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FEATURED ARTIST
FEATURED EVENT
ENDORSEMENTS
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| Meet the Jurors |
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The Jury members consist of individuals knowledgeable in the field of Erotic Art, people who are academics and well informed on the subject as well as already established masters in erotic imagery. The jury includes curators of erotic art museums around the world, writers, artists, photographers and digital artists; they have experience in illustrating this subject, all with an artistic and professional passion for eroticism in art. Whether you submit one, two or (the maximum) five images for our jury to decide upon, you have the chance to have all submissions included as each artwork is judged anonymously and on its own individual merit. Each juror will view every submission by you and award a high to low number score to each artwork. At the end of the competition the scores of each juror will be added together for each of your submitted artwork, giving you a total. The highest totals in each category will be the winners. The percentage of entries in each category will correspond with the percentage of the highest scores selected for that respective category. We think this is the fairest way with every artist having an equal chance of success.
Artist and Co-founder of The Association of Erotic Artists
Christopher John Ball BA (Hons) MA is a widely exhibited and published, award winning, London based, fine arts photographer, playwright and lecturer. With almost 30 years experience as a photographer - his work is held in public and private collections worldwide and he is the co-founder of the international arts and academic body 'Association of Erotic Artists.' Chris draws his inspiration from philosophy, film and music. He believes that how we see ourselves, and how we are objectified by the camera, is an existential rationale and his work is an attempt to explore that. Given that he is also a writer, and because he sees in photography a strong link to literature, it should come as no surprise to find that his photographs are made to work in series so as to create a visual narrative. "...sensual nudes that pay homage to the female form in a manner that is both graceful and elegant. Very rarely do we come across a portfolio that strikes us so deeply..." -The New Nude Magazine
He often uses non-conventional photographic equipment such as pin-hole, Holga and vintage cameras and alternative photographic processes such as the cyanotype to create a specific aesthetic. In addition to his teaching and photographic work; Chris also works in film and theatre. His first play 'Throwing Stones' was co-written with Dean Sipling. It was first performed at The South London Theatre in July 2005. There followed a successful month long run at The Greenwich Playhouse in September 2005. “Mid-life male photographer meets young, nubile female student-cum-artistic muse - so far its old hat. But photographer turned playwright Christopher John Ball and co-writer Dean Sipling, whose background is film and television, bring the pairing into a thoroughly contemporary world of intercepted emails, sinister insinuation and sharp retorts. Their ‘guilty until proved innocent’ plot ... is thoroughly watchable and believable - perhaps as a result of Ball’s professional insights and DS Dom Lucas’ services as police advisor to the production.” - Barbara Lewis – The Stage ‘Throwing Stones’ is set to be staged again in 2009 and will be published later this year. Christopher and Dean are currently at work on a new play to be called 'Dancing at Tyburn.' <!--[endif]-->
KELLY STEVENS Director of Nude Nite Orlando/Tampa
Kelly Stevens is director of NUDE NITE, an annual multi-media event celebrating the art of the nude. In its 11th year, the 3-nite, multi-city event plays host to hundreds of the best nude artworks in the country attracting thousands of attendees each year.
Stevens has a Masters in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing. After many years of corporate experience, Stevens devotes herself full time to the arts. She has held board positions on the Orlando Museum of Art Associates, and the City of Orlando’s City Arts Factory. Stevens is a photographer/writer with contributions to MCO, Industry, Microfilm and Create magazines and travels internationally to review art events nationwide.
JERRY VILE Director and Creator of the Dirty Show
Jerry Vile is the creator and director of the infamous Dirty Show®, considered to be the largest erotic art exhibition in the world. Now in its tenth year, the Dirty Show is expanding globally with simultaneous opening events planned for most continents. Vile and his Dirty Show® cohorts (Jeremy H and Gary A) believe that “erotica is perhaps the final frontier in the art world” and are continually seeking artists who will take the erotica to the next level. When not organizing the Dirty Show®, Vile is a publisher of regional publications with national appeal, such as Detroit’s legendary Fun & Orbit Magazines, both defunct the latter best known for its cartoon mascot Orby appearing in the movie Pulp Fiction worn by director, Quentin Tarantino. Vile has written for numerous publications, as varied as Details, Juxtapoz, Modern Machine Shop and The Hollywood Reporter. Besides journalism, Vile has done stints singing in bands, acting, software marketing and is a low volume creator of “What some people might consider art.”
