CONTACT: Malia Schlaefer, feminapotenspress@gmail.com

RELEASE YOUR INHIBITIONS AND SURRENDER TO A NIGHT AT FEMINA POTENS ‘ART OF RESTRAINT’

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 21, 2009 – On February 21st 2009 the doors of Femina Potens Art Gallery will open at 7:30pm. 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. Visualize yourself in the midst of beautiful bound submissives molded into sculptural installations. In the corner of the gallery champagne, strawberries and dark chocolate will be fed to you. Some of the most skilled rope artists and bondage experts in the country have gathered in this intimate 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 the a hot avant-garde bondage scene. Welcome to the Art of Restraint.

The Art of Restraint will feature rope artists Midori, Princess Donna, Lee Harrington, Lochai, and JD of Two Knotty Boys with bondage models Janice and Raina Degrey and award winning suspension model Madison Young. Erotic performance art by Bast and Sadie Lune, visual art by Nancy Peach, Suzanne Forbes, Ellen Stagg (of the Independent Film Channel), Barbara Nitke and more. Through rope, restraint, bondage and erotic performance the performers will be delving into our most intricate neurosis. They will be manifesting them in an outward artistic expression of performance or installation. 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 http://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”.

Advanced online ticket purchase is highly recommended through Brown Paper Ticketing: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/52722

‘Art of Restraint’ Erotic Rope Bondage Art Salon
February 21, 2009 @ 8:00 – 11:00 pm
Doors open at 7:30pm
Doors locked at 8:00pm sharp – no ins and outs
$50.00 per ticket

Visit http://www.feminapotens.org for guaranteed seating information and advance ticket sales.
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Artist, photographer and human sexuality educator, Midori has authored several books, including “Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage.” She has shown, performed and taught at many venues including Das Arts (post graduate performing art institute Amsterdam) and Tanz Quartier in Vienna. She’s also worked with Ong Keng Sen (Singaporean choreographer/director), Tiziano Magni (Italian fashion photographer) and Nick Knight (UK fashion photographer). More on Midori at http://www.PlanetMidori.com

Princess Donna has been a professional BDSM rigger, director, model and performer for about six years. Currently the director and primary dominant at girl-girl electrosex website http://WiredPussy.com, she more recently launched http://PublicDisgrace.com, an explicit BDSM and D/s site that focuses on one of Donna’s very favorite kinks: public sex, bondage, punishment and humiliation. Donna got her start as a rigger and model at Insex.com in 2003 and has since appeared in a number of films such as Shine Louise Houston’s Superfreak and Tristan Taormino’s Ultimate Guide to the G-Spot. Though perhaps best known for her work as a dominant, she is an enthusiastic switch and recently performed as a bottom in a four-day slave training at TheTrainingOfO.com. Donna holds a double major in Photography and Gender and Sexuality Studies from New York University, and has previously served as an instructor at several alternative sexuality conferences.

Lee Harrington is an eclectic artist, spiritual and erotic educator, gender radical and published author on human sexuality and spiritual experience- including “Shibari You Can Use: Japanese Rope Bondage and Erotic Macramé” and the “Toybag Guide to Age Play”. Well known for his fun and informative approach to education, he approaches sexuality as yet another art to master, or simply an art to enjoy to its fullest! He has been an active part of the international kink and sex positive communities for over 13 years, and his stories make people laugh while showing you that eroticism can be as serious, sexy, or silly as you make it. Lee’s writings and photography have appeared in numerous anthologies including “Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path” (also under his previous pen name, Bridgett Harrington), and his image has been seen everywhere from PlayBoy TV to the pages of Skin Two Magazine. To learn more about Lee visit http://www.PassionAndSoul.com.

Although he’s been part of the public kink scene for 15 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, http://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 http://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

JD is member of the internationally renowned bondage duo Two Knotty Boys. He is the producer of over 100 rope bondage instructional videos and the coauthor of two popular rope bondage guidebooks, “Two Knotty Boys Showing You the Ropes” (2006) and “Two Knotty Boys Back on the Ropes” (2009). Aside from his work as an educator and promoter of sensual rope bondage he is an artist, using rope as his paint and the human form as his canvas. Unrestrained by tradition or protocol, his rope art utilizes Asian, European and American knots, in addition to rigging techniques based upon the physics of the human form, safety and aesthetics.

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 and her award winning nationally recognized art gallery and performance space Femina Potens (http://www.feminapotens.org). Femina Potens is a sex positive art gallery and performance space dedicated to women and transgendered artists. Madison has traveled the world with her sex positive performances, workshops, panels, artwork 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”.

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 http://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.

