What Do You Think?

[joannaprimrose]

Just when you thought the world was strange enough . . . someone has to try to raise the bar on how strange . . . strange can get.

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http://thepost.ohiou.edu/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=5&ArticleID=32957

Artists 'explore love' in Athens with sexecology
11/4/2010 4:07:00 AM

By Emma Morehart • Staff Writer • ohiou.edu


Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle will wed for the 10th time in six years Saturday in Ohio University's Galbreath Chapel. The wedding is unique, however, in that it is a marriage to the Appalachian Mountains.

Stephens and Sprinkle are performance artists who invented "sexecology," a concept that combines sexology and ecology through art.

The two women have wed each other, their community in San Francisco, the moon, the land and the seas. These weddings are a form of performance art that represents their love for the earth.

"If we can change the metaphor of the earth as mother to the earth as lover, then maybe people would start to realize that it's time to take care of the earth instead of expecting the earth to take care of us the way a mother would," Stephens said.

The seven-year sexecology project began in 2005, partly in response to the anti-gay marriage movement, and combines three main values: environmentalism, art and love.

"(We wanted to) use art as a way to explore love without being hokey or stereotypical," Stephens said. "We were trying to take love back as something that really has power."

Stephens and Sprinkle can have more than one wedding each year, but each one is based off one of seven chakras, representations of different types of energy within the body such as courage, love and intuition.

The chakra for the wedding to the mountains is intuition and wisdom. The corresponding body part is the "third eye," and the corresponding color is purple.

The third eye is similar to hindsight - it urges people to look back at current ecological practices from a more logical standpoint. For example, while people are searching the moon for water, they are destroying water reserves in mountains from coal mining, Stephens said.

Blue and green ephemera - such as costumes, shoes, photos and other objects - from past weddings are on display in the OU Trisolini Gallery in Baker University Center today through the end of January.

A reception tonight in the gallery will kick off this exhibit, and the ephemera from the purple wedding will be showcased in the Kennedy Museum of Art in January.

"We hope that (attendees of the events) are going to experience something new ... and something that they have never thought of as art," said Petra Kralickova, the curator of the Kennedy Museum of Art.

Stephanie Fisk, one of the coordinators of the week's events, also said she hopes people learn from Stephens and Sprinkle's unique beliefs.

"It's inspiring to see someone else's passion and to allow yourself to discover your own passion through it," Fisk said.