Before I say what an incredible time I had last night at Femina Potens‘ Art of Restraint performance event, let me tell you what an amazing thing is going on with this gallery and community. It’s like nothing else right now, and with all the economy of bullshit I’m seeing in the current climate of the ‘tech scene’ full of douches, XXX carpetbaggers, and empty gestures — Femina Potens is doing The Right Thing for women and transgender artists. This means more than supporting the creation of art, or creating community; it’s a conversation about making a place for a new kind of sexy celebration of humanity. There’s nothing else in the world like it. The art is outstanding, the vibe is gentle but playful and kinky, and it’s always warm, welcoming, with an edge that feels like you’re part of a revolution just by standing there with a drink in your hand surrounded by so many brilliant iconoclasts from all worlds.
Donate to Femina Potens (through Network for Good). It’s not an empty gesture. Madison is an articulate, powerful feminist female submissive porn performer, and she’s making a positive change. For real. And her dedicated volunteers and interns are amazing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen something so “from the heart.”
Now, last night’s theme was “Unraveled” and it was funny, outrageous, beautiful. Lots of Kink stars were in attendance. Miss Maggie Mayhem was literally just back from volunteering to help rebuild Haiti, and I can attest that her biceps are beefy from building shelters. She has some incredible stories, from what the sex trade looks like in the disaster’s wake to harrowing tales of witnessing tragedy. She’s going back in December; watch her blog for Haiti fundraising help opportunities. Madison Young was cute as a button (she’s really super-sweet in real life, and even prettier than her photos). Lochai delivered his last official public suspension performance before leaving San Francisco (and Kink ::weep::) to go back to teaching and if I heard right, establishing a rope dojo in Baltimore. (I’m going to try and plead him for a suspension this week, before he leaves and before I go to Gnomedex next weekend.) I met Jack Hammer, and OMG is he insanely hot. He is. Mon dieu. Also on hand was Fivestar looking glowy and happy as ever; and I finally got to watch Two Knotty Boys‘ Danarama in action; I somehow crossed paths with Aurora Snow, chatted with peeps from Carnal Nation and much more.
The entire Art of Restraint: Unraveled gallery is here on Fotki. I’m not going to make anyone deal with Flickr’s identity crisis just to look at my photos — but I just did a WordPress plugin hack that *should* let you quick-peep all my photos in a gallery after the jump (just not in large sizes).
The neat thing (besides my hack!) about this set is that it combines photos taken with my Sprint EVO and photos taken with my Canon 12MP wide-angle — I was surprised that several of the Android’s photos were better than the Canon’s. Also, FYI: I uploaded two sets of these live as they were happening to my lifestream Daily Violet.