Janice Stine is many things to many people: Ms. J, Mistress Mary Poppins, A toaster, a chew toy… The list goes on. If you try to put her in a box, she’ll deconstruct it, color it with glitter pens, and turn it into something unexpected. Kink just happens to be an outlet where her creativity and love of the absurd can be channeled. For Janice, the conventions of the scene are not hard and fast rules, but rather tools that she can mold and use to create something that is all her own. She identifies less as an educator and more as an avid learner, who will happily share whatever skills and lessons she acquires on her journey, so that others may carve out their own path. In her experience, BDSM is all about individuals enjoying and taking charge of their own sexual preference, not trying to fit themselves into predefined roles.

Bast is a ritual multi-media performance and visual artist, writer, poet, mother, modern temple dancer, activist, interdisciplinary tantric yoga and yogic-sexuality educator, and healing artist based in San Francisco. Bast was named ‘Best Tantric Yoga Teacher’ in The Best of the Bay issue, SF Weekly 2005. Her art is inspired by the tantric path and various forms of sacred ceremony and art: ritual feasts, shaktipat, darshan, puja, Japanese tea ceremony, Butoh, and traditional Indian and Arabic dance. At the other end of the spectrum, she is also inspired by burlesque and dark circus. Her work is opulent, surreal, poignant, and sometimes kitschy – a live dream in which the barrier between artist and audience dissolves. In this upcoming show she explores the shamanic aspects of restraint and the discipline of taboo-breaking. She studied at New College of San Francisco with an emphasis on Art and Social Change. She has created performance and visual art works in San Francisco at Fort Mason, 111 Minna, 12 Galaxies, SOMARTS, Project One Gallery, Cell Space, Broadway Studios, Anon Salon NYE, Workspace, Concourse Exhibition Center, and Mezzanine, Lighting in a Bottle Green Festival in Santa Barbara, California 2007-08, and Internationally at the Boom Festival in Portugal.
She currently resides in San Francisco, California with her love, fellow artist, and sometimes co-creator, Chor Boogie, and her son.

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.

Nancy Peach was born in Nova Scotia, Canada until she was 16, when she headed to Alaska to earn the money she needed to get to California. Her experience in Gourmet Cooking brought her into the very private homes of the Rich and Famous, whom sponsored her talents and sent her to art schools in San Diego, Pasadena and San Francisco. Ultimately, ending up in the Bay Area in Sausalito where she lives with her husband and 2 children, Sophie and Ryan. After 30 years of working as a professional artist/illustrator/professor in the fields of Architectural Rendering and Children’s Book/Murals, she has immersed herself into the Erotic Art World with her art being represented by FP Edge Artist Network in the Castro District of San Francisco. Femina Potens and FP EDGE work only with the LGBT and Female Erotic Artists community. Painting with a vibrant, luscious, almost graphic comic book style, her work has been said to document the BDSM community by “nailing it” with her extra large format canvases that represent iconic images in her series “The Fine Art of Bondage”. Her work can be seen in entirety at http://www.nancypeacherotic.com

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.

Stagg has been a photographer since the age of sixteen. Since then she’s been in love with and began to study photography. She moved to NYC in 1996 from Connecticut and attended the School of Visual Arts where she received her BFA in photography. In her 9-year career as a professional photographer, Ellen has worked in advertising, fashion and portraiture, shooting for all kinds of magazines look books, stock photography, and celebrities. When not shooting commercial photography, she shoots erotic photos and has been shooting erotic photography since she began to use the camera. Her work has been described as too “artsy” for porn mags and too “porny” for commercial work, so she has since posted most of her photos on blog http://www.StaggStreet.com as an outlet for this work.

Barbara Nitke is a New York City artist dedicated to opening the eyes of the world to the beauty of all forms of love, sex and passion through her photography. Hailed by The Village Voice for her quest “to find humanity in marginal sex,” Nitke has gained worldwide attention for her affecting and powerful photographs chronicling relationships between consenting adults engaged in sadomasochistic activities. She has been the featured artist and official photographer at many SM conventions across the country. She was the keynote speaker at the 11th annual national Leather Leadership Conference in Minneapolis in April 2007. In 2004 she received the Brother Leo Educator’s Award from the Eulenspiegel Society, and in 2001 the President’s Choice Award for community service from the Pantheon of Leather. She is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work has been the subject of one-woman exhibitions in New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, Provincetown and Philadelphia.

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Femina Potens is located at 2199 Market St at Sanchez, SF
www.feminapotens.org
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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Malia Schlaefer
Marketing/PR Director
feminapotenspress@gmail.com
Femina Potens
2199 Market Street (at Sanchez) San Francisco 415-864-1558

For the longest time I have been waiting for Utilikilts.com to make mention of all the kilt wearers in the fetish lifestyle. Well it finally happened. I sent them images from the show I did and a painting that was done of myself & Madison Young and they featured it in their newsletter as well as on their website!