JUSTICE HOWARD Photographer
Amidst the pack of internationally renowned photographers, there has arisen an Alpha Female. American born Justice Howard has come in great strides through her career to the heights of her predecessors such as Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton sinking her eye teeth in and making her own distinct mark in the industry. Internationally acclaimed for her works in over 25 countries with hundreds of print features, dozens of anthologies, many successful art gallery exhibitions, works in hardcover coffee table books and magazines that stretch from French Vogue to Easyriders, she has proven herself as a force to be reckoned with. All this and she shows no signs of slowing. Best known for her erotic imagery, she has cast her distinct light on legends from Mamie Van Doren, Sybil Danning and Xene Cervenka, with a great number of Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets all living in print within the vast collections of Justice’s remarkable manifested visions. Her images display empowerment of the women she films, showcasing their strengths and highlighting their prowess. You get the feeling that the women in her work are quite capable of escaping from the frames and moving forth to conquer the world by storm. Her hunts have also covered a great pride of rockers from surf guitar legend Dick Dale, Eric Burden, to crystal shattering metal phenom Neil Turbin, Dave Navarro and Marilyn Manson. She is credited for capturing the last living photographs of outlaw country’s irreplaceable Waylon Jennings. Her unique style is vibrant and crisp, supernatural and intense. Dynamic frame after dynamic frame, every shot stands illuminated and shines above and beyond other known works. Coupled with a no-nonsense hands on shooting style, there’s really no stopping her as she moves forward like a loaded train onto greater heights and even more impressive collections. The future holds much for this gifted ‘huntress of the lens’ and somewhere, howling in the distance, she is letting the world know that she stands ready. LAURENCE GARTEL
Digital Media Artist/Producer Mr. Gartel is considered the "FATHER" of the Digital Art movement around the world for over 30 years. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Joan Whitney Payson Museum, Long Beach Museum of Art, Princeton Art Museum, PS 1, Norton Museum, Palm Beach Photographic Center and in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History and the Bibliotheque Nationale. His biography for his pioneering efforts is included in "Who's Who," "Who's Who in the East," "Who's Who in America," "Who's Who in American Art," and "Who's Who in the World” and recently included in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London. Born and raised in New York City, Gartel had the opportunity to teach Andy Warhol how to use the Amiga Computer, went to School of Visual Arts and associated with fellow student, graffiti artist Keith Haring, where he earned his BFA degree majoring in Graphics. Gartel started his electronic career working side by side with Nam June Paik at Media Study/Buffalo in upstate New York. Gartel had many associations with musicians such as Debbie Harry (Blonde) Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols), Stiv Bators (Dead Boys) Johnny Thunders (New York Dolls) Ace Frehley (Kiss) and Wendy O Williams (Plasmatics). Recently, Gartel has created artwork for such Pop Culture stars such as Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. His ABSOLUT GARTEL commission for Absolut Vodka is perhaps his most well known artwork gracing the pages of “ART-IN-AMERICA,” “Artforum,” “Sothebys,” “Art and Auction,””Art and Antiques,” “ArtByte,” “Scientific American,” “Technology Review,” “WIRED,” & “NY Magazine... He has several monograph books including:
Gartel has judged the Digital Filmmaking Compeittion for the Scottsdale International Film Festival as well as being asked to Chair and Moderate the Panel on New Cinematic Perspectives for the Cannes Film Festival in France. Regionally in the State of Florida: Gartel organized a large screen projection multimedia DVD for Governor Jeb Bush's Office of Film & Entertainment, presented during the Florida Filmmakers Reunion at the Globe Theatre, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, Hollywood. He has also coordinated the Digital Filmmaking Panel during the Miami International Film Festival in conjunction with Miami Dade College. GARTEL’s latest project “FERRARI” will be presented at the Transverse exhibition taking place at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, late 2009.
ANNA HURWITZ Director of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival (SEAF) Anna Hurwitz, Director of the internationally acclaimed Seattle Erotic Art Festival, has been producing alternative art events for 20 years. She started on the shores of the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the late 80s, turning vast abandoned warehouses into pulsing arenas of art and sound. She opened the artspace Mustard with a group of artists who went on to produce over 20 events in 18 months. During this time, she began to notice surprising similarities between the vanilla warehouse performance artists and the BDSM, fetish and body art scenes. As providence would have it, Anna was given a copy of RE/Search Magazine’s Modern Primitives and subsequently met photographer Charles Gatewood. Both of these experiences led her to conceive of and co-produce the Deviant Playground (1995). Originally planned as a photo opportunity for Gatewood, the event became an extravaganza of interactive installation and performance art that featured many prominent body artists, extreme performers, several infamous houses of domination, and dozens of vanilla artists all playing together on an adult-sized playground. Later she went on to help produce Gatewood’s retrospective The Body and Beyond at the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center (1997), which included a ‘parade of perversion’ over the Williamsburg Bridge, and helped with environmental design of the long-running SMack! parties. After successfully burning out in NYC, Anna moved to Seattle in the late 90s where she hid out until invited by the organizing committee to join SEAF as a juror. Not able to keep her mouth shut, Anna was soon voted in as the Committee Chair and became the Festival Director. During her seven year tenure at SEAF, she has had the pleasure of working with an incredible array of artists and the extraordinary Festival Organizing Committee. She is grateful to the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture board for the opportunity to forward her personal mission to make art accessible to all while supporting living artists. Please visit the Festival website at www.SeattleErotic.org or contact Anna at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
JOHNNY GRAY a.k.a. JAYGI Digital Artist - Master Winner of Erotic Signature 2007 Competition
Born in 1955, Johnny Gray a.k.a. Jaygi never used to take his art overly seriously as it has always been there and something he has always been able to do well. Jaygi has no formal training other than at school up until the age of sixteen.
