I can haz artses?
So when Book Expo America was in New York City, not last year but the time before that (2004?) -- I was invited to a book party of Annie Sprinkle's at the Museum of Sex. My agent took me and a bunch of her other clients out to eat at a fabulous fusion restaurant called Basta Pasta, which is if a bunch of Japanese chefs decided they wanted to cook sort of nouvelle Italian with an Asian twist. Verrrrah good food.

After dinner, we went over to Annie's party at the Museum, and one of the really nifty things they were doing was basically every party-goer could take home a piece of erotic art as a party favor. They had artists on hand making art while people watched. I don't recall now who all the artists were or what they were all doing. I think there was one woman who was making painted impressions of her breasts, for example.

The artist that caught my and corwin's attention most, though, was a fellow doing Chinese-style brush painting, named Fred Hatt. He had a live model who would change her pose every few minutes, and he just tossed off painting after painting of her. In the course of the evening he must have done over a hundred. Maybe two hundred? I'm not sure how long he was there for, and each one took only a few minutes.

In the end we chose two pieces out of the rather large pile he had made, and I rolled them up and lovingly guarded them through the evening and the trip home a few days later.

The paintings have been sitting in the study, rolled up with a few other things, waiting for me to get around to framing them and hanging them. Today corwin went off on a business trip and ti seems like whenever he goes away, I get the urge to do home improvements. I have no ida why this urge is dormant when he's here, and wakes up immediately as soon as he leaves. On the way home from dropping him at the airport, I went by the art supply store and bought frames, and spent the evening futzing with the hooks and such.

And now, I haz artses!!





Here are the two pieces hanging side by side. The pink "ticket" in the frame on the left was the ticket to the party and says "redeemable for one piece of free erotic art" on it.



You can see Fred's signature very clearly on the right in this one. Google him to see more examples. I'm of course fascinated with Chinese brush technique and am slowly teaching myself some Chinese calligraphy at home, but I've been too busy to take a class. And I just don't have the hand-eye coordination of an artist. My brain is too interpretive.



And the other piece in closeup. I would have long since forgotten Fred's name, but thank goodness I was smart and tucked his business card in with the paintings. I decided to keep it in the frame box, too.