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 deep dish - issue 238 |
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WARNING: Viewing this page might make you a) spit out your apple martini, b) throw up your last trick or c) hide under your Martha Stewart San Quentin comforter. You see, the woman on this page was hung from the ceiling with eight hooks through her flesh (which is freshly pierced each time with large fish hooks). As blood started to leak from one of these wounds, I squirmed. In the corner another wild woman lay content as two rows of eight silver hoops were inserted into her tattooed back, which she then, fiddle-dee-dee, had laced up like Scarlett O’Hara’s corset. This was all part of Feisty Productions and S.M.U.T. Magazine’s Carnival Sang-Froid at The Reverb. I fished around later and found Rachel McBride hanging about backstage. She has been performing “flesh-hook suspensions” for three years with a group called iWasCured. “It’s mind over matter. I like to test my body’s limits,” says Rachel. “Some people run marathons, some jump out of airplanes, I just happen to hang from hooks.” Hmm, yes. Sometimes I try and get up before noon. It’s murder! • The two owners of XEXE (pronounced “she-she”) aren’t hooked on phonics. Shirley Ann Spiteri and Kristyn Wong-Tam are currently showcasing the works of two female artists, Sandra Brewster and Marisa Swangha, in their almost two-month-old, two-level gallery at 624 Richmond St. W. “It’s not ‘she-she’ in terms of gender,” Sandra explains. “It’s a word that we made up. It means a devotion to a diverse representation of fine art.” Their current shows, “Stance” and “Beads and Books: Red, Orange and Brown” are perfect examples of this. Brewster’s work uses charcoal on watercolour paper to depict figurative images that focus on the clothed torsos of mysterious subjects; Swangha delves into the whimsically abstract by combining beadwork, leather and bookbinding under thick coats of bright, acrylic paint on her stretched canvas creations. One piece, called “Volcano,” incorporates 17 layers of beadwork that protrude an inch above the canvas. “My lesbian friends like it because it looks like a nipple,” she laughs. Attending the opening were DJ Nikki Red, gallery owner Joshua Burston and fascinating artist Stephen James Kerr. I swallowed as he told me that the streets that fan out from the White House form a pentagram. “If you ask a fundamentalist Christian what it means, they will tell you that the American ruling class worships the devil.” Hmm, I thought it odd that George “Wicked” Bush had hooves! • I’m in love with a teenage lesbian. Sounds like the title of a B movie, but there I was, infatuated with young Mae, who was manning (or girling) the kissing booth at Shameless Magazine’s fundraiser. Performing was all-girl breakdancing crew shebang!, which included MuchMusic VJ Jennifer Hollett, who has been busting a move for the last four years. The mag is aimed at teenage girls but “most girl mags assume that everyone is white, straight and upper-middle class. We’re not going to make that assumption. We will have content that is lesbian- and trans-focused,” says co-publisher Melinda Mattos. The magazine (www.shamelessmag.com) will be available on newsstands in June. Cuddle up with a copy…in your Martha Stewart Jailbird Jammies. • rolyn chambers |
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