&: The Art You Make

This section of City Arts is reserved specially for locally made art that translates well into two dimensions. This month’s theme celebrates the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. A showcase of performance, visual and literary arts, SEAF puts a new spin on experiencing erotic art, one that encourages open-mindedness, education, safety and – despite some of the heavier subject matter – laughter. Highlighting some of the winners from last year’s lineup, we give just a hint of what you might encounter this year. Works by Emily Pothast and Jennifer Zwick make you do a double take, an excerpt of a cheeky screenplay by Vivien Lim gets your motor running and, finally, an original essay by Sharon Arnold reflects on her work as guest curator in the visual art showcase last year.

VISUAL ART

Emily Pothast, Cauda Pavonis I, 2009, collage and drawing, 16 x 16 inches

ESSAY

AS IT SHOULD BE
by Sharon Arnold

If i have one ambition for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, it’s to upend the notion that erotic art exists only for a fringe audience. 

Art history shows us that the subject of sex has always been relevant: Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa, Rodin’s Kiss and Manet’s Olympia, to name a few. The sexual themes in art have changed along with the way sex was perceived throughout cultural history. We see these perceptions changing still, as evident in the work of contemporary artists Leigh Bowery, Cindy Sherman, John Currin, Kara Walker, Marilyn Minter, the Chapman Brothers and Ghada Amer. More than ever, a new take on aesthetic and philosophical eroticism is a credible and significant theme to explore in any creative medium. After all, we live in a society in which the public is barraged by mainstream media sources, in which ads by the likes of Levi’s, Reebok and Carl’s Jr. rely on sex to sell consumer products. Which is more offensive, Cecily Brown’s highly sexual yet beautifully painted and formally breathtaking pieces of rutting bodies full of pleasure, sensuality and joy, or Miller Beer’s commercial featuring mud-slinging females in a cat fight, in which the women move from fully dressed to their underwear in the span of a single minute? The commercial we accept without question; the art we deem socially uncomfortable.

Last year I was honored to be chosen as the Seattle Erotic Art Festival guest curator for a show within the show, if you will, separate from the rest of the juried works and those of the annual festival-invited artists who show up year after year. In that role, I challenged twenty-five artists – Joey Veltkamp, Gretchen Bennett, Troy Gua, Robert Hardgrave, Jennifer Zwick, Emily Pothast and Kim Trowbridge among them – to push their work beyond obvious perceptions of eroticism and to help mark a shift in the festival’s misunderstood reputation of pushing porn (or “bad art” belonging only to a fringe crowd) to one of engaging viable contemporary art. 

There are few erotic art shows in the country that strive as hard as SEAF to comb through every piece of work, ensuring all perspectives are represented and all the patrons walk away with something they can relate to. The jury is selected to include pairs of eyes involved in different facets of the art community, and performances are curated to showcase a wide range of theatre: from highbrow plays to bawdy burlesque.

I think the biggest challenge for me, as a curator, was working with more abstract pieces. Having strongly identified with the struggles that arose from applying an erotic theme to disparate art forms, I talked with artists a lot about landscape and the body and how self-referential our work always is – something which, as it turns out, is a natural launching pad for erotic works. Many artists I spoke with found themselves having some kind of inner dialogue along these lines and had a lot of fun with the work they put in the show. I’d like to think I helped build a bridge between two formerly distant artist communities – and audiences – and opened a door to free expression on a fun but taboo subject. 

SEAF is gaining momentum among artists in Seattle’s more mainstream art community. This year I have been invited by guest curator Chris Crites to put my money where my mouth is and push my own aesthetic limits, along with local talents Charles Krafft, Joey Bates, Cable Griffith, Shaun Kardinal, Erin Frost and Daniel Carrillo, among others. I’m excited to be in such good company as we strut our conceptually sexy stuff on the walls, and I’m also more than certain the challenge will continue to fuel our own work outside the Festival.

As I said of the festival last year, it isn’t necessary to like all the work you’ll see – in fact, I guarantee you won’t – but you have to acknowledge its dynamic progression towards something positive. This event provides a safe haven of acceptance, encouragement and celebration and proves every year to be a joyful, provocative, surprising and challenging experience, as art should be. •

VISUAL ART

Jennifer Zwick, Asscape, archival inkjet print, 12 x 16 inches

ESSAY

AN EXCERPT FROM
PULSERATOR
by Vivien Lim

In which a door-to-door salesman has just convinced a housewife to let him into her home to demonstrate the powers of his latest vacuum cleaner model.

Housewife: So your life on the road is more than just gunk and grime?

Salesman: Wha ... ? (confused.)

Housewife: Down in people’s rugs.

Salesman: Oh, right ... Yes, indeed. My line of work has a lot to recommend it.

Housewife: Like being a missionary. 

(Seeing he’s confused again.) For the progress of technology.

Salesman: Why, yes. I guess you could just say that.

Housewife: Well, what are you waiting for, minister. Preach!

Salesman: (Turns the motor of the vacuum on for one second – vroom – then off.) It’s the Pulserator that will do the preaching. (Vroom, off, vroooooom, held for several seconds, then off.) Do you hear that power?

Housewife: Sounds to me like it could do a powerful lot of sucking.

Salesman: Pulsing and sucking.

Housewife: Better yet.

Salesman: (Tips the base of the vacuum up forty-five degrees.) Put your hand down there. (She kneels and puts her hand near the intake as he turns it on.) Can you feel how it shoots air out for a fraction, then sucks inward for a longer moment? (loudly.)

Housewife: Pu-Suuuuu. Pu-Suuuu. I can feel it, minister. I can feel it. (Shouting over the noise, as he turns it off.)

