Femina Potens

Suzanne Forbes Reception Friday May 22nd at Madame S

FP EDGE PRESENTS THE PORTRAITURE OF SUZANNE RACHEL FORBES OPENING RECEPTION TONIGHT AT MADAME S

FP Edge presents the work of painter Suzanne Rachel Forbes.   Forbes is a prominent and prolific force in the world of Fetish Art, working with acrylic on canvas to create “traditional portraiture for alternative lifestyles.”

Her work will also be presented at Madame S.  focuses on traditional portraiture with a fetish and gothic flavor, as well as allegories and narrative portraits.  The exhibit runs through July 12, 2009.  Please join us for an opening reception TONIGHT May 22, 7-9 pm.

Forbes was born and raised in Manhattan, and attended Parsons School of Design for two years, then finished her BFA at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in the Fine Art Program. She has worked as the courtroom artist for CBS Television, CNN and several newspapers, as the regular artist on DC Comics’ Star Trek, The Original Series, as a book illustrator and as a portraitist.  Her paintings, comic art and courtroom illustrations are in collections across the United States.  She lives in Berkeley with a large manatee-like cat. (www.suzanneforbes.com)

Visit http://www.fpedge.com for more information about Suzanne Forbes and other artists

For more information about the Center for Sex and Culturewww.sexandculture.org

For more information about Madame S. visit www.madame-s.com

May 12- July 12, 2009

Madame S:  Bondage, Fetish, and BDSM store

Opening Reception May 22, 7-9 pm

385 8th Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

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FP Edge is an artists’ network run by the Femina Potens Art Gallery, focusing on building relationships and recognition between cutting-edge LGBTQ and Erotic artists and artworks, venues and residents within the greater queer, feminist, wellness and sex positive communities. Based in the SF Bay Area, Edge connects a diverse range of artists with the businesses, collectors, exhibitions and other events searching out LGBTQI and erotic-themed works or commissioned pieces. The network also offers the support of the gallery’s marketing experience, artist and venue consultation services and a vast list of specialized contacts within the West Coast art scene. For more information please visit www.fpedge.com or call 415.864.1558

Madame S and Mr. S Leather are not only a physical store in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, but also an online bondage and BDSM store in business since 1979. Madame S and Mr. S are special when it comes to bondage and fetish gear because we make most of our products right here in the USA, unlike most of our competitors, which means, we make products that are by players for players and we specialize in Quality Bondage Gear including but not limited to the following: bondage toys, dildo harness, bondage restraint, BDSM toys, chastity belt, bondage collar, fetish gear, leather bondage, violet wand, bdsm gear, fetish clothing, BDSM clothing, sex machines, leather bondage sex gear, cock rings, bondage, cock toys (cock and ball toys, BDSM CBT, Male Chastity Devices), fetish sex toy, bdsm bondage, nipple clamp, nipple toy, dungeon furniture, fucking machines and other BDSM gear. Visit our online Adult Sex Toy Store (Bondage Store) for all your Adult Sex Store online shopping needs.

The Mission of the Center for Sex & Culture is to provide judgment-free education, cultural events, a library/media archive, and other resources to audiences across the sexual and gender spectrum; and to research and disseminate factual information, framing and informing issues of public policy and public health. We envision the day when people around the world are free from the stigmas and shame attached to sexuality. Rather, sexuality is recognized as a birthright and as our life-force energy. To attain such a lofty vision it is vital that the resources, educational, and cultural programming we offer reaches many. And while our programming aims to reach all adults, we look to support those engaged in teaching and working with youth around issues of sexuality.

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Femina Potens is located at 2199 Market St. at Sanchez, San Francisco, California 94114

Gallery Hours Thursday - Sunday Noon - 6pm.

http://www.fpedge.com

415-864-1558

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Femina Potens is a nationally recognized art gallery and performance space dedicated to the advancement of women and transgendered artists since 2001.

Sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center with support from California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Zellerbach Foundation and Grants for the Arts.  Femina Potens is a leading queer organization in San Francisco, and has been featured on the LOGO channel, Q-Television, Bitch, Bust, Spread, Brian Alexander’s book “America Unzipped”, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the San Francisco Chronicle where Violet Blue called Femina Potens, “the most happening art space in the city; a revolution in art and sex.”


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Femina Potens 
2199 Market Street (at Sanchez) San Francisco 415-864-1558

Femina Potens Announces a Writers Workshop for Women & Queers

WRITE HERE! WRITE NOW!

WRITERS’ WORKSHOP FOR WOMEN & QUEERS

Beginning the last week of May, Femina Potens will be offering an intensive writers’ workshop for women and Queers directed by the talented Beth Mattson.  The work shop will culminate in a reading performance with the National Queer Arts Festival on Thursday, June 25th. The theme of the workshop will be Identity, and poets and creative non-fiction authors are welcome if comfortable with the fiction writers’ perspective. Authors will meet for four weeks on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, starting on May 26th, from 7:00 - 10:00pm. The group will be capped at a total of nine authors, and there will be a flat fee of $80 to help cover the costs of the reading and workshop space. No one will be turned away for lack of funds, but contact the gallery quickly, as the first nine writers to make a deposit will be included in the workshop, and the rest will be placed on a waiting list.

