Tag Archives: Berlin leather community

The Women of Folsom Europe

Miss Natasha Enquist in Butcherei Lindinger at Folsom Europe Sept 9 2017 by Suzanne ForbesMy friend Miss Natasha Enquist performed at Folsom Europe 2017!

So of course I was there to see her. And the other women on stage.  There were plenty, despite the event being produced by male.space! ! Miss Natasha was styled for the event by legendary Berlin fetish wear designer Butcherei Lindinger.

She played a set you can check out here and also my favorite cover, “The Cat Came Back”. She got down and twerked and waggled her cock at the audience. You might have thought it was pretty transgressive for a mainly-gay-men event, but the crowd loved it!

And I was surrounded by big, buff leathermen who were cheering Miss Natasha on and saying incredibly nice and supportive things about my drawings.

Liliana Velasquez at Folsom Europe by Suzanne Forbes Sept 26 2017Then we enjoyed Power Woman Ms. Liliana Velásquez from the Freudian Slip Club and  Fetish Comedy Show.

She told jokes about working in a house in New York, which I was greatly entertained by. It took me back to the 80s when my friends worked at a house in the Meatpacking District. She was wearing a bespoke latex gown from The Baroness!

Comedy Singer at Folsom Europe by Suzanne Forbes Sept 26 2017I will have to get the name of the very young and very funny woman with the ukulele.

She was hilarious and pretty shocking!

See more drawings of Miss Natasha Enquist here and here and more Folsom Europe here.

First Sitting: A really big new portrait, my first diptych!

WIP Portrait of Sadie Lune and Jo Pollux by Suzanne Forbes color clarification pass Sept 24 2017This Sunday I started a big new portrait of my dear friend Sadie Lune and her wonderful partner Jo.

WIP Portrait Jo Pollux by Suzanne Forbes Sept 24 2017This is my first diptych painting. It is being done on two canvases, which will be hung together or separately at the choice of my curator Thorsten at @ludwig.berlin when we show the works in early October!

Sadie is wearing her beautiful black leather Alexandra corset by  @darkgardencorsetry. Jo, a photographer, is wearing a marvelous outfit of a little ruffled white dress and a cage harness of black elastic, which I will paint in at the next sitting. And they will have Autumn headdresses of rosehips!

Sadie Lune at her birthday party CSC October 2008 by Suzanne ForbesI have wanted to paint Sadie since I met her at “Nude Aid”, an art benefit for the Center for Sex and Culture, in 2007. She is an artist, performer, sex worker and activist and has marvelous style and presence. The day I met her she was working as both artist and model as she often does. She was wearing a cloche, I remember it so vividly!

As the drawings were all sold that day for a fundraiser, I don’t have a picture of it, alas.

We talked that day about a portrait collaboration, but with our busy, frantic, community-focussed, subsistence working lives as Bay Area artists, we were never able to make it happen in the US.

Art of Restraint 5 16 2009 Sadie Lune performs

I did make several drawings of her at events, like the one above of her at her birthday party (also at the CSC) in a latex dress. That party was full of amazing performances, like Jiz Lee and Syd Blakovich doing a work from their Twincest collaboration with blood-drinking and fisting.

Sadie invited the audience to use her body as a canvas for “birthday bites” and we all decorated her with bite marks!

I drew her again in 2009, when she performed with her snake at Art of Restraint, a regular fundraiser for queer art gallery Femina Potens. Here’s Violet Blue’s photo of the scene. and her shot of me drawing Fivestar.

Suzanne Forbes drawing at Midori performance at Femina Potens photo by Zille Defeu Sept 29 2010

Suzanne Forbes drawing at Midori’s “Taken” performance at Femina Potens/ Photo by Zille Defeu Sept 29 2010

We both were constantly donating time and art to fundraisers for the sex-positive and queer art community in the Bay Area in 2006-2010. My policy for five years was, if someone in the community asked me for any art or art labor, I said yes. So we were doing the same events in the scene all the time. Here’s another shot of me drawing at another Art of Restraint. You can see my red flowered head in this one from another Nude Aid. These events were so beautiful and magical, so queer and body-positive and great for community resources. They didn’t leave us as much time for personal projects as we would have liked, though!

Sadie moved to Berlin years before anyone else I knew, and was a great inspiration to me.

Portrait of Sadie Lune by Suzanne Forbes in progress Sept 24 2017She was tremendously helpful in the year before we moved here, providing critical advice about how to prepare for life here and apply for an artist’s visa. (By the way I was granted a two-year artist’s visa of my own on August 28th!)

It has taken us until now to sort out doing a portrait at last, because we both face health challenges and Sadie has a little one, who is now four.

And that’s fine. It takes time to come together for personal-project portraits.

it took a year to schedule and another two years to finish the sittings for my portrait of Midori, for example!

WIP portrait of Sadie Lune and Jo Pollux by Suzanne Forbes Sept 24 2017I believe it always happens at exactly the right time.