Inspired by Marcel Duchamps’s mysterious Étant Donnés, we designed and fabricated a beautiful door with a peep hole. Looking through the hole, viewers saw a video image of two naked full-figured women. We were laying in the grass by a flowing river, with our legs wide open, holding a lantern with a lit candle. French author and filmmaker Virginie Despuentes did the camera work. We made a second version of the piece installed at Femina Potens gallery.

We appropriated our vibrator as a ready-made art object, signing it “R. Muff,” a lesbian variation of Marcel Duchamp’s R. Mutt urinal. The vibrator hung down from an extension cord three stories high, and was turned on to high speed. People in the gallery were welcome to handle the vibrator, which heated up and glowed red in the dark gallery space. We did another version at Femina Potens gallery, placing one of our personal R. Muff Hitachi Magic Wand vibrators on an altar we made to honor our delightful lover and inspiration, Marcel Duchamp.

When we first entered the exhibition space, Transpalete, in Bourges, France, we fell in love with the most beautiful spiral staircase running up the center of the building. Within minutes we stripped naked, filmed each other, and ourselves while descending the staircase. We also recorded the sound of our dainty footsteps echoing throughout the building. The final product was projected on two big white perpendicular walls across from the staircase.

As we had not appeared nude in public since gaining some extra pounds, it would take some courage to show our new bigger bodies. We were in the Yellow Year, the Year of Courage, and Year of the Belly. So there was no doubt that we had to do it. Sometimes we love our big bellies, sometimes we don’t. But when we do performance art, we always love our bellies exactly as they are.

We also made a large print on canvas from a still of the performance/video, and wrote on it “We Made Love With Marcel Duchamp.” (Edition of 3) We later presented the Big Nudes Decending A Staircase on a 43” wide screen TV, which at our Femina Potens exhibit, was the piece de resistance.

2007 was the year of the belly chakra so we had bellies on our brains. One day, while sitting in our kitchen sipping tea with our friend, award-winning poet Camille Norton, we decided to draw each other’s bellies. Annie drew Beth’s belly, then Beth drew Annie’s belly, and Camille embellished them with lovely spontaneous poetry. One of our favorite poems is Lifting Belly by Gertrude Stein, so we titled them Lifting Belly Drawings. Love thy belly, we say!

2007 was the year of the belly chakra. So true to form, we grew our bellies bigger, softer, rounder. To document and celebrate this great achievement we rubbed each other’s bellies with ink and pressed them on to Arches 400 pound, 23” x 30” water color paper, like human printing presses. Then we embellished the prints with inky text and drawings. Our big belly prints hung in Femina Potens Gallery window right on San Francisco’s major boulevard, Market Street for a month. Day and night people could enjoy them. A sign read, “We are two queer women artists in love, growing old together. Our bellies are growing old too. Sometimes we love our big bellies, and sometimes we don’t. But we always love our belly prints.” More photos coming soon.

A delightful and dedicated group of folks with an art organization called Emmetrop invited us for a ten-day residency in Bourges, France. We filled Transpalette, their three story exhibition space, with our artwork. This work included photographs, collages, sculptures, video projections and performances. Beatrice Preciado, Europe’s hot, smart curator and queer studies academic, curated the show. We called our show Faire l’amour avec Marcel D., (We Made Love with Marcel D.) because we love the work of Marcel Duchamp and wanted to get to know him more intimately. Here is an overview of what we did while there. Click on other links for more details about the various works.