To make a $20 deposit and reserve your place in June’s intensive Identity workshop, please purchase a Workshop Deposit Ticket as soon as possible at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/60371 (the remaining amount will be due on May 26th).

Please email Beth Mattson at fpwritersworkshop@gmail.com with questions, interest or sliding scale inquiries. And keep your literary eyes wide open - starting in July, Femina will also be offering broader, longer writers’ workshops.

Femina Potens Writers’ Workshop with Beth Mattson

May 26 - June 25, 2009

Femina Potens Art Gallery

Tickets: $80.00 sliding scale (No one will be turned away for lack of funds)

On Facebook? RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=109738657316

www.feminapotens.org

Art House Sluts Premiere Porn Screening

15 MINUTES OF FAME AT THE RED CARPET PREMIERE

“ART HOUSE” BY MADISON YOUNG

THURSDAY NIGHT!

Discover your 15 minutes of fame as you walk down the red carpet for this Warhol inspired premiere party and screening for Madison Young’s newest release “Art House”. Walk into our studio for a Nude Screen Test and become part of the San Francisco Art Porn Revolution. Dress as your favorite Warholian character as you watch queer porn inspired by The Factory phenomenon. Young melds art films with hot sex scenes creating one of the most avante garde and visceral queer features of the decade.

Expect more from your pornography - Join us at Femina Potens Art Gallery and be the first to see Madison Young’s “Art House” on May 14, 7pm. Join us for a panel with the stars of Art House including Madison Young and Sadie Lune.

“Art House Sluts” Queer Porn Screening

May 14, 2009 -7pm

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market Street

San Fancisco, CA 94141

$10-15 sliding scale

Limited seating availability. Pre purchase your ticket today with Brown Paper Ticketing

For more information please visit feminapotens.org

On Facebook? RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/event.php?eid=81774203617&ref=nf

*This is an 18+ event

Become a Femina Potens Member today and help sustain community arts! You will receive tons of membership perks including free SIZZLE tickets, VIP After Party Invites to meet artists, and discounts and previews on all art exhibits. JOIN NOW!

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Femina Potens is a nationally recognized art gallery and performance space dedicated to the advancement of women and transgendered artists since 2001.

Sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center with support from California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Zellerbach Foundation and Grants for the Arts. Femina Potens is a leading queer organization in San Francisco, and has been featured on the LOGO channel, Q-Television, Bitch, Bust, Spread, Brian Alexander’s book “America Unzipped”, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the San Francisco Chronicle where Violet Blue called Femina Potens, “the most happening art space in the city; a revolution in art and sex.”

Volunteering for Art of Restraint

Femina Potens is seeking volunteers for our quarterly Art of Restraint event on Saturday. We’re looking for;

• People to help set up the event
• Someone to loan us fabric for the evening
• And lastly someone with mad interior design skillz to make the gallery look sexy on Saturday

Can you help? Email fpdevelopment (at) gmail.com

Art of Restraint feat. Lorelei Lee, Fivestar, & surprise celebrity guest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Malia Schlaefer, feminapotenspress@gmail.com

GIVE INTO YOUR DEEPEST DESIRES AND INDULGE IN EROTIC DECADENCE AT FEMINA POTENS ART GALLERY ‘ART OF RESTRAINT’

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 16, 2009 - 8PM. Last February Femina Potens hosted a sold-out evening of erotic debauchery at the first ever ‘Art of Restraint’ bondage art Salon.  On May 16th 2009 the doors of Femina Potens Art Gallery will open at 7:30pm once again. This time you will have your ticket in hand, rather than just watching all the excited patrons line up and patiently wait as they are escorted on the red carpet into a night of true decadence and erotic debauchery. You will be one of those happy attendees watching as bodies are manipulated into erotic bondage art installations and beautiful bound submissives offer you champagne, sweet strawberries and dark chocolates, listening to the music from one of San Franciso’s hottest DJs.  In our small intimate setting you are not only witnessing the bondage art that they are creating, but you are a part of it. You are standing side by side with celebrity bondage artists, models, and porn stars.

Step inside and experience rope cinching tight into eager flesh as bodies struggle and dance in the air in an erotic ballet of dominance and submission. Be present as we explore together the Freedom through Bondage. Witness our brave and unyielding artists as they ask themselves and their viewers “how we can find freedom for our spirits to soar when our bodies are given over fully to the restraints of bondage?  And what holds us in place when nothing but our Master or Mistresses’ voice has wrapped us in bonds? Some of the most skilled rope artists and bondage experts in the country have gathered in this close gallery setting to meld art and bondage to intertwine submission and empowerment in a dynamic exchange between two people and an audience starving for connection.   Doors will be locked at 8pm sharp, placing you in the center of a hot avant-garde bondage scene.  Welcome to the second edition of Art of Restraint.