Salesman: Now. Get your eye down low to the floor. (Butt in the air, she puts her cheek on the rug. He lowers the intake area so it’s cocked just off the floor and turns it back on.) Look closely. See all those little particles being zapped from the roots of the rug fibers? Before they suck up into the vacuum orifice – (she mostly suppresses a smirk trying to rise on her face and a guffaw) – and through the tubes to the bag. 

Housewife: (Genuine awe.) My golly. I mean, praise the Lord. I see it. Itty-bitty particles dancing around. Bouncing like ping-pong balls up into the air. (Cocks her head in his direction.) Then snared away, like on a thin rubber band, into the tube.

Salesman: (Smiling, turning off machine.) We at Knuteson Inc. never lie.

Housewife: Well ... you certainlay don’t exaggerate. 

Salesman: Tell it like it is. That’s our motto.

Housewife: (Still on her knees, she stretches her head up toward him.) Well, I’m not convinced. (Her robe has fallen open to its knotted sash at her stomach. He seems not to notice, or is too polite to notice, her décolleté and nearly transparent bra, with her nipples evident as shape and darkly visible through the thin fabric.) I have a test of my own I’d like to put your Pulserator to. Is that okay with you, Mr. Wilberton Jr.?

Salesman: Pulserator is up to any task a housewife might put a vacuum cleaner to, Mizzz Trasket ...

Housewife: Mirabelle. (Sits back on her ankles, gazing up.)

Salesman: ... Mirabelle.

Housewife: The problem, Theodore ... is when I have to get at ... tricky places. You know, with one of those attachments? (He efficiently whips out a narrow attachment with a diagonal groove, twisting or clamping it into place, like a soldier clamping a magazine of ammo into his rifle.) The nooks and crannies of the couch or the curtains up near the rings. The bag gets half full and the machine never has power enough.

Salesman: (Listening carefully.) Check.

Housewife: So why should I believe Pulserator can do any better at those tricky jobs?

Salesman: Good question, Mirabelle. (Nods.) Name your test. (Opens the vacuum, exposing the bag. Pats it and nods again, indicating it’s about half full. Snaps the case shut with resolution, as if to say “ready to go.”)

Housewife: (Mischievous) Any test I say?

Salesman: Any test.

Housewife: (Sitting on her ankles, she twists her head this way and that. Her gaze passes the tea set, then returns to it.) The sugar test.

Salesman: The sugar test?

Housewife: Sure. Fine grains. Like dirt from the street?

Salesman: Ah, of course. And it’s white. So we will clearly see if Pulserator does not get it all. You have the makings of a scientist, Ms. Trasket.

Housewife: Thank you for saying so, Mr. Wilberton. (Pointing to the tea set.) Will you do the honors?

Salesman: (Walks over and picks up the sugar container.) Shall I sprinkle some on the table? (indicating the coffee table.)

Housewife: No.

Salesman: No, of course. We don’t wish to scratch the surface. How thoughtless of me.

Housewife: Mr. Wilberton, just place some in my hand. I wish to feel how strong the suction is.

He spoons a small, seemingly measured amount of sugar into her hand, which is outstretched like the hand of kneeling supplicant. She is kneeling but seated on her haunches. He puts the sugar bowl back down and picks up the nozzle of the vacuum.

Salesman: Are we ready?

Housewife: (Decisive nod.) Let ’er rip!

He creeps the attachment with the diagonal slit to within a couple inches of her hand. Vroom. Closes in to hand, dramatically slow. Arriving, moves it around the hand’s surface. Then, shuts it off.

Salesman: Well. How’d it do?

Housewife: (Peers at hand.) Well. Sugar’s all gone ... (Purses her lips together.) But the suction ... well, maybe my hands are too callused to feel properly, but ... I could hardly feel the suction. (Puts hand to her mouth, sucks in. Suuuuu.) A person’s mouth, I think, has more sucking power than your engine, Mr. Wilberton.

Salesman: Surely not!

Housewife: Let’s try it again. (Offers both hands this time.) Put sugar in each of my palms. (He lifts bowl and spoons an equal quantity into each of her hands, then sets bowl down.) Okay. Do Pulserator here. (Indicating one hand. He turns the machine on, moving it around a couple of seconds, then off.) Now. Use your mouth here. (Indicating other hand.) 

Salesman: I couldn’t do that!

Housewife: Oh. I’m sorry, Theodore. Are you on a diet?

Salesman: Ah, um. No. It’s not that. It’s just ... you know.

Housewife: Oh. Don’t be a prune. This is science. (He gulps.) Come on. (He tugs his face incrementally closer and closer.) Put your lips there. Pretend you’re a straw.

Salesman: (Glancing forward at her, he sets his lips down and does one quick pull, suuuuu, with eyes closed. Then pops back up and away.) Huh.

Housewife: (Inspecting) Sugar’s gone from both hands. (Shows him.) But my hands are so leathery ... I couldn’t tell much of anything.

Salesman: Your hand didn’t feel callused to me. I mean ... (She smiles sweetly at him.)

Housewife: Got to put it somewhere where my skin is softer. (Thinking. Pushes up sleeve of robe.) Theodore. Put some here. (Pointing to inside of arm halfway between wrist and elbow.)

Salesman: (Dubiously.) Okay ... (Dishes some sugar onto her arm. Most of it slides off. The eyes of both look to the rug.)

Housewife: Get that, Theodore. Would you?

Salesman: (Quickly vrooms the rug over and over in one spot. Then the remainder on her arm. Then quiet.) Think I got it all. •