On Sexual Imagery

            Sexuality is fundamental to the way we are.  We are born with reproductive organs and a powerful biological drive to use them.  Our mandate is to go forth and multiply.
            We are also born into a group, and groups regulate sexuality.  To a greater or lesser extent, we each live in a state of tension between our desires and our social obligations.
            Our social institutions are designed to control sexuality.  In the strictest religious formulation, the only permissible sex is between a sanctioned couple with the intent of making a baby.  This excludes any type of sex for pleasure only, and any sex outside of a sanctioned relationship.  It also excludes the vast preponderance of actual sexual activity.
            Our ideal is that sex should be consensual, but we know that the strong can dominate the weak.  In reality, consensual sex is based on the strong voluntarily refraining from using power.  Sex cannot be separated from power.  Power cannot, ultimately, be separated from violence.  It can be hard to reconcile our notions about romance with the realities of power.
            We choose the degree to which we sexualize our own behavior, depending upon what we want.  We can use sex to attract a mate, or to manipulate another, or to get attention.  We are aware of other people’s sexuality.
            We are only partly aware of what arouses us sexually.  Sometimes, what arouses us also upsets us, and we prefer not to face up to it.
            Sex feels wonderful and sexual intimacy can build an intense, primordial bond.              During sex, we can sometimes get an ephemeral glimpse of why God made the world.
            An art that uses sexual imagery can talk of creation, pleasure, pain, violence, tension, arousal, attraction, loathing, guilt, desire, compulsion, control, restraint, fear, and love.  It is a rich, rich stew.

Noah’s Ark

            A number of years ago, I saw an exhibit of Noah’s Ark toys made by 19th Century artisans.  The toys were die-cast pairs of gaily-painted animals, standing on rectangular bases, one each, male and female.  The story of Noah, of course, is that of the triumph of the procreative urge in the wake of the cataclysmic destruction of nearly all that walked, swam and flew.  These toy animals from more than a hundred years ago represented a cheerful and unquestioning sensibility of sexuality as solely in the service of reproduction.  The toys were not sexualized in any way other than by the differences in size and colorization that we associate with many male and female animals, but their mission was perfectly clear:  Mama and Papa Zebra, hell-bent on making as many little zebras as time and good health allowed.
            I could not help but compare this simplistic view of couples and their sexual relationships with the complex, if not absurdly convoluted, goings-on that characterize any real relationship.  Few of us, anymore, feel the need to indulge in unbridled fecundity.  Our sexuality seems more an arena, now, for playing out our needs and desires and our aversions and fears and, only occasionally, for the making of babies.  I decided to make Noah’s Ark toys for our times.

A Baker’s Dozen

            This is a series of thirteen small scale sketches of my family, friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances, and me.  They deal, varyingly and in no particular order with:  eating disorders, dependency, rage, poor judgment, aging, authority, habit, despair, inherited traits, defecating in public, taboos, privilege, fidelity, loneliness, bad hair, intimacy, pets, and ambivalent feelings.

The Middle School Science Teacher Makes a Decision He’ll Live to Regret

There is nothing as inexplicable in the human character as our propensity to look something square in the face, know that it is completely and totally wrong to do, and then go ahead and do it anyway. 
            A number of years ago, I read a series of articles in the paper about a school teacher.  He was married and had young children.  He was active in his church.  He had been a teacher for over thirty years.  Then, one day, he seduced a student.  He was arrested, tried, and convicted.  He is still in prison today, estranged from his family, and disgraced in the eyes of his neighbors.
            What terrible compulsion could drive a person to risk the loss of all that is good in his life?
            We all understand our actions affect other people, and we understand that our actions can have consequences.  Knowing what is right and wrong is not the issue.  Choosing to do the right thing, even when we are being pulled hard the other direction, is the crux.
            We all do things wrong.  Usually, they are small things, with small consequences.  What do we do, though, when something we deeply desire is something we shouldn’t have, and the consequences for taking it are huge?  Is weakness inevitable, or do we always have a choice?
            Our underlying fear is that we, too, will give in to our desires - that we, too, facing the choice between compulsion and restraint, will trade a moment of gratification for a lifetime of despair and regret.
           
            The Middle School Science Teacher Makes a Decision He’ll Live to Regret combines two different time settings:  the moment of weakness and the eventual arrival of consequences.  While nominally it depicts the act of fulfilling an overwhelming desire, the man is posed as what I imagine a guy who lost his job and is out on bail pending sentencing would look like as he watches his wife drive off with his kids for the last time.  It shows a man who, in the very act of committing the crime, is staring ahead at a future of disgrace and ruin.

            I believe that art can have the power to help us think about difficult, even troubling, things.  Artwork about crime and its ramifications is one of those things.  Art helps us to think about right and wrong, compulsion and restraint, and actions and consequences.