Erotic Needle Point Workshop - Join the talented Amy Leonard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Alicia Gonzales: feminapotenspress [at] gmail.com

VISUAL ART EXHIBIT 'QUEER COUTURE'

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – August 7 , 2010 – Femina Potens has gathered an impressive collection of artists for your discerning tastes this August. We're excited to be able to present to you this sexy, fashion-forward, Queerest of Haute-Queer shows! All month long we bring to you a stunningly off-center multimedia art show that combines the fashionably distinguished photography, couture designs, and textile installations by artists Najva Sol, Molly Crabapple, Mev Luna, Jesse Trepper, Corey Gunter Brown & Cassidy Wright. Come Dress Your Inner Couture with Your Outer Queer amongst these outrageous designs and explore what queer identity and alternative fashion are really about with those that know what Taking it Off and Putting it On really mean.

Femina Potens is known for taking risks and exploring your options with up-and-coming designers of fashion-as-art & art-as-fashion! We welcome you to the Opening Reception & Artist Talk at 7pm on the evening of Saturday, August 7th, 2010. Partake in artistic insight, refreshments and libations during the opening reception and introduce yourself to the Artistic Underbelly of our Underworld. And of course, join us all month long as we bring you an array of enticing workshops, performances and events. Show runs through August 28, 2010.

'Queer Couture'

Visual Art Exhibit + Events
August 7-28, 2010
Opening Reception Saturday, August 7th, 7-10pm
Femina Potens Art Gallery
2199 Market St @ Sanchez
San Francisco, CA 94110

Hours: Thurs-Sun, Noon-6:00pm
415-864-1558
http://www.feminapotens.org

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All workshops are free to FP Members!

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August 7, (Saturday), Opening Reception & Artists Talk 7-10pm Celebrate with artists Navja Sol, Molly Crabapple, Jesse Trepper, Mev Luna, Corey Gunter Brown, and Cassidy Wright. (FREE)

August 8, (Sunday), "Femme Cock: Harnessing Your Power" Harness Making & Decorating Workshop with Holly Holbrook 3pm Come get your custom harness fitted and decorated with the help an expert on sexy accessories. Cost includes instruction, all leather and all hardware. Dildos will not be available onsite for purchase. ($65) Reserve your spot now.

August 14, (Saturday), "Unravel Me" Art of Restraint 8pm Madison Young, Lochai, Fivestar, Danarama of Two Knotty Boys and some of the most skilled rope artists and bondage experts in the country gather to meld art and bondage, to intertwine submission and empowerment, in a dynamic exchange with performers and the luscious decadence that we offer to our audience. Doors open at 7:30 and lock at 8pm ($55 for members - $75 for non-members) Reserve your spot today .

August 15, (Sunday), Erotic Needle Point Workshop 3pm Join the talented Amy Leonard for some sexy sewing! ($10) Reserve your spot now .

August 18, (Wednesday), Talk with Katie "Megaphone" Diamond 7pm Katie Diamond is a graphic artist that will be talking about the illustrative process of creating a book that explores transgenderism, trans-sexuality and sex. Diamond is one of the contributors for "Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation." She drew the piece 'Transcension' with Johnny Blazes' text. ($10) Purchase your tickets here .

August 19, (Thursday), Electro-Feminists Nicky Click & Violent Vickie 7pm Come hear two of our favorite Electro-Feminist bands perform live music. Fun electro pop merged with songs about queer femme identity, feminism, and heartbreak. ($10) Purchase your tickets today .

August 20, (Friday), "Transformation" Double-Feature Movie Night Fundraiser 8pm We're showing Teen Wolf and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. All Proceeds benefit, Gender Check, a nonprofit organization helping to fund transgendered individuals in the legalities of gender transitioning. Doors open at 7:30. ($10-20) Reserve your advance tickets now .

August 21, (Saturday), Sizzle 8pm Award Winning Literature Series. Featuring select authors from Michelle Tea's "It's So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style" Anthology, including Sherilynn Connelly, Cindy Emch, and Samara Halperin. ($10) Purchase advance tickets here .

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Najva Sol is Brooklyn & San Francisco based artist of all trades. Among her inspirations are glitter, adventure, scandal, and smut. For fun, she co-runs an art collective in NYC called "The Lowbrow Society for the Arts" which hosts carefully curated down + dirty art parties, free swaps, and subway parades. The Lowbrow Society has been mused about in The Village Voice, NY Press, Time Out New York, Gothamist, Nerve.com, and others. Her work was most recently featured in the “Little Prints” show at the SF LGBT Center as part of the National Queer Arts Festival. Her photography can be found on najvasol.carbonmade.com and she keeps a randomly-updated blog najyisatrip.blogspot.com .

Molly Crabapple is an award-winning artist, author, and the founder of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School Molly’s drawn for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and illustrated over a dozen books. She’s also turned her talents to giant theatrical backdrops, parade installations, burlesque posters, and gallery shows around the world. For two years, she’s been the resident Toulouse Lautrec of The Box, one of New York’s most exclusive nightclubs. Molly is also the creator of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, an international chain of alt. drawing salons that takes place in over a hundred cities on five continents. A business case study and media darling, Dr. Sketchy’s has received hundreds of media profiles and changed the way life drawing is done.