In his twenties Jaygi was very interested in what he can only describe as spiritual art, for the most part Animistic in that it tried to show the spirit of life in all things.
He has worked with computer graphics for the last 15 years. Mostly in the T-shirt printing company he started in 1985 with his friend Terry. This has trained him to work quickly to a brief and within a time and price; good training for any artist.
Prior to starting Apple Screenprint when he first left school, he worked as a barber, factory worker, gardener and grave digger; one could say dead end jobs; but Jaygi has always believed that life is what you make it. He became interested in what the viewer sees and feels when they look at art after a trip to Japan in 2002. One afternoon, he went to an exhibition of art created by Onisaburo Deguchi. He was a poet, potter, painter, calligrapher and one of the founders and the driving force behind the Omoto faith in Japan. Part of the exhibition was one room full of his Kanji.The person he was walking the exhibition with “Aia-Bella” who was kind enough to challenge him “as a, none speaker or reader of Nihongo, (Japanese) to try to translate what each of the Kanji meant. They were both surprised to find how close Jaygi was able to come to their meaning of each of the Kanji. He was able to do this by the emotion in the brush strokes and the over all pattern of the symbol. This has lead him to try to find ways to promote emotions in the viewers of his art; He of course cannot say whether he achieve this; He leaves it up to the viewer.
Last year ,Jaygi entered four pieces of artwork in the Erotic Signature Art Competition. “Ophelia” won the Master Award and another picture “Little Red” won a place in the top 200 pieces of artwork that were voted into the book of the competition “The World’s Greatest Erotic Art of Today, volume 2”.
Artwork now fits in between work and a long term project that he has been working on for the last ten years. The next two years should bring the first stage of this work to light but the recreation of the Zhouyi and the theory of the Four Phases will take him and other some more years.
JACQUES RIVEST Director of Conseil Des Arts du Quebec Jacques Rivest started his career in the art world more than 30 years ago as an agent with a single artist. For five years he worked with this one artist, showing successfully his work around the world. In the mean time, he manage an underground gallery which, at the time, was quite “avantgarde”. He became involve in the political life and was the first President of a Cultural Commission of an elected political party in Montreal, a city of over one million habitants at that time.
During many years, he continued as an agent,
travelling the world and putting on shows in Paris, New York, Tokyo and Delhi,
just to name a few. In 1993, he started a foundation to help out artists. While
he was Chairman of the board and CEO, this Montreal based foundation was built up to a museum, which held a collection of
more than 3000 works of art. In 2007, he then left the foundation and became
the director of the Quebec Art Council.
JAMIE McCARTNEY Jamie McCartney is a sculptor whose taste for the unusual is gaining him an international reputation. His Bachelor of Fine Art (with highest honours) in Experimental Studio Art from the renowned Hartford Art School sent him down the path of non-traditional sculpture very early on. It was, however, during his years creating models, props and effects for the movie industry that he really developed his techniques. Taking that experience, Jamie is creating some truly outlandish artworks from his eccentric Brighton seafront studio. Jamie’s work goes beyond the boundaries of erotic art into all kinds of genres. Although often incorporating nudity or genitalia it is not always with sexy intentions. There are conceptual and political threads that run through many of his works and he is never shy of courting controversy. “I thrive on it”, he says, “I’m not here to make ‘safe’ art. I see myself as a revolutionary with a bucket of plaster instead of a gun”. Being prepared to go to extremes is what this artist is all about.
It is, however, Jamie’s erotic body castings, which have made him a household name. Taking this age-old process, he has embraced the new materials available and developed his techniques to really make this type of sculpture his own. What Jamie does has pushed the boundaries to create a completely new art form, which is indeed revolutionary.
Jamie won the first Erotic Signature sculpture prize in 2006 with his wall piece, The Spice of Life. Consisting of 84 casts of genitals and breasts, it is a hugely compelling piece of art and social commentary combined. In contrast Jamie’s outlandish, surrealist piece, The Impossibility of Passion, made him an ES book winner in 2007.
Jamie’s interests though, go beyond his own studio. Heavily involved in the local art scene, he set up the ARTSHOLE group in Brighton and is a founder member and of the AQUA group. He also recently established the UK’s only permanent commercial erotic art gallery, IMPURE ART. This has given many erotic artists the opportunity to get their work into the public eye in a way never possible before. He is currently developing several artworks, which will involve worldwide collaboration, further demonstrating his commitment to the art community.
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Artist Phil Illingworth is an artist with a professional career spanning some 30 years. He studied at Portsmouth College of Art (1975 - 1978), and spent much of his earlier career as a designer and illustrator working for an impressive list of blue-chip companies and many household names. Phil's work is shown widely at art galleries and exhibitions both in his native England and in the USA. His work has featured in national and international publications as well on TV, and has been selected for shows including the Dirty Show 8 in Detroit, the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, and the 2008 Kinsey Institute Summer Exhibition. He also appears in the first edition of our very own 'The World's Greatest Erotic Art of Today'. His works are well known for their incisive exploration into all aspects of the human condition and our society, from politics to sexuality, and "a deep, frequently unsettling, subversive wit". He lives with his family in England and France.
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