This year, LAB SERIES has partnered with illustrator Cheyne Gallarde to create our “Proud to Be Me” campaign, which encourages everyone to explore and express their true, authentic self. On the illustrations, Gallarde says, “For these pride images, I wanted to feature men empowered by fierceness! When you are confident and comfortable in who you are, you can do anything.”

Pride month is a time for acceptance and self-love, and LAB SERIES stands in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community to support Pride not just this month, but every day.

LAB SERIES will also donate $10,000 to Asian Pacific Islander Equality – Los Angeles (API Equality-LA), a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights and racial justice organization.

About Cheyne Gallarde
Cheyne Gallarde was born and raised in Hawaii but has since relocated to San Francisco. His illustration work reimagines drag queens and queer people as the modern-day superheroes that the world needs today. Cheyne’s art is nostalgic, celebrating the printed aesthetic and grit of the secondhand comics he grew up with.

In 2020, Cheyne won a National Advertising Award for his MTV’s Video Music Awards Art. Cheyne was also a mural artist in the 2020 Pow!Wow! Festival and painted a 3-story mural dedicated to the LGBTQ drag queens of Hawaii. In addition, Cheyne’s cover art for Tom & Lorenzo’s “Legendary Children” was published by Penguin Books and voted one of the best books of 2020. When not illustrating, he loves to unwind by decorating his Animal Crossing island, binge-watching reality TV or chilling with his rescue dog Rocket.

About API Equality-LA
API Equality-LA was founded in 2005 to organize queer and trans API (QTAPI) individuals in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community for marriage equality in California. Since the legalization of same-sex marriage, API Equality-LA has worked on a variety of issues including bullying in schools, LGBTQ+ inclusion in school curriculum, immigration rights, access to health care, combatting Islamophobia, and transgender justice.

The API Equality-LA mission is to build grassroots community power by organizing API and LGBTQ+ communities to achieve LGBTQ+ equality and racial and social justice. The organization currently focuses on a range of API LGBTQ+ issues from mental health disparities, fighting against anti-Black and anti-Asian violence, and advocating for transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) inclusion and justice. API Equality-LA works to educate the public, change institutional policies and practices, and transform our communities by collaborating with queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and people of color (QTBIPOC) organizations and building a leadership pipeline for QTAPI youth.

API Equality-LA envisions an inclusive, equitable, and just society where all API LGBTQ+ people can thrive.