This May’s Art of Restraint will feature rope artists Lew Rubens, Lochai, James Mogul, and Fivestar. Award winning suspension model and Indie Porn Pioneer of the year, Madison Young, as seen on MTV, Independent Film Channel and Curve Magazine.  The sexy and smart AVN nominated Lorelei Lee will be bound for your ultimate pleasure. Raina Degrey, Christina Horn and Mo will be our dedicated service submissives, constantly pleasing us with sweet treats, sparkling beverages and boot blacking. Erotic Performance Art by Sadie Lune. We are delighted to be joined by a special Celebrity Guest who was born and raised here in San Francisco, and is now a famous comedienne. Visual art installations by Tom Cat of Kink.com, a Steam Punk Powered  Vibrator installation, and  an antique collection of vibrators brought to you by the Center for Sex and Culture. Live drawings by Suzanne Forbes. Through rope bondage and erotic performance the performers will be delving into an exploration of how physical and mental restraint creates freedom.  Our performers will utilize rope, metal, flesh, and other articles of choice that play with the juxtaposition of freedom and restraint indulgence and self-control.

Lights out at 11pm sharp…unless you are fortunate enough to be a Femina Potens Member.  Members of Femina Potens will be invited to stay for after hours with the artists and models.  To become a member go to the Donate button on www.feminapotens.org and follow the prompts.  All levels of membership will get you into this sexy after hours event. This will be an evening of decadence and erotic debauchery.  Champagne, strawberries, chocolate, beautiful women, shibari, restraint, and groundbreaking art. Come be a part of what the SF Gate called “The Most Happening Art Space in San Francisco”.

‘Art of Restraint Erotic Rope Bondage Art Salon

Femina Potens Art Gallery

2199 Market St @ Sanchez

May 16, 2009 @ 8:00 - 11:00 pm

Doors open at 7:30pm

Doors locked at 8:00pm sharp -  no ins and outs

$100.00 per ticket

$75 for Members - Sign up to become a member today

For more information please visit www.feminapotens.org

This event will sell out.  Advanced online ticket purchase is highly recommended through Brown Paper Ticketing: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/57876

See the video from the first ‘Art of Restraint’ by clicking here.

Become a Femina Potens Member today and help sustain community arts!  You will receive tons of membership perks including free SIZZLE tickets.   JOIN NOW!

On Facebook? RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=76357108130&ref=nf

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Madison Young , your kinky girl next door, is making waves in feminism one orgasm at a time with her award winning queer production company Madison Young Productions (www.madisonbound.com) and her award winning nationally recognized art gallery and performance space Femina Potens (www.feminapotens.org).  Femina Potens is a sex positive art gallery and performance space dedicated to women and transgendered artists.  Madison the world with her sex positive performances, workshops, panels, art work and readings from her upcoming memoir “The Tail of a Bondage Model”.  Madison ‘s writings have been published in On Our Backs and Girlfriends Magazine and can also be found in the anthology “Baby Remember My Name”.   Madison has been featured on MTV’s LOGO channel program Out and About, the documentary Lesbian Sex and Sexuality Porn Today: Pushing the Limits, and was featured in Brian Alexander’s recent book release “America Unzipped”.

James Mogul created the bondage photography web site NawaShibari.com and is the director of Kink.com’s MenInPain.com and theTrainingOfO.com sites. He is an amazing rigger and top, a captivating instructor and a serious photographer. James launched his kinky career in Seattle, where he played, taught and developed content for NawaShibari.com. James conceived of and produced the groundbreaking Artbound I and II events in 2000.

Experienced rigger and suspension artist, Lew Rubens has a love and passion of bondage that shows in his work. Known mostly for his wild suspensions, Lew joined the public side of BDSM play spring of 2001 and started his website, BoundNDetermined.com.   A few years later Kink.com made him an offer he couldnt resist and he began running Waterbondage for them from winter 2006, through spring 2008.  At that time moving into a “Bondage Consultant” position for the prestigous company. On his own again now, Lew has plans to revive Boundndetermined.com and well as starting excitingf new sites LewRubens.com and Lewbari.com. as well as contracting his Bondage Consulting knowledge abroad. Lew has presented his workshops and demos of his unique style at many BDSM and bondage industry events throughout the US, Canada, Jamaica and Germany.

Although he’s been part of the public kink scene for thirteen years, Lochai has been exploring kink and fetish since he was a six year old riding the school bus when he tied up his first “girlfriend”. Since those humble beginnings, Lochai has built up an impressive resume not only as an award winning photographer, but also as a renowned bondage rigger, educator, and stalwart of the greater BDSM CommUNITY. It’s no surprise that in August of 2008, he was picked by kink.com, one of the most respected companies in the adult entertainment industry, to spearhead their flagship site, hogtied.com. Lochai’s iconic photo, “Beach Bound,” had the distinction of being judged “The World’s Most Erotic Photograph” by Erotic Signature. “Beach Bound” also has the distinction to be in the permanent collection of The Leather Archives in Chicago as well as in the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami. His work has been published in such publications as British Journal of Photography, World’s Greatest Erotic Art of Today Vol. I & II, Secret, Skin Two, Bizarre, Prometheus, Cherry, A Magazine, Fetish Anthology, and Extreme Anthology as well as his own fine art photography books. He brings the same flair and energy to his rope work, whether he’s performing or teaching erotic rope, photography and bdsm lifestyle classes at any number of national kink events. As an educator and organizer, Lochai is fiercely dedicated to his CommUNITY. He helps monitor and organize online communication platforms such as the AlternativePresenters.com, which he created, and freely shares his skills and knowledge to rope enthusiasts and photographers of all experience levels and from all walks of life. You can view his photography at http://www.kirinawa.com

Lorelei Lee is a student, writer, and porn performer. She has appeared in over 200 BDSM, queer, and mainstream adult films.  Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Transfer, $pread Magazine, Animal Shelter, and Denver Quarterly.  She has been nominated for three AVN awards and has received both a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts YoungARTS scholarship and the Bishop Award for Best Tit-Tortured Model 2005.  She has toured nationally with the Sex Workers’ Art Show, and has been featured in such performance festivals and reading series as the National Queer Arts Festival, LitQuake, Femina Potens’ SIZZLE, and the Bay Area Poetry Marathon.

