(Descriptions of mansex, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
From the Mic site yesterday, “Needleporn: The queer, wholesome yet sexually explicit craft you need to get into” by Evan Ross Katz.
Nice story, though the only illustrations of Zach Nutman’s work are Safe For Work or have the naughty bits pixellated. So I went off to get some of the hard-core stuff. And then found another source of X-rated gay embroidery, by Maria Piñeres. Three examples from each artist are now available in an AZBlogX posting “X-rated embroidery”.
(Big hat tip to Kim Darnell.)
Katz on Nutman:
“I wanted to sew porn; I felt like it might be a fun thing to do,” 22-year-old London-born Zachary Nutman decided on a whim two years ago after moving to New York City to attend film school at NYU.
Growing up in London, Nutman says the depictions of queer eroticism he saw in television and film were mostly either punishing to queer characters, often resulting in violence — like on HBO’s Game of Thrones — or totally devoid of any real expressions of sexuality, depicting them as non-sexual or heteronormative — like on ABC’s Modern Family.
To contend with this, Nutman decided to concoct “the most grandmotherly, matriarchal way to depict aggressive queer sex in a way that felt wholesome and was not at all diluting the sexuality of it,” he said, “but rather celebrating it.” And so, wanting to create something folks could proudly hang on their walls, he settled on an old hobby of his: needlepoint … extremely NSFW needlepoint.
An example right on the X borderline (where the pubic hair starts), “Banana Republic”, #1 in the AZBlogX posting:
Cowborgies [cowboy orgies], queerleaders [queer cheerleaders], finger banging and pegging are just some of the themes Nutman explores by way of an art form he says is largely associated with grandmothers in the South stitching Bible quotes.
Jeremiah 29:11 [KJV: For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.] this ain’t.
“I didn’t have an interest in diluting the sexuality,” he said. “The only criteria is that it feels queer to me. It was always important for me to show hard, queer sex in this really soft medium. The first one I did was two dudes going at it. It didn’t get more sexual; it started off really sexual and has stayed that way.”
Influenced by the work of Tom of Finland, Grayson Perry and Ross Watson, thus far he’s made around 30 pieces and has no plans to stop any time soon. Each can take up to 100 hours to create, depending on the size.
“I was thinking about the most grandmotherly, matriarchal way to depict aggressive queer sex in a way that felt wholesome and was not at all diluting the sexuality of it, but rather celebrating it.”
When asked if there’s anything too explicit to be woven, Nutman replied “definitely not” without a hint of hesitation.
So who’s the intended audience? “In my mind, I make them for queer people — and that is what I intend to keep doing,” he said. “They are the people I find understand and respond to them the best. But something I found really fascinating while making these is that non-queer people who I would think normally would blush at images of hard queer sex, because of the softness of the medium, find themselves questioning that impulse and actually being more open to these images.”
Nutman on my X blog: #1 above; #2, “The Gym”, three-way with analinus and fellation; #3, “GayAqua Spa”, with a couple standing up in a bathtub, being affectionate, plus an erect onlooker.
The sex in Nutman’s is anonymous sex — literally faceless. His characters have no facial features; they are nothing but sexual actors.
Maria Piñeres. Then from the wewastetime site on 7/17/12, minimal information about the artist:
70’s gay erotica needlepoint pillows by Maria E. Piñeres, a Colombia-born American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
She is represented by DCKT Contemporary in New York City and Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles.
The three works on AZBlogX: #4 showing fellatio against a background of rainbow strips (my snarky caption: “on your knees, rainbow sucker!”); #5 masturbation (“self-service”); #6 fellatio again (“got what you need”, from the insertive to the receptive).
Piñeres’s characters all have faces (expressive ones, within the limitations of the medium), so they are what you focus on first in the scenes depicted.
Leave a Reply