Mev Luna is a video artist working on a BFA at California College of Arts in Textiles and Media Arts, with a minor in Visual Studies. Luna has exhibited at the 2010 National Queer Arts Festival, SF Tranny Film Festival, San Francisco Fringe Festival, and The Marguiles Collection Warehouse in Miami. Luna recently curated a queer performance and video event Feast of the Beast: Wurst, then Queer, at Artists’ Television Access.

Jesse Trepper is a restless, genderqueer, Oakland-based artist who has trouble confining herself to any medium for too long. She graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts with a BFA in drawing and textile arts in 2008 and has since performed and exhibited locally, including collaboration with the New Barbarians performance troupe and the Queer Arts Commission’s 2008 group show “Making Room for Wonder.” Lately she’s been traveling around the United States and Mexico, and working music and writing into her stash of aesthetic aptitudes.

Holly Holbrook is a New Jersey native, second generation leather-worker with rock n' roll roots who recently relocated to San Francisco and is coordinating the launch of a high-end leather accessories line this fall. When she's not organizing and volunteering for local queer organizations, Holly spends her spare time leather-working, and working on outrageous embroidery and millinery projects. Holly currently lives in San Francisco with her partner Jacob Vaughn and their super dog Thursday.

Danarama grew up in a family of mountaineers including a naval officer. Dan has worked with rope and knots since the time he could walk, spending his youth hanging from cliffs, trees and rafters in self-suspensions. A rope bondage artist since 1992, Dan began tying models for world renown fetish photographers and Internet erotica pioneers. As one of the Two Knotty Boys, which he started with his friend and fellow rigger JD in 1999, Dan has been co-presenting rope bondage workshops and performances all over the US and Germany. He co-authored Two Knotty Boys' two top-selling bondage how-to books, Showing You the Ropes and Back on the Ropes, and produced a number of instructional videos. As a fetish photographer and rigger for other photographers, Dan continues to create innovative restraint-focused art.

Amy Leonard is an artist who has been working with fabric & embroidering one thing or another for 10 years; most recently her artwork has focused on fusing early 1900's-era redwork embroidery and cross-stitch with the shapes and textures of contemporary sex toys, particularly those used in BDSM scenes. Her artwork is influenced by the conceptual leanings of UC San Diego's Visual Arts department where she spent her undergraduate years earning a degree in Media, her experiences working in the adult industry, as well as her interest in historic and traditional textile design. When she's not making art or working on
her Etsy store, Amy can often be found drinking tea, attempting to chase pigeons, collecting interesting leaves and catching up on cancelled TV shows on DVD.

Katie "Megaphone" Diamond is a radical queer comic artist who fuses art with politics, graphics with sex, and education with visuals as a method of altering societal norms and breaking down preconceived notions of gender and sexuality. Her work throughout New England, and across the country at large, has been called “imaginative,” “ambitious,” “fresh,” and “creative.” Her dogmatic approach to comics and art as a transformative experience sets her apart from other artists.

Sherilyn Connelly is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work can be found in books by Manic D Press, Homofactus Press and Seal Press, and periodicals such as Morbid Curiosity and Instant City. She recently completed Bottomfeeder, her first memoir. She also curates Bad Movie Night at The Dark Room.

Cindy Emch is a queer accordion-playing poet based in Oakland. Cindy's writings have been been published in the Can I Sit With You project, LodeStar Quarterly, There Journal, It's So You, and numerous chapbooks. She founded and hosted San Francisco's Queer Open Mic for many years and has performed at local legends like SFinX, K'vetch, Smack Dab and Writers with Drinks, and has hit stages all around Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles and more. She believes that art can create change in the world and that it's not so hard to be nice to people. She also thinks that dirt smells like magic and gets lost in the woods on purpose.

Samara Halperin is a filmmaker and writer whose short films have been making audiences laugh, cry and scream in screenings from Australia to Saskatchewan since 1989. Samara is from New York City and lives in Oakland, CA where she makes movies and teaches film and video making. Samara is currently working on "Times Square Tumbleweed," the sequel to her film "Tumbleweed Town." Samara's work has been featured on LOGO Television's "The Click List, Best In Short Film."

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Femina Potens is a nationally recognized art gallery and performance space, established in 2001, and dedicated to the advancement of women and transgender artists.

We are sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center, with support from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Zellerbach Foundation, and Grants for the Arts. We also thank our Golden Rope Donors: Theresa Ikard, Jack Killough, Saxon MacLeod, James Mogul, Catherine Murty, Nancy Peach, John Pettite, and Carnal Nation.

Femina Potens is a leading queer organization in San Francisco and has been featured on HBO’s Real Sex, MTV Networks’ Logo channel, and the Q Television Network; in Bitch, Bust, and Spread magazines and Brian Alexander's book America Unzipped; and locally, in 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.”
2199 Market St | San Francisco, CA 94114 US