About Karly

Hi. I’m Karly (they/she)

I make art from the constellation of stories and identities that live in my bones.

I’m sapphic and nonbinary. I’m autistic and ADHD, shaped by complex trauma and chronic illness. I’m a mystic and intuitive channel, with a heart that stays beating thanks to my pacemaker. I live in the American South, where being queer and disabled feels like a complicated love story. I hold this land in deep reverence and learn from her wisdom. I’m also a clinical social worker who refuses to pretend the system isn’t broken.

I’m a contradiction, but at least that part is consistent.

This is where I create from. This is what I know.

I’m working on a poetry collection in progress called Burning (Out) and Becoming. It’s a body of poems and writings that came out of autistic burnout and collapse. Some of it lives here on this site.

I host Sapphic and Spiritual, a podcast that started as an exploration of queerness as a spiritual path and turned into a mix of mysticism, historical context, grief, social justice, and whatever else I was metabolizing at the time. It’s resting right now, but it’s not over. Season 2 is coming soon!

I make digital art, write reflections, build spells and meditations, and offer intuitive guidance that’s centered in both inner and collective liberation. I consider myself to “work” for the Great Mother and feel most at peace co-creating with nature spirits. Trees are some of my dearest companions. I believe spirituality and liberation work are one and the same. My work is grounded in disability justice, queer and trans liberation, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist politics, and solidarity with Palestine and all people resisting occupation and empire. I don’t experience my politics as separate from my spirituality, my queerness, my trauma, or my art.

I’m lucky to have a wife who feels like a safe space and three animal children who fill our days with cuteness and chaos. I am a crazy cat parent who starts each morning with a tarot reading. I’m fascinated by patterns in nature. My camera roll is 90% water and trees. Music and singing have always been lifelines. I have a guilty pleasure for bad reality TV. I’m always changing and also very stuck in my patterns. I make meaning out of everything. I’m more comfortable in depth than almost anything else. I have a bad habit of wanting to delete everything I’ve ever made. I struggle to trust permanence. I’m learning to be present and am starting to love my own weirdness.