Check it out! Utilikilts’ Newsletter

Lochai

So with the explination out of the way, I have posted below some images shot by my friend Retrotie of “Blind Faith” performed with “Uncommon Bond” as a backdrop…

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So last night was the opening for Nancy Peach’s exhibit “Unspoken Bond” which was a series of oil paintings of Madison Young in my ropes.

Now Nancy & I decided to not meet one another till the opening. We discussed what was wanted for her reference images and that was it. Lydia photographed Madison & I and turned over the images. I also didn’t want to see which images Nancy chose to paint.

Well, last night I arrived at the gallery to find Nancy dancing at the top of the stairs waiting for me to arrive, along with my beautiful wife Janice & a very sexy house guest K. We kissed, made pleasantries and entered the gallery together. WOW, it is not often I am left speechless but I still cant find the words to describe an 8 foot painting of myself. I will just say I am humbled……

Not sure who was filming but we also did a performance last night with video hired by the artist, Nancy Peach, who painted the 8 foot painting of Madison & I. As soon as I get footage & images from our performance “Blind Faith” I will post them.

Here are the paintings Nancy did form photographs of Madison & I that are on exhibit at the Center for Sex & Culture.

Here are a couple of the photos she worked off of by Lydia.

You can find more of my rope art on my site Kirinawa.com

Lochai

Well there is a new networking site out there fr all you kink related cyber junkies (like myself) called I-Bondage.  This is a very powerful, well appointed site that takes everything that every other networking site does right & gives it to you for free.

Great chat functions, groups, discussions, galleries, member uploaded videos and much, much more.  Now I would have written this last week anyway but I was very busy & this week I have even more incentive to send you there because I was chosen as the “Photographer of the Month for Nov/Dec.  Come by & check it out. I-Bondage.com http://www.i-bondage.com/page/behind-closed-doors .

You need to be a member to even view the site (membership is free) but it is VERY WORTH taking the time.

-Lochai

As you may or may not know, I not only perform in some of your favorite adult films and bondage sites but I’m also an artist and activist who runs a progressive art gallery in San Francisco, Femina Potens Art Gallery (www.feminapotens.org)

Femina Potens has provided hundreds or art exhibits, spoken word events, multi-media programs, film screenings and educational work shops over the past 8 years that reflect the experiences of women, transgendered, kink, and sex worker communities.  We need all of your support in order to continue to provide such resources to the community and create visibility for cutting edge artists.

With our new sustainer program you can donate as little as $10 a month, a tax deductible donation, and at the same time become part of a movement of artists pushing boundaries around identity, sex, feminism, public health, and queering how together as a community we engage with art.

Help support visibility and connection of the queer community through the arts.  Nurture your community by sustaining the only non-profit art gallery in the Castro and the country’s only queer public arts program.

Femina Potens is an all ages community funded gallery and is a reflection of all of us.  We encourage you to become a member.  Connecting Communities by Queering Concepts of Art and Sex.

Go to http://www.feminapotens.org to become a sustainer today.  Sustainers also receive such benefits as free tickets to Femina Potens events, VIP art events, and discounts on art purchases.

Thank you so much for your support.

xo,
Madison Young

Well some of my photography is in Germany with the Erotic Signature world tour.  Below is a shot of some of the viewers and on the walls you can see 4 of my images including “Beach Bound” and “Curves”.

I am very proud to have this image permantly hanging in Miami @ WEAM as well as in Chicago @ the Leather Archives & Museum.

The other way August has been so wonderful and actually ties in rather well with Beach Bound is that as you already know, I was offered a wonderful new job as the new Director of Hogtied.com!  It just so happens that the model in “Beach Bound” Claire Adams, is also a director at Kink.com, the umbrella company of HT.  So, all in all this month has made me rather proud of myself and has given me warm & fuzzy feelings.

I think I like August.

“Goodness… I can’t even imagine how this must all feel for you. I see your name EVERYWHERE! It makes me laugh… I sucked your cock while watching the Olympics! It doesn’t seem quite real.”

J and I will be heading out to SF next Fri and staying at the Armory for a week to look for a new home. I will also start putting some shoots in the can & the first one once I get out there will be with Lexi Belle

Back to packing! We finally hired the moving company yesterday. When the guy walked into my office and saw my photography on the wall he was impressed with my “collection” He was floored when I told him it was all my own work & he said that once he was finished with work, he was going to stop by the Museum to see my exhibit. Aug has to have been the best month for me in a very long time…….

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 16, 2008

Le Bal Érotique