Laurie says:

I’m delighted to have 2 of my nude portraits in Body, body, bodies, a feature exhibition of the 2014 National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco.

One is of my friend Tee Corinne (taken shortly before her death in 2006). Tee was a groundbreaking Lesbian erotic artist whose works included The Cunt Coloring Book, her solarized erotic photographs of lesbians,  and her remarkable final project Scars, Stoma, Ostomy Bag, Portacath: Picturing Cancer In Our Lives.

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The other is of Samuel R Delany, from my photo suite Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes. From his earliest books as a science fiction writer, his work included issues of sexuality, ethnicity, race and gender, including polyamorous love. He brought queerness into the future.

… It was at this point that Delany began dealing with sexual themes to an extent rarely equaled in serious writing. Dhalgren and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand include several sexually explicit passages, and several of his books such as Equinox (originally published as The Tides of Lust, a title that Delany does not endorse), The Mad Man, Hogg and Phallos can be considered pornography, a label Delany himself endorses.  (Wikipedia)

He was named a Grandmaster of Science Fiction at the Nebula Awards in San Jose earlier this month.
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The Bay Area has a long history of political activism that extends to this day. This history of civic engagement has nurtured visual art that pays special attention to the politics of the body as well as the body politic. For those who are denied access to traditional political means, or for those who voluntarily reject this, artists have used their own bodies as sites of political transformation or contestation.

Whether it is in performance art, installation, film/video, photography, or traditional media such as painting and drawing, artists use bodies (their own and others) as site, metaphor, and catalyst for change. This year’s exhibition presents 27 cutting edge artists who take on the body for your pleasure and edification.

This exhibition is produced by the Queer Cultural Center as a visual arts centerpiece of the National Queer Arts Festival 2014. This year’s festival theme is “Body Politic/s,” and more information about upcoming festival programming can be found here.

The opening is at the Somarts Gallery, 934 Brannan Street, in San Francisco on June 7th, from 2PM-5PM. I’ll be there and so will Deb.

5/29 – And there is a walk-through with curators and artists (open to the public) on June 14, 11am. And I’ll be there too.