How This Nonbinary Michigan Artist’s Feel-Good Sculpture Reflects a Life in Bloom
With their Detroit Month of Design sculpture, Quinn Faylor is exploring a new artistic horizon

A super bloom is a phenomenon where an abundance of wildflowers blossom in the desert simultaneously. These events are rare and often symbolize transformation.
For Quinn Faylor, a 29-year-old Detroit-based non-binary artist, that unique blossoming also symbolizes their life and how they see themself as an artist.
“During a super bloom, so many things will blossom that usually, in a normal season, you would never see. So it’s how the land responds and is overflowing with abundance. And for me, this feels like the point of blossoming and letting everything you’ve worked toward reveal itself,” Faylor tells Pride Source.
Faylor considers themself a painter, printmaker and muralist. Recently, though, Faylor decided to try their hand at a new medium: sculpture.
Their exhibit, “Super Bloom,” is currently on showcase at Playground Detroit through Oct. 5 as part of Detroit Month of Design. “Super Bloom” is an exhibition of meticulously crafted 3D sculptures and paintings created in “abundant and saturated colors that are grounded in what feels good to me,” says Faylor.
Faylor says the piece, which they created through processes including computer numerical control (CNC) and lap joinery manufacturing that they learned themself, symbolizes the exploration of self through the modular shapes and the use of no hardware, representing balance and trust within your own body.
“Emotionally, the body of work is very much an extension of myself and inspired by relationships in my life as I consider them acts of fantasy, acts of voice, acts of body and how we as queer people can find ways of inhabiting our body and connecting with others that maybe we’ve never seen modeled before,” they say.
As Faylor’s partner, David McGuffie has witnessed her personal and artistic evolution firsthand and says “Super Bloom” is a clear representation of Faylor and who they are as an artist right now.
“This body of work represents a specific side of Quinn that is currently in bloom. It’s a beautiful thing to see translated into this medium,” he says. McGuffie also says the movement within the piece feels like a celebration of dance, another artistic medium Faylor uses for self-expression.
“Super Bloom” consists of 23 pieces, each containing multiple shapes within it, making it an “assemblage of continuous parts.” Faylor says the totality of the work mirrors life.
“There are so many chapters and parts inside me, inspired by being queer, moving through my own gender journey, and how that is kind of an undulating state. It presents itself in different ways on different days, and I’m just trying to move toward a soft, resilient space inside myself where things don't have to be fixed,” says Faylor.
Faylor is a self-taught artist who grew up in Petoskey and always felt drawn to abundance in nature, whether it was in the woods or near the shore of Lake Michigan. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2016, they moved to Detroit to chase the nourishing feeling art gave them.
“Art was always the thing that made me feel the best,” they say. Through college, Faylor made collages and painted on t-shirts as a reprieve. When they realized art made them feel better than anything else, they decided to pursue it intentionally.
While Southeastern and Northern Michigan can feel like a world away from each other, Faylor says living in Detroit has taught them how to notice more.
“There’s an abundance of nature here as well; it just looks a little different,” they say. “I’m now noticing what is growing in the sidewalk cracks or in the field across from my house. Michigan is very much in my bones, and Detroit is where I’ve really come into myself.”

Faylor appreciates that Detroit as a city supports the arts. There are spaces and communities eager to celebrate art and support people pursuing their passions. Detroit is even where Faylor says they remember seeing a large-scale mural for the first time.
Since then, Faylor has created various murals across Michigan, as well as in San Francisco and Tokyo. In 2022, they were an artist-in-residence with the Glen Arbor Arts Center and the Salt Spring Arts Council in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. They were also an artist-in-residence with City Walls in Detroit from 2022-2023.
Now, Faylor is one of Playground Detroit’s 2024 recipients of the Emerging Artist Fellowship, which brings emerging local artists mentorship opportunities and offers $5,000 to support their artistic endeavors. Faylor says without the fellowship, “Super Bloom” may not have come together.
“Being self-taught, I don’t really know how the big world of art galleries operates. Having professional mentorship will be really major for me because I haven’t had that before. But this art show wouldn’t have been possible without the fellowship. It’s so cool to have Playground Detroit believe in this piece. It’s validating that others wanted to see it exist, so I’m very grateful for that,” says Faylor.
Playground Detroit director Paulina Petkoski says the contemporary art gallery is excited to see Faylor using a new-to-them technique to explore who they are as an artist.
“It feels like a critical point in Quinn’s career where they’re exploring a new medium and three-dimensional work, and the fellowship prioritizes supporting artists at a critical point in their careers,” says Petkoski.
Faylor says working on this piece feels like a jumping off point into a new world and point of view.
“I’m trying my best,” says Faylor, “but I think it is significant and it’s nice to just be myself and feel safe enough to be myself.”