing about transgender people. All I knew was that I had never felt happy before this day and that that happiness might cost me everything in my life.
I didn’t lose my wife or my family but I did lose my job. The fire dept rejected me and ran me out on false disciplinary charges. That was devastating to me. For nearly twenty years that had been my home and those had been my brothers and sisters. I didn’t know what to do. That’s when it hit me.
I made art, that made me an artist. I wrote things, that made me a writer. I decided to stand up and share that work with the world. I decided to stop hiding from myself and my feelings and step fully out of the closet and into the light.
That decision has led me to all sorts of new adventures. Now I exhibit my art regularly, I have a newspaper column, I give interviews, I speak and read my poetry in front of hundreds of people, and I have made wonderful new friends all around the world. Never would I have guessed where life would take me. Never. I don’t even have the same name or body that I thought I would. And never could I have imagined the joy I would feel looking in the mirror or the comfort of sharing myself with strangers.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has definitely not been a smooth road. My exit from the fire department was devastating. They went as far as to falsely acuse me assaulting a civilian. The police escorted me from my fire station, I had to hire an attorney and everything. The charges were dropped because they were ridiculous but they had already made the decision to force me out. I resigned my dream job and crawled away broken.
That process took months and was incredibly stressful. I fell back into my anorexia and began losing weight until I became so sick that my doctor threatened to take away my hormones. I developed a polysubstance abuse problem and eventually went back to cutting myself. All of that was while I was suddenly finding myself in the spotlight as a transwoman and as an artist. It was a lot, but I am sober now, my cuts have healed, I am eating, and back to work as a medic.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My visual artwork is primarily in mixed media/collage, both analog and digital. I also work a lot with pen/pencil as well as photography. I frequently combine my drawing and photography when I collage. My art and my writing are defined by an intensity of emotion and a commitment to vulnerability.
I try to work very intuitively. I never have a clear destination in mind when I begin a piece. I start with an image, either something that I found or a specific reference photo, and then I let it evolve. I only pay attention to fine tuning the technical aspects of a piece once it is well on its way to completion. Working from the subconscious in this way creates pieces that are full of motifs and repeating imagery, not all of which I understand.
I approach my writing the same way. A poem may start with just a single line that pops into my head. An essay may begin with my just having a story to tell and as I write it down I begin to see the larger lesson or thought that I want to share.
I take a lot of self portraits. I use these as stand alone pieces and as reference for my drawing. I love to photograph bands and musicians and do a lot of work with performers doing photoshoots, concert photography, and album covers.

What’s next?
I have turned a lot of my creative energy toward trying to combat and push back against the current regime’s policies of trans erasure. I launched what I hope will become an annual exhibition of gender non-conforming artists this past June in Yellow Springs titled Gender X. The idea with Gender X is to partner with area restaurants, cafes, etc to exhibit the art and the personal stories of the artists. I wanted to put this work and these people into spaces where someone who normally would not engage with the trans community would have a chance to see us as people and to understand the truth about us.
I also have started an archiving initiative that I am calling The Permanent Ink Project. The plan here is to solicit as many trans/enby stories as I can, assemble them into downloadable files and host them on my website. People all around the world can then download the stories, print hard copies, etc. The hope is that, no matter how bad things get here for us, no matter how thoroughly they try to supress us, our stories will survive. Like permanent ink, we will not be erased.
On the personal side, I continue to create and share my work. I am frequently subject to online censorship, so I created my own e-zine showcasing new work and poetry. The zine is called Trigger Warning and is available on my website and via my mailing list.
I am also the subject of a feature length documentary telling the story of my transistion that will be premiering this fall around the Dayton area.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mynameisiden.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/my_name_is_iden/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iden-crockett-5433b1276/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@mynameisiden797
• Other: https://www.idenfilm.com