CH: Over the last few years there has been a huge renaissance of young southern artists, do you enjoy being a part of the movement?
EC: Yes, I love it! I’ve definitely seen the southern visual come back, I really love seeing all the moss and white dresses. It’s cool.

CH: A relationship with the church and Christianity is there throughout your work. There’s also a lot of witchy and Satanic references – what is your relationship with all of these?
EC: I definitely love the spookiness of it all, but for me, the real spook factor isn’t so much with Satan or the witchiness, it’s very much in God. I know some of it at face value looks very culty – the candles, and all that. But for me, the true terror comes in God. When you grow up in the church everyone tells you that you have to fear God. Before you love him you have to fear him. Satan to me has never been that scary, he’s just the devil. God has all power, he is all-powerful. He is the overarching and looming face in the darkness. That’s very much what God felt like to me growing up, the person who’s always watching and you can never get away from. And that to me was terrifying. That’s where I’m at. I think Satan and all that is kind of a cheap facade – if you want the real scary shit you gotta go with God.

CH: I feel like there’s a total rejection of God and specifically a Christian God in queer spaces.
EC: Whether I like it or not, God always has and always will be a huge part of my life. Whether he’s being used as a comforting figure or a threat, I’ve always been surrounded by it. It’s not really something you can walk away from. And I’d rather just sit with it than be like, “Fuck the church!” Especially in super southern Christian environments, everything is about God. I definitely have been accused of it being a gimmick, or that I’m cheapening Christianity. It’s funny talking about this in light of everything that’s happening on Twitter with Lil Nas X, but I don’t feel like there’s ever been a space for queer people to discuss the impact that it had on them, for better or worse. We have just as strong of an emotional connection to the church, and more often than not that connection is not positive. They say that artists should create from the heart, this is what’s in there.

CH: What you’re doing seems very authentic.
EC: I will say, I’ve definitely had a lot of people talk about the comparisons to the Catholic Church to what I do, and I always tell them – I have nothing to do with the Catholic Church, I am Southern fucking Baptist!

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