Rain Degrey is a fetish/bondage model, artist, and writer. She has appeared in a number of books and magazines, including Charles Gatewood’s “Messy Girls” and “Photography For perverts”. In her film and performance work she has shot for Kink.com and Twisted Factory, as well as performing for the SF fetish ball. Always inspired by rope and pretty girls, she is currently being mentored to become a rope Top.

Always a literalist, Dusty Horn has taken the act of making a name for herself to absurd lengths. As a porn performer and practitioner of professional BDSM for over two years, she goes by Christina Mabry Horn, and you can call her Tina if you’re lucky. Vast legions of bike punks and DIY rockers know her by a monosyllabic moniker referencing her resemblance to a 14-year-old English schoolboy. As for what they call her when she’s at home, only her attorney knows for sure. Horn earned her BA in modern literature from UCSC and King’s College London which may go some way towards explaining the Marxist-feminist-paraliterary critical theory slant, and also the body hair. Among her accomplishments are writing for Mcsweeney’s the Believer, penning, publishing, and distributing her nominal sex worker memoir zine, releasing her former band’s 7inch on her own label, booking three punk tours, and getting DP’d alongside a who’s-who cast and crew of erotic artists and activists in her very first porno, Layover. Her double life as a social worker and volunteer for a variety of non-profits and art galleries keeps her honest. She is a show business impresario, an urban cowboy cyclist, a part-time hippie, a loud fast and loose drummer, and a face-melting wah rhythmn guitarist. A hopeless rambler, Horn currently sets up shop in the San Francisco East Bay and cannot begin to tell you how badly she could use a spanking right about now.

Sadie Lune is a pleasure activist, bizarre and erotic absurdist, and multi-media artist based in San Francisco, whose work focuses on sexuality and gender in performance and visual genres. Sadie has been a sex worker of varied specialty for ten years and has presented and facilitated sex-positive workshops for the past seven years. She has volunteered at the Center for Sex and Culture and the St. James Infirmary (an occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers and their partners) and worked with SWOP-USA. Sadie is also the co-creator of Paul Reubens’ Day, an annual celebration of sexual expression and Pee-wee Herman, the fifth anniversary of which she hosted in 2007: www.paulreubensday.com . She has appeared in queer porn for web and DVD and as a guest on Nina Hartley’s weekly web sex show. Sadie often performs in plays as either a souped-up femme fatale, tough butch, or harried old hag. She also enjoys performance art, and has shown her talents and her cervix across the U.S. and in parts of Europe. Sadie was quite honored to perform in Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Steven’s Green Wedding. Offstage, Sadie works on fetish modeling (Women in Control, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Women), writing and drawing comics (Fancy Whore and Saturn Returns Komyx in $pread Magazine), and visual art, some of the later of which is featured in the BDSM documentary ‘Vice and Consent’. Her short film Yum, won the People’s Choice Award in the 2007 Good Vibrations Amateur Erotic Film Competition. Sadie is a recent convert to blogging; she writes for the comic blog BreakUp Girl as well as her own three (!) blogs: Sadie Wants a Wife, Whores in the Woods, and Working Hearts. Sadie is beginning work on editing an anthology of essays by personal partners of sex workers. She is currently smack dab in her Saturn Returns which pretty much explains everything. Sadie lives in the Mission District of San Francisco with her three snakes (and beloved roommate Irene).

Suzanne Rachel Forbes was born and raised in Manhattan, and educated as an artist, starting with private lessons, from the age of 8. She began classes at the Art Student’s league at ten and continued her studies there as a teenager after dropping out of Stuyvesant High School on the advice of her guidance counselor. After getting her GED she attended Parsons School of Design for two years and then finished her BFA at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in the Fine Art Program.  Straight out of art school she went to work as a courtroom artist for CBS Television, CNN and several newspapers, as a book illustrator and portraitist, and then as the regular artist on DC Comics’ Star Trek, The Original Series for a year and a half.  After a creative burnout and art hiatus of ten years she returned to drawing and painting in 2005.  Her current work focuses on traditional portraiture with an alternative flavor, as well as allegories and narrative portraits. Her paintings, comic art and courtroom illustrations are in collections across the United States.  She lives in Berkeley with a large manatee-like cat.

Boi mo is a giggly little bottom who blushes easily and melts over fierce femmes and hot daddies. He loves to feed you strawberries and lick your boots, and is even more thrilled if he gets to serve you while he’s bound in rough rope.

