I am a superhero. I have many talents. One of my hidden talents is that I am a painter, as in, brushes and paint and canvases. I keep this fairly hidden, as I don’t particularly care about being a successful painter, I really just sometimes need to get my thoughts out in color and visual imagery, as opposed to words and thinking all the time.
A while back I worked on a series of giant portraits of women who practised the occult circa 1900, but in between these portraits I did a series of very large erotic pieces. These were on found pieces of wood, mostly plywood, about four feet tall. I’d scavenge them out of trash piles and dumpsters, then take them home and layer on the paint, and other mixed media, such as nails, staples, images ripped out of fetish magazines and painted onto, etc. They were made about the time I got involved with SRL, and included lots of machinery and S/M overtones.
A few years ago, at the request of coworkers, I brought my erotic pieces to work and hung them in the Marketing department, where I work. They stayed up for years in coworker’s cubicles, even surviving regime changes at GV — when I almost did not. Today, my paintings were taken down and turned around, so no one can see them. They can no longer be displayed. You see, someone complained to the management that they were offended by the images, were made in fact "sexually uncomfortable by the violent sexual imagery" in them. Also today, the art show I put together, pictures of the Extra Action Marching Band from Good Vibes’ pride parade 2002 came down from the walls of the Valencia St. store, where they have been happily showing for a month. Many in my department wanted to put these images up too, in the department and possibly in the front office, because we’re so proud of the images, the band, and our success. But now, we are not allowed to.
I am beside myself. My artwork is much less graphic than the porn we carry. Much less violent than a walk by the newsstand. I just can’t fathom that I work in a place that triumphs freedom of speech, especially freedom of diverse sexuality, anti-censorship, and seeks the freedom to someday be able to sell fisting videos in every state of the union, yet takes down its own employees’ artwork for making another employee "sexually uncomfortable." I’d understand (the discomfort, but not the censorship) if there were little kids in the paintings, animals or dripping bloody limbs being inserted into bound puppies, or the worst — Dick or Lynne Cheney naked. The horror. I might barf.
Does anyone go to museums anymore? Guess what — it’s not safe out there, or anywhere, if you want to avoid seeing something that offends you. Life is a stocking stuffed with candy and hand grenades, my friends. I work in a sex shop, for fuck’s sake, and so does the person who was sexually threatened by the images. How is it that so many of the people who get hired to work at a sex toy company are so fucking uptight in one way or another? Maybe take my paintings down because they suck. But not because they’re being art in its most effective sense — provocative, thoughtful, causing feelings of all kinds (including enjoyment — one member of the department was so saddened the paintings were leaving they offered to buy them all so they could still see them at home). I had to take my paintings home tonight.
It’s like politically correct lockdown. Maybe they should just hang an $8000 curtain over them.
