The Folk Show: For the People, By the People
Celebrating the Erotic Impulse in Folk Media

The Erotic Museum presents The Folk Show, an exhibition of erotic folk art by a new generation of craft revivalists. These pop-culture conscious do-it-yourself American artists have created risqué latch-hook, macramé, puppets, embroidery, woodcarvings, stained glass, etched eggs, paper crafts, and fiber art reflecting provocative sexual morals and ideals. As the values and structure of society evolve, the survival of the folk art lineage relies upon the adaptation of traditional techniques to modern tastes. The cross-stitched red-breasted robin of the past has been upgraded to the hand sewn large-breasted bombshell pillow or dominatrix marionette more concurrent with contemporary desires.

Exhibition Detail:

Greg Der Ananian:

Greg Der Ananian’s Dirty Pillows not only challenge the conventional pantheon of “craft” imagery, but re-signifies cultural practice in terms of identity. One can scarcely imagine a skill more closely associated with the construct of the American household than needlework. The very ideal of “Home Sweet Home” exists almost exclusively as needlepoint, embroidery, and cross-stitch. Der Ananian’s work confounds the facile divide between the artifacts of an American domestic economy and the products of a sexual one. His fusion of a pleasure-based, non-reproductive sexuality with a craft mistakenly regarded as safe and banal is more than mere juxtaposition. It’s recognition that multiple conflicting identities inhabit the same subject.

Whitney Lee:

Using this process of hand-tying two-inch strands of colored yarn to a gridded rug canvas, Whitney Lee has created Soft Porn, a five-by-eight foot rug that depicts a contemporary “reclining nude”. Soft Porn places medium against subject in order to point out the contradictory roles of women. By starting with pornography (imagery made by and for men) and converting it to latch-hook (a technique associated with women), gendered seeing gets turned upside-down. This conversion mixes and reverses gender roles: men looking at women and women looking at women as men see them. It also references women’s inferior place in art history- both as makers and as subjects.

Michael Maas:

Michael Maas created the Ultra Joy marionette using items he could find under the sink or in the junk drawer. Ultra Joy emerged from a Joy dishwashing bottle, ping pong balls, yarn, dowel rods, broom handles, leather, embroidery floss, fishing line, screws and nails. The heads, hands and feet were sculpted using a two-part epoxy resin putty fabricated over an armature of tin foil.

David Pibel:

Self-taught artist David Pibel has been carving wood since 1964, first in relief with primarily African and American Indian designs after returning from US Peace Corps service in Nigeria, West Africa. He later evolved into hardwood abstracts, and driftwood freestyle, and in the 1980s he began to do gay erotica. Pibel works with a band saw, a Dremel Tool, and an exacto knife using hardwood, basswood, pine, and primarily gelutong, a South Pacific wood whose grain allows for more detail. Pibel lives in Long Beach, CA and regularly exhibits with the Tom of Finland foundation.

Yun Bai:

The Porn Flowers are made of porn magazines, carefully cut and collaged onto pine tabletops. From afar, the fleshy colored plant silhouettes trick the viewer into believing they are seeing flowers. However, upon closer inspection, the viewer discovers that the flowers are genitalia made of porn magazines. Bai supports the message that “All women are flowers”.

Paul Wirhun:

Paul Wirhun has worked on eggshells since he was a child, learning the traditional Ukrainian art of pysanky from my mother. Pysanky are talismen created through batiking designs with specific intentions to use the egg's life-power for a desired result. Wirhun manipulated traditional processes with innovative dyeing & brush techniques, etching, and mosaic to forge a new visual language to write on this versatile, organic sphere. Wirhun believes that eggs are events - not simply objects. They are the confluence of primal life forces, sexual energies, that create new life - new beginnings. The shells are memories of these events.

Rachel Strickland:

Strickland’s shadow puppets are inspired by the voyeuristic eroticism of silhouettes. The dark space of the puppetry stage creates an intimate arena where the fantasies of the active imagination can be fulfilled. Strickland uses her background in classical Russian Ballet to set the foundation for her understanding of movement and sound in the theatrical space.

Felis Stella:

Pillow Talk: Proverbs Puns and Perversions is a union of common proverbs meant to serve as a moral guide coupled with subversive acts deemed taboo by society. Since the indoctrination of Christianity, common English and American proverbs have been passed down through the generations to keep the public’s morals in tact. This project presents puns that inadvertently invite the acceptable (proverb) and the taboo (image), two incongruent entities, to literally go to bed together by sharing a pillow.

Addie Gartland:

Addie Gartland’s embroidery is reminiscent of 1950s era pin-up girls, as they embrace the erotic without being explicit. The pieces are given active dimension with the addition of working tassle pasties on a pillow, and a horseshoe used as a sewing frame. The “bad girl” motifs and the “good girl” hobby mix sweetly, like sugar and spice.

Donna Williams:

Williams has been crocheting for 30 years. Williams began designing and making afghans about five years ago, winning 5 ribbons at the 2004 Arizona State Fair: one 1st place, three 2nd place, and one 3rd place. About nine years ago Williams developed Multiple Sclerosis. Crochet and her wonderfully supportive family helped her get through the bad days. Williams’s love for the human body inspired her to make this penis afghan and matching pillow, as she desired to make something that probably hasn’t been done before in the world of Afghans.

Jenny Hart:

In Hart’s sexualized rendition of La Llorona, the weeping woman is both a mother and an object of desire, with Donda es mi hijo? (Where is my child?) tattooed on the arm that rests against her nude torso. La Llorona is one of the oldest and most popular legends in Mexican culture; she appears as a weeping woman who, abandoned by her lover, kills their children as an act of revenge by drowning them in the river. To see La Llorona is an omen of death, and her legend is often told to frighten children into good behavior.

Juan Martin Del Campo:

Juan Martin del Campo, Jr. is an LA native. Campo first fell in love with stained glass art after seeing Rita Ackerman's stained glass cover art for Thurston Moore's 'Psychic Hearts' Album. His love of music, design and the erotic help to shape each piece; infusing his own subversive personality into the preconceived notion of mainstream stained glass. Campo’s art is meant to inject humor and titillation in an increasingly safe and boring pop art world.

Sam Smith:

Outsider artist Sam Smith was born with Optic Nerve Atrophy, a permanent visual impairment caused by damage to the optic nerve. He learned to read and write using a closed circuit television system (CCTV), which enlarges ordinary sized print. He uses CCTV to do his artwork, despite being legally blind. Smith’s satirical style adds humor to his colorful reinterpretations of familiar idioms.

KB VanHorn:

Dick was inspired by the men who walk around every day with this phallic power symbol hanging from their necks, pointing to their crotches, restructured from a thrift store shirt and tie. Sexy Pillow was sewn with material generally intended for drapery and upholstery of the wealthy to create an equally useful home accessory, albeit one in the form of a vagina spread wide.

This exhibition will open in conjunction with Sex Ed 102: Progressive Sex Education Materials from the Free Love Era.

Opening night is August 4, 2005 from 7 to 11pm, $10 admission. Free Preview from 6 to 7pm. Refreshments will be served.