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Femina Potens is a nationally recognized art gallery and performance space dedicated to the advancement of women and transgendered artists since 2001.

Sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center with support from California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Zellerbach Foundation and Grants for the Arts.  Femina Potens is a leading queer organization in San Francisco, and has been featured on the LOGO channel, Q-Television, Bitch, Bust, Spread, Brian Alexander’s book “America Unzipped”, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and the San Francisco Chronicle where Violet Blue called Femina Potens, “the most happening art space in the city; a revolution in art and sex.”

SIZZLE feat Carol Queen, Dusty Horn & Chica Boom

GET A TINGLE DEEP INSIDE WITH EROTICA READINGS AND DEVIOUS PERFORMANCES IN HONOR OF NATIONAL MASTURBATION MONTH AT FEMINA POTENS’ AWARD WINNING LITERARY EROTICA SERIES, SIZZLE.

EXPOSE YOURSELF MAY 8th 2009  at 8pm as Femina Potens proudly presents SIZZLE, the monthly Bay Area award winning literary erotica series and open mic. SIZZLE heats up the Castro every month, merging internationally acclaimed queer and erotic authors with the Bay Area’s top emerging local writers, spoken word artists and performers. SIZZLE’s open mic performances regularly reveal the bravest, hottest, most eclectic performers that the Bay Area has to offer.

May is National Masturbation Month, and Femina Potens is celebrating with an auto-erotica reading extravaganza at SIZZLE. Carol Queen, Dusty Horn, award winning porn star, Madison Young, and sizzling burlesque performer, Chica Boom, will set the self-pleasuring stage with their pud-pulling pieces of fantasy and real life. Carol Queen, the quintessential sex and culture maven will captivate the crowd with stories from her sexual cannon of debauchery. Dusty Horn will spank spectators with stories from her seductive zine of exploits as a pro BDSM switch.  Chica Boom, award winning burlesque performer who holds the title of Miss Gay Latina, will tempt us with her seductive burlesque performance that involves electric vibrations and earth shattering orgasms or is at least an homage to such sexually astounding experiences. Madison Young, will blow your mind and break your literary and performance hymens with her latest erotic acts in exhibitionism. Madison Young, clad in a letter sweater, will seduce the words on the page as she tantalizes her type writer and fists her **********.  Show up to Sizzle to hear Madison Young read from her forthcoming memoirs and find out what ********** stands for. Afterward, our aroused audience of literary patrons will be invited to question the sizzling experts and artists at our Q&A panel. Enjoy an intimate evening with some of the hottest erotic writers in San Francisco at Femina Poten’s “May Means Masturbation” SIZZLE. Friday, May 8th, 8:00pm.

As an extra incentive there will be a special sex toy raffle for your jack and jilling pleasure.

Sizzle hosted by:

Femina Potens curator, international award winning Bondage Model and Feminist Porn Star - Madison Young.

May 8 2009 @ 8:00 pm

Doors/Open Mic Sign-up @ 7:30 pm

$10-15 sliding scale admission ($5/open mic performers) for an evening of hot words, buttery pop corn and cheap beer.

Femina Potens has limited seating availability so advanced online ticket purchase is highly recommended through Brown Paper Ticketing: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/62157

OR

Visit www.feminapotens.org for guaranteed seating information and advance ticket sales.

Become a Femina Potens Member today and help sustain community arts!  You will receive tons of membership perks including free SIZZLE tickets.   JOIN NOW!

On Facebook? RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=77697963172

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Carol Queen is the author of Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture and has also written or edited 10 other books. She’s the Founding Director of the Center for Sex & Culture (www.sexandculture.org) with her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence, with whom she innovated the Live Masturbate-a-Thon (www.masturbate-a-thon.com) after helping develop the original private masturbate-a-thon at Good Vibrations. She still works at Good Vibrations as Staff Sexologist (www.goodvibes.com), where she also occasionally blogs. You can now keep up with her on Facebook and Twitter, and look for more detail about her writing at www.carolqueen.com.

Always a literalist, Dusty Horn has taken the act of making a name for herself to absurd lengths. As a porn performer and practitioner of professional BDSM for over two years, she goes by Christina Mabry Horn, and you can call her Tina if you’re lucky. Vast legions of bike punks and DIY rockers know her by a monosyllabic moniker referencing her resemblance to a 14-year-old English schoolboy. As for what they call her when she’s at home, only her attorney knows for sure. Horn earned her BA in modern literature from UCSC and King’s College London which may go some way towards explaining the Marxist-feminist-paraliterary critical theory slant, and also the body hair. Among her accomplishments are writing for Mcsweeney’s the Believer, penning, publishing, and distributing her nominal sex worker memoir zine, releasing her former band’s 7 inch on her own label, booking three punk tours, and getting DP’d alongside a who’s-who cast and crew of erotic artists and activists in her very first porno, Layover. Her double life as a social worker and volunteer for a variety of non-profits and art galleries keeps her honest. She is a show business impresario, an urban cowboy cyclist, a part-time hippie, a loud fast and loose drummer, and a face-melting wah rhythmn guitarist. A hopeless rambler, Horn currently sets up shop in the San Francisco East Bay and cannot begin to tell you how badly she could use a spanking right about now.

