Source: Letters to the Editor
By: Annie Sprinkle Ph.D.
On Personal Notes–We’re moving.
Me Today
You’re Invited to Blue Wedding(s)
It’s Show Time!
My Only Complaint…
Porn Again?
Come to the Love Art Lab
Be My Friend?– Facebook
And YOU?
Dearly Beloved,
It’s been well over a year since I wrote. But I can’t contain myself any longer. The tide goes in and the tide goes out, and the tide is in in in, baby! My cups runneth over.
On Personal Notes…
Beth and I spent two Sweet years together in our little house in the redwoods in Boulder Creek, tucked in the Cleavage of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Beth completed her duties as the chair of the Art Department at UCSC and I got to play faculty wife and live in an emerald forest and befriend a white peacock. Now we are ripe and ready to move back to our much bigger house in San Francisco where we plan to be based for the years to come. I do so miss my wonderful friends and the culture in San Francisco. We Move mid-July, so if you know anyone that wants to rent a darling house in Boulder Creek/ Santa Cruz area, please do let us know.
Living with Beth for Seven years now has been remarkably easy; never a dull or lonely moment. Mid-September Beth will start as a student at UC Davis to get her Ph.D. In Performance Studies. Our darling husband Joe Kramer has been a regular visitor to Boulder Creek, and has gifted us with many wonderful massages. He’s the best husband two ”lesbians” could ever have. Bob, our perfect black lab doggie still travels and performs with us and is a delight.
Me Today…
Life is too short to try and squeeze myself into a mainstream kind of box. I have come to realize that I just won’t fit. So I’ve become more fringy than ever. I’m living the dream of being an experimental, conceptual artist person. What a feeling! I’m free to be me, exactly as I am, and do exactly what I’m drawn to do next, and to say and do the exact things I want to. So far so good, I am managing to make enough money at it too. I’m a healthy 54 years old, an abundant 199.99 pounds, and generally Happier with myself than ever. Sure sometimes I want to look younger and be thinner but as performance artist Frank Moore says, ”I have the perfect body for a performance artist.” if you’ve got it, flaunt it, and flaunt it I do.
With the exception of my visiting artist college lecture gigs, and some sex worker rights stuff, most of my work these days is in collaboration with Beth. Our Love Art Laboratory is in full stride, and we now have a good body of work under Our Belts. We’re in our fifth year, the Blue Year; the throat and communication chakra. www.loveartlab.org/
You’Re Invited to Our Blue Wedding(s).
Beth and I made a commitment to do a wedding every year as a platform for exploring, generating and celebrating love. We always ask for no material gifts but invite people to just come as a guest, or collaborate on the creation of the weddings. Everyone is invited! Especially you. While we are the two brides, our aim is always to make the focus of the weddings go beyond our personal relationship. There is always a political/spiritual/ecological/erotic/social component. Everyone knows the narrative of wedding, and its fun to mess around with this form. And I always just love a ritual.
Last summer 150 people helped create Green Wedding #4 and close to 400 people attended. We made vows to love and cherish the Earth ”until death brings us closer together forever,” and we came out as Ecosexuals. The wedding was held in a magnificent redwood tree grove on campus at UCSC. There is a video of it at www.loveartlab.org/performance-video.php?year_id=4. Then a few months later we did Green Wedding Queer Zagreb. As far as anyone could ascertain, it was the first queer wedding in the entire Balkans. There was only one Death threat. We were so happy we could pave the way for more queer Balkan weddings. www.loveartlab.org/slideshow.php?year_id=4&cat_id=95
Our NEXT wedding is just days away. Eeek! It’s Blue Wedding #5 in Oxford, England, at the historic Grove House on June 14th. We will Marry the Sky–rain or shine–because the sky needs our love. Ozone depletion is happening at an alarming rate. Besides the sky is Sexy. Get your blue outfit together and join us. (Your invitation is at www.loveartlab.org/invitation.php?year_id=5) for five days before the wedding, we will facilitate a workshop called Making Love Into Art and Art Into Love. Workshop participants will then help create the wedding. Call for collaborators is here: www.loveartlab.org/slideshow.php?year_id=5&cat_id=105
Beth and I decided we wanted to take a vacation, so we decided to go to the Venice Biennale this coming August. We thought it might be nice to marry the big blue sea while we were there, maybe drop a couple rings into the water from a gondola with some of our friends in attendance. Then we discovered that during the Renaissance the people of Venice would all marry the sea and the Doge would drop rings into the sea! What a coincidence. Who knew? Then we got invited by the curator of the pavilion of the Society of Fear to do our Blue Wedding to the Sea in the Venice Biennale! And he offered to help us with the production. (Thanks to our friend Beatriz Preciado for hooking us up.) We’re having an artgasm! Blue Wedding to the Sea is now growing into a big Blue performance piece on an international scale. So much for the vacation. Join us on August 28th–just come as a guest/witness, or come be in the Biennale with us as a collaborator. Wear Blue.
