I don't know how to start this blog off, because I want it to go in a clear direction, but start from an odd place.

The thing about the whole porn-going-mainstream, debutante-sex-tape, pop-star's-vaginas, youth-of-today, that whole scene, thing, is the feeling of dishonesty. There's nothing wrong with being proud of your body, it gets weird when the idea of your body that you're presenting is distorted. Likewise, there's very little wrong with communicating your sexuality- except for the fact that sexuality is a really complicated thing that probably can't be communicated by having words written on the ass of your pants. Sometimes dreams show up in the subconscious that are really oddly sexualized, but not in a way that can be codified into fetish pornography- there are things in this world that are mostly just the province of our minds, that can't really be communicated by lifting your shirt up when the cameras are rolling. A shirt that shows a lot of cleavage projects sexuality like wearing all black depicts depression- not really getting at the core of the thing, to the point of maybe missing it completely.

This is where Shary Boyle's art comes in. I posted a link to her website when I first found it, after it was announced she was going to be in Kramers Ergot 6, but I didn't really talk about it. My first thoughts were probably "huh, that's interesting imagery" and "I like her color sense." But her drawings and sculpture capture bigger things than most art does. It really short-circuits my ability to talk about it, besides just giving that general context. It sums up other things as well, the general idea of having things inside you that bloom in such a way as to explode your body, which is largely separate from anything sexual besides it being tied to some kind of disassociation between body and mind. Her work screams. I read somewhere, from someone who's seen her earlier work, that it used to be concerned with awkwardness, shame, and trembling. But now it's moved on to be this vision of what the world should be, that exists on the other side of all the nervousness, where things go wild. It's related to surrealism, but free of the misogyny that tends to pop up with those dudes. I don't blame the surrealists for having that pop up, I understand how it happens. I'm just saying, that's not in her work, for reasons that should be self-evident. I did read, however, that Shary's work almost was on display at the Sea-Tac airport but was rejected for its "lesbian overtones." That's in quotes, but it's a paraphrase- they might've been "lesbian undertones" as well, or just subtext. It's a thing that bubbles up, and then only barely- I don't think it's crass, but I think it would be an odd thing for an airport, if only for the explosive quality of it.