Madison Young , your kinky girl next door, is making waves in feminism one orgasm at a time with her award winning queer production company Madison Bound Productions (www.madisonbound.com) and her award winning nationally recognized art gallery and performance space Femina Potens (www.feminapotens.org).  Femina Potens is a sex positive art gallery and performance space dedicated to women and transgendered artists.  Madison the world with her sex positive performances, workshops, panels, art work and readings from her upcoming memoir “The Tail of a Bondage Model”.  Madison ‘s writings have been published in On Our Backs and Girlfriends Magazine and can also be found in the anthology “Baby Remember My Name”.   Madison has been featured on MTV’s LOGO channel program Out and About, the documentary Lesbian Sex and Sexuality Porn Today: Pushing the Limits, and was featured in Brian Alexander’s recent book release “America Unzipped”.

The tantalizing Chica Boom is a modern marvel to be reckoned with!  By day Chica Boom is a community organizer and facilitator, by night Chica Boom is the quintessential Xicana Burlesque Mistress, who will dance her way into your corazon and leave you feeling caliente!

Femina Potens Interviews Carol Queen

The spectacular Carol Queen dishes about masturbation, from its development as a cultural taboo to self-comfort for the masses. For more info on the Queen check her out at www.carolqueeen.com, and be sure to get steamy with her and a hot bill of other mind- blowing feminist thinkers and doers at
Femina Potens Sizzle, May 8th.

F: Hi Carol! It’s May, national masturbation month. In preparation for this interview I looked up the etymology of masturbation, and apparently it means “to disturb the penises.”

C: Well, it depends on what translation you look at. Some older dictionaries call it to “disturb with the hand” or to “pollute with the hand.” So, clearly not super sex positive.

F: If you were to write the dictionary definition for masturbation, what would you call it?

C: I usually just call it solo sex or self- pleasuring. I really like the way the Chinese translation comes out, that I learned when Robert and I went to China, which is self- comfort.

F: Masturbation has historically and continues to be a taboo- criminalized, pathologized, demonized-

C: Note, I am rolling my eyes while I hear this…

F: I’m so intrigued, because to some extent, while ordering a society there is some very specific, however backwards, logic for whatever dictatorial powers that be to try and control peoples sexual habits. Be that for heirs, power distribution, caste/ class perpetuation, etc. But masturbation, what’s the harm in it that it has for over a millennium caused such an outrage?

C: Well, going back to Judeo Christian prohibitions against masturbation, which is where we get many- not all- but many of our prohibitions, we see the sin of spilling one’s seed on the ground. At that particular time, the Jewish tribes were trying very hard to insure that there was enough of them to hold their own against their enemies. That’s no longer anybodies real issue today, but we’ve got two other things that come into play. One of them is from Wilhem Reich and his amazing “The Mass Psychology of Fascism.” His point was that if you can control the sexuality of a people you can control them utterly. So it isn’t just who you get with for the purposes of heirs, it is still being seen today in the echoes of who you can marry, and that determines whether you are a legitimate person in the eyes of the culture and the law. I’m into Reich, I think that he’s got something going on there that helps explain in the broadest possible sense the different puzzling forces of sex negativity.
The other thing is, and I was just writing about this today, is that by the time Good Vibrations started National Masturbation month in 1995, there wasn’t a real need to talk about masturbation as far as the law was concerned. But, people really, really believed that masturbation was second best because it wasn’t with another person. Partner sex, in our culture, especially for women, though it applies to men as well, but especially for women, is still, for so many of us, associated with our status in life, our economic abilities, and our self- image. Sex is supposed to cement a relationship between two people, whether it is a brief one, one that is free, one that is for pleasure, or for money, or a long term one. Masturbation steps completely out of that duality and that relationship orientation. I think that is the main, contemporary reason why it remains as taboo as it is.

F: Tell me about the Masturbate-a-thon that happens every May. How and why did it start?

C: Robert and I started the live- show Masturbate-a-thon here at the Center for Sex and Culture. However, the Masturbate-a-thon itself was an idea that came out of Good Vibrations. It started after Joycelyn Elders was fired for saying one smart, simple thing about masturbation, and Bill Clinton was like “you, you’re out of here. You’re too controversial.” Literally, she said, “Perhaps masturbation was something that should be taught,” in the context of youth sex education.

F: oooh, Bold.

C: Crazy talk!! That’s what got it started. The Good Vibes staff was like “What the Fuck??” We were so about, and continue to be, but certainly back then as a worker owned company, so about getting women comfortable masturbating. The main thing we saw around the Elders firing was that with masturbation, such a simple statement would be controversial enough to take down a Surgeon General, and the first African American woman Surgeon General at that.
So, the masturbate-a-thon came up, not as a group event, but sort of like you would start out the AIDS walk. You ask your friends, who are appropriate to ask, to sponsor you. They say yes, or they say no, but they have talked about masturbation with you in a non- sexualized way. You’ve discussed it as something normalized. People would do their thing at home, or where ever, collect the money remit it to Good Vibrations, or any of the other sponsors, and 100% of that money would go to non-profits. Then we would do it again the next year, hopefully each time having raised the level of consciousness of people in North America.

F: Do you have any tips or words of inspiration for anybody reading this who is looking forward to a full month of masturbation?

