Love and lust were in the air Thursday night when Crocker Art Museum hosted its Art Mix series with the theme of “Love & Lust” in celebration of Valentine’s Day. The evening both warmed hearts and taunted mischief with a melange of performances and activities for a diverse audience, many of them couples. As DJ Mike Colossal spun sensual sounds, visitors posed affectionately in a photo booth by Beatnik Studios, drank pink pomegranate martinis and wrote Mad Lib love letters to each other.

On the third floor, Crocker featured selected amorous works in “Couples in the Collection.” The show includes Otis Oldfield’s portrait of his wife Helen in “White Dress,” John Bankston’s “Into the Rainbow,” and local painter Wayne Thiebaud’s portrait of his wife, titled “Betty Jean Thiebaud and Book.” The evening also engaged curious audiences with a presentation by Pecha Kucha, a global design network, which asked five local creative minds, “What turns you on?” The artists’ inspirations ranged from Kurt Edward’s photography of Jerry Brown in the ’70s to modern museum architecture and women in the humanities.

“We want to offer something for everybody,” said Christian Adame, Crocker’s lifelong learning manager. “Sensory overload is fun. It kind of sets (us) apart.”

The sensory experience hit its peak with provocative performances by the Sizzling Sirens burlesque dance troupe, a unique live art display, featuring theatrically enacted Valentine-themed vignettes. The live art pieces, a project that Sizzling Sirens founder Jessica Swanson says “fulfils an artistic fantasy,” explored five themes: Love, voyeurism, desire, mother nature and erotica.

Virtually visit the five Love & Lust scenes by viewing the Sizzling Siren’s program below:
 

Desire
“We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied to us.”
– Francois Rabelais

Friends and neighbors for years, Lucinda and Harlow are both caged in sterile and unfulfilled marriages. Leaving the ladies with their domestic duties, their husbands have left for a weekend fishing trip. While the two housewives tend to their chores, the absences of their spouses allows them to explore their simmering feelings for each other. It does not take long for the tempted twosome to submit to their yearnings, and consequence is not a concern to them. Only one outcome is for certain: The dirty laundry will only get dirtier for these desperate dames.
Performed by Lucinda Buttons and Harlow Mynx.

Love
“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.”
– Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) American clergyman, writer

Love is friendship, intimacy, comfort, exploration, sensuality, understanding and kindness, an emotional and physical reaction that recognizably unifies us when we experience it. Our sweet ingenues know the true meaning of love, and enjoy in celebration its many glorious forms. They teach us the pure gratification that comes when loving and exalting another simply for the enrichment of the divine spirit that lies within us all.
Performed by Shauni Fatale and Meowie Wowie.

Voyeurism
“You like to watch? Watch this…”
– Carly Norris, “Sliver”

Voyeurism, from the French voyeur, “one who looks,” can take several forms, but its principal characteristic is that the voyeur does not normally relate directly with the subject of their interest, who is often unaware of being observed. We are all made the voyeur at some point in life. We watch, listen, experience, from afar. It is not in our nature to resist the draw to see something private — not for our eyes to see. The challenge to holding to the secret, anticipation, excitement and peripheral titillation can be insurmountably ferocious.

Perofrmed by Colette Corbeau and Pantichrist

Mother Nature
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
– Albert Einstein

There is an organic and ancient seduction that swells with Mother Nature’s own power of creation and destruction. She is both awe inspiring and all consuming, with a ravenous passion the undercurrent to all her magnificent workings. Patience and raw power emanate from her very being, as she draws you into her spellbinding and ethereal gaze. She is all of us and none of us. A part, yet above. We revere and love her because she is everything.
Performed by Alijiah Dresden.

Erotica
“It breeds lust. Lust defiles the body, debouches the imagination, corrupts the mind, deadens the will, destroys the memory, sears the conscience, hardens the heart, and damns the soul.”
– Anthony Comstock

It’s a centuries-old campaign to bowdlerize, censor and reign in the great minds of classic writers because of their lustful content, and Comstock’s present-day bluenose successors’ basic motivations remain the same: to apply the values and preconceptions in a minority in such a way that the majority is denied free access to thoughts and ideas. This exhibit, featuring ribald and erotic excerpts from the likes of Ovid and Walt Whitman, demonstrates that erotic writing is a legitimate form of literary expression.
Performed by Tenacity Jane.

Scene text courtesy of The Sizzling Sirens

Photography by Julia Marino