Our Blue Wedding to the Sea will be dedicated to my beloved art pimp of twenty years, Torch Gallery gallerist extraordinaire, Adriaan Van Der Have. He has gone on to the big art gallery in the sky. Without him I would not be in the great place I am. Thank you Adriaan! I’ll be eternally grateful.
It’s Show Time!
As if moving to San Francisco and creating two weddings aren’t enough to do this summer, we had to commit ourselves to a really Intense gig. In Madrid, on July 4th, Beth and I will present a new theater piece, Dirty Sexecology. Also performing that weekend are living-performance-art-treasures Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Franko B, and Ron Athey. The bar is High! So far Our show involves Beth singing about mountain top removal mining, me doing a nude ballet, we talk dirty to plants, and get buried in a mountain of dirt. It’s a poetic piece about the Earth as lover. We did a first short version in Switzerland. www.loveartlab.org/slideshow.php?year_id=4&cat_id=98 Rehearsals start tonight!
My Only Complaint…
… Is that we sometimes get overly busy and I’m not seeing friends and family nearly often enough, or having enough time for the gym, or swimming, or taking naps or reading a book. It could be worse.
Porn Again?
Recently a fun thing happened to me. I was flown to Manhattan to do a video shoot (just talking) for a DVD extra for the new fancy boxed edition re- release of my 1981 porn film classic Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle. Each box will have 3 DVDs, will come with a special booklet, a tit print, and an actual snip of the original 35 mm Film print, and more. Funny to have a ”new” mainstream porn movie coming out at this time in my life. So I guess I Am a Tad Mainstream still. After our video shoot, my nice producers at Video X Pix organized a reunion dinner of twenty 1970’s porn stars and directors for me-people I hadn’t seen in over three decades! My BFF Veronica Vera joined and represented the 80s. I was reminded of how kind, lovely and talented the people in pornography were in the 70’s, and it was a really touching heartfelt reunion. We must do a bigger one in the near future. Also, Joe Kramer has got my cannon of my best self produced/directed DVDs up on pay per view streaming video now. Should anyone want to see them go to www.anniesprinkle.org for instructions.
Come to the Love Art Lab
If you have some time, visit the virtual home of Love Art Lab, www.loveartlab.org/ Check out some of our other recent adventures; our exotic site specific tours for lovers, getting protested by ”feminists” and tagged as a Jew by a neo-nazi in a black ski mask in Norway, painting with blue paint using our hair as brushes, spooning naked in the lobby of one of the world’s top museums, our bridal party installation…
I finally joined but still don’t quite know how to work it. Will you be my Friend?
And YOU?
How are you? Please drop me a note and tell me what’s up in Your Life. I always love to hear from you. Please know that I send you lots of love and best wishes always.
The blushing and grateful bride,
Annie Sprinkle
Ps– My upcoming schedule of events is at www.anniesprinkle.org/html/about/calendarcurrent.html Maybe I’m coming your way. Hope to see you soon. XXX