C: Get going right away, of course! One is everybody’s different in their sexuality and everybody masturbates a little differently. So many people are still worried about whether they’re doing everything sexual correctly. The fact is, if you are alive, in your body, and have a sexuality, then yes, you measure up to everybody else- ‘cause that’s the bottom line. So, just do your thing- figure out what your thing is through splendid trial and error and then do it.
The other thing is, most people masturbate too fast. By too fast, I’m being a little judgmental here. If you’re in a hurry I’m not going to tell you not to masturbate… Sometimes people will get fired if they don’t get to work on time. The government does not pay us to lay around and masturbate, more is the pity. Too may people learn, from the earliest age that when they are self- pleasuring, that you have to hurry up- brother’s pounding on the bathroom door, because he wants to get in and masturbate too. Whatever it is, there is lots of pressure not to just linger. Sexual arousal is associated with duration of stimulation. And many, many people have sex, including masturbating, too fast to get as aroused as they optimally could get. Their orgasms are less strong for it. The ways that their bodies process pleasure is affected. So, I would suggest to everybody, that at least one time during masturbation month turn the phone off, and take some time, double it, triple it, a couple hours… take some time, and see what a difference it makes.

Video from "Art of Restraint"

Here’s a collection of clips from our last Art of Restraint event. Missed out on the last one or just want to see more erotic performance art? We’re going to be having another one on the 16th of May, expect more details very soon!

A Touch of Pleasure - Exhibition for Masturbation Month

‘A TOUCH OF PLEASURE’ - EXPOSE YOURSELF TO SELF PLEASURE AND CUTTING EDGE ART DURING NATIONAL MASTURBATION MONTH

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 2, 2009 7-10pm step through the doors at Femina Potens Art Gallery to experience a wonderland of art works and installations that will leave you salivating as your host for the evening, sex educator and feminist Porn Star, Madison Young welcomes you to a world of art and pleasure. Sculptural installations from Maria Kretschman, of ice cream dildos will leave you dripping for a taste of something sweet. Steampunk style turbine engine powered vibrators that can be powered from your kitchen’s espresso machine engineered by Ani Niow, will have you revved up for more. World famous, Kink.com and FuckingMachines.com, will be bringing us the future of masturbation with one of their originally designed machines by Kink.com’s Tom Cat. Come see what the world is so fascinated with when it comes to jilling off at over 200 rotations per minute!

And although the future looks promising we mustn’t forget our past. We pay homage to our masturbatory heritage with a display of antique vibrators on display from the Center for Sex and Culture. Our walls will be spewed with the creation of visually astounding art works by photographer Ryan Whittier and artist Diana Stapleton while performance artist, chel{SEA LU}na, breaks boundaries with a series of live performance art. Femina Potens, proudly presents ‘A Touch Of Pleasure’ as we encourage viewers and artists to take matters into their own hands, so to speak, at our second annual visual and performance art exhibit celebrating National Masturbation Month.

Originally started in 1995 by Good Vibrations, Masturbation Month was established to protest the firing of U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, who, when asked about safe sex, responded with, “Masturbation is something that perhaps should be taught.” Afterward, conservative outrage cost Elders her position and inspired Good Vibrations to wage war in the name of rubbing one out on the home front.

These artists will manipulate the meaning of masturbation through drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, and engineering. Masturbation means different things to all of us and our artists will explore these ideas, stigmas, innovations, and private processes of pleasure through ride-able, larger than life sex toys, fucking machines, and steam powered dildos! Come celebrate one of our favorite pastimes on May 2; we hope to send you home inspired to explore yourself.

Receive your very own stimulus package this May at Femina Potens. Opening Reception May 2, 2009 7:00-10:00pm. This is your chance to meet and enjoy refreshments with the talented artists that created these masturbating masterpieces. Show runs May 2-31, 2009.

For more information visit www.feminapotens.org

On Facebook? Please RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=73759983977

‘A Touch of Pleasure’ Visual Art Exhibition
May 2 - 31, 2009 7-10pm
Femina Potens Art Gallery
2199 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
Gallery Hours
Thursday- Sunday
Noon-6pm

Special thanks to

The Center for Sex and Culture

www.sexandculture.org

And Kink.com

www.kink.com

Become a Femina Potens Member today and help sustain community arts! You will receive tons of membership perks including free SIZZLE tickets. JOIN NOW!

_________________________________________

Maria Kretschmann was born and raised on an organic farm outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She migrated north to upstate New York where she received her BFA in ceramics and sculpture from the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology. Maria currently resides in Philadelphia where she maintains a healthy studio life. In practice, Maria is powered by the idea of making work that emphasizes audience participation. She is determined to break down the wall that separates the artist and the observer. Embracing this moment of interaction-confrontation helps to create an environment that promotes an understanding between the two. With creating an atmosphere for viewing her work, she simultaneously engages the observer in a full sensory experience. Maria’s extreme interest in multiples demonstrates her human need to produce like a machine. She explores her ideas with the “more is more” concept. Her work is instinctively honest, as well as humorous. A fascination with the concept of private and public thoughts, has led her to this most current work. Maria is an avid maker, and liver of life. Her life is her work, and she invites you to participate. www.mariakretschmann.com

Diana Stapleton has a BFA in printmaking and mixed media from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. After graduation she started painting in both oil and acrylic as her primary medium. She has shown artwork publicly in Arizona since 1990 and belongs to Central Arts Gallery, an artists’ collective established in May of 2008. The conceptual content of her artwork is generally comprised of specific personal experiences, history, politics, power, feminism, and sexuality. She is currently self-employed as the proud owner of a queer & counter-culture coffee house and in Tucson, Arizona.

Ryan Hale is a Photographer and Video Artist Born 1985 San Francisco, California. Ryan is currently living and working in Manhattan in New York. He is studying at Parsons School of Design in New York to receive his BFA in Design and Technology. He has exhibited at the Chelsea Art Museum and the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

Look! Up in the sky! Its a bird! Its a plane! Its…the One Letter Wonder!! Born in a land far far away, the exceedingly pink haired Ani V Niow started hacking things at a young age at the behest of her engineer father. After a long lull of trying not to be like her father she has accepted her destiny and is pursuing a degree in engineering herself. With one small catch…she’s a minor in human sexuality. This of course leads to only one career option which is making badass sex toys. Naturally she is already doing this. Ani enjoys long walks on giant metal snakes, hacking microcontrollers and playing with big power tools. She’s also a huge Twitter whore and you can find her at https://twitter.com/vniow to hear her thoughts on life, the universe and her pants status.

Chel(SEA LU)na is a genderqueer artist from Texas, now residing in the Bay Area and working on a BFA from California College of the Arts. Refering to their work as “Gender Inquiry and Performative Textiles”, Luna playfully explores the the shape-shift body and the social practices of quantum mechanics. Previous performances include, “Cirque du So Gay” hosted by the Houston Gendermyn, and the debut of “Sealu’s Sideshow” an alternative puppet show about Luna’s polyamorous relationship with gender, androgyny and quantum physics, performed at Bobbin Doctrin’s Fourth Annual Puppet Festival. They have exhibited at Bootleg Studios (Houston, Texas), The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and The Margulies Collection Warehouse.

Tom Cat is the resident director for www.FuckingMachines.com, a porn site dedicated entirely to women having sex with machines. Fucking Machines features kinky sex with hot naked girls that love hardcore machine fucking. At FuckingMachines.com, smoking hot girls get fucked by robotic dicks and dildos on high tech machines and machines straight from the garage or even kitchen! Video with girls fucking machines is in high definition for your viewing pleasure. We take kinky sex to a new level with our women fucked in many ways by sex toys and machines at speeds up to 350 RPM, leading to genuine orgasms. If you like seeing women getting fucked by machines and having genuine screaming, cum dripping orgasms, Fucking Machines is the website for you.

Good Vibrations founder Joani Blank began collecting antique vibrators in the 1970s and displayed them from the beginning — 1977 — in her San Francisco store. Showing that vibrators had a history interested her customers, and even made some of them feel less hesitant to try vibrators themselves. Customers donated the old vibes they found undertheir grandmothers’ beds and in bureau drawers. Even after Joani sold the business, the vibrators kept coming, from every decade of the 20th century. Joani donated her collection to the Center for Sex & Culture,which already had several of its own and whose director, Dr. Carol Queen, also curates the Good Vibes collection. Items from both arestill displayed in most GV stores. Past CSC intern Kaley Terwilliger archived the items displayed here, which are held at CSC under the direction of librarian Birdie Sumner and director Carol Queen. www.sexandculture.org

Madison Young , your kinky girl next door, is making waves in feminism one orgasm at a time with her award winning queer production company Madison Bound Productions (www.madisonbound.com) and her award winning nationally recognized art gallery and performance space Femina Potens (www.feminapotens.org). Femina Potens is a sex positive art gallery and performance space dedicated to women and transgendered artists. Madison the world with her sex positive performances, workshops, panels, art work and readings from her upcoming memoir “The Tail of a Bondage Model”. Madison ‘s writings have been published in On Our Backs and Girlfriends Magazine and can also be found in the anthology “Baby Remember My Name”. Madison has been featured on MTV’s LOGO channel program Out and About, the documentary Lesbian Sex and Sexuality Porn Today: Pushing the Limits, and was featured in Brian Alexander’s recent book release “America Unzipped”.

Kink.com was started in 1997 by bondage enthusiast, Peter, who was a PhD student. After realizing consensual BDSM games were more exciting than finance, he left academia to devote his life to subjecting beautiful, willing women to strict bondage. The result was Hogtied.com, Kink’s first site. Hogtied now has an enormous archives of videos depicting many tightly bound women. Through adhering to our core values, kink.com has grown into a respected company which has attracted talented employees. Kink’s team of more than 90 people is now dedicated to bringing you the most imaginative fetish material. Each of our unique websites is directed by a webmaster who is heavily kinky. Each webmaster’s passion is to bring their kink to life to deliver authentic fetish footage. Our models are never told to act or artificially struggle. BDSM is about respect and trust. When you watch a Kink.com movie, you are watching real BDSM-loving people play in this context. We at Kink.com pride ourselves in the authentic reproduction of fetish activities enjoyed by those in the BDSM lifestyle.