(I know I said I’d do this several days ago. Aggiecon was more time-intensive than I expected, and Austin has beseiged me with allergens. But aren’t you just bonkers excited that I’m here now?)

I’ve bought prints in the past, mostly when I was trying to make my 9-to-5 office an enjoyable place to work. Other than that, print buying isn’t really something I do. A print at an art show has to resonate with me powerfully for me to want it, and it needs a certain additional degree of excellence for me to actually buy it. (I’m sure a lot of people function the same way.)

What did I promise again? Intrique? Woe and introspection, right? Morose… princesses? I don’t remember. Tell the story, Megan.

When we arrived at Aggiecon 2008, last year, we found ourselves in the unique position of having to go through Marty’s display art and censoring nipples. No nipples were allowed in the art show, so they gave us a roll of blue tape and we, uh, taped ‘em up. Marty’s artwork had plenty of nipples to censor! We were a little peeved. We talked to the show staff about it, and they obviously weren’t happy with it either—they showed us some really beautiful mail-in work that they couldn’t even include in the show, and more that they bikinified so that they could still display it.

Don’t get me wrong; I think bikinification with blue tape is very funny as a general rule. But I don’t think it’s funny when it’s censoring and effectively destroying the effect of a really nice piece of artwork. The blue bikini’d artwork, in this case, was Sarah Clemens’ St. Labia trilogy: Three nude incarnations of “St. Labia, the patron saint of pornography.” Each piece was wrapped and matted and contained the same lewd gesture, and the effect was really striking: Beautiful technique, unorthodox theme. Even better, I thought they were funny, and poignant, and just plain neat. Worth seeing. (If you want to see them, here’s Sarah’s nude prints page. Buy stuff from her. She’s awesome.)

The blue tape bikinis covered up the usual suspects, but they didn’t cover up the titles (“St. Labia” is fairly straightforward) and they didn’t cover up the lewd gesture. I wasn’t offended by any part of it, but the fact that the censors were picking and choosing was particularly absurd. Even if we bypass the whole argument about natural bodies and sexual denial, this was a stupid situation, and it was probably going to affect the artists’ ability to sell their work. We had put tiny pieces of tape on Marty’s artwork, just barely covering the “offensive” parts—but the blue bikinis on St. Labia covered too much. Who would buy them now, I wondered? I walked around the entire con talking about how shameful it was, how unfair to the artist, and how insensitive it was to her hard work. This offended me—not the freaking nudity.

Aggiecon 2008 went on; Angel instituted blue tape censorship of all willing con-goers. I bummed around the dealers room and found nothing I wanted. I was disheartened and grumpy about it. Nothing called out; nothing spoke to me. Nothing said “BUY ME.”

And then I realized that wasn’t true.

St. Labia had to be protected from their censored fate, and I was going to protect them. I was going to rescue them from blue tape bikinis. And once I’d bought them, I could show them to whomever I wanted.

Take that, censorship!

Victoriously, I paid the art show people and we peeled the bikinis carefully off my new prints. A cheer went up as they reminded me that the prints were no longer under their purview, so I could wave them around like a pro-sex heathen if I wanted. (I won’t say I didn’t have the urge.) I heard a rumor that one of the staff had bought a piece called “Dragonplay” (on this page, and nsfw, obviously), having felt bad that they couldn’t display it and not wanting the artist to suffer for it. As for me, who cares whether I would have bought them in a different situation? I felt like we had triumphed over evil. Save St. Labia, save the world.

I took my prints home and gave them pride of place on my bedroom wall, feeling silly in some ways and brilliant in others. They resonated with me because I wanted to protect them, because they represented a not-always-welcome artistic and sexual expression that I think we all need more awareness of.

In 2009, Marty was christened “The Boobie Guy” for his part in all of this. (I guess if it sticks, at least it’s accurate—he draws enough of them.) “You’re the reason we have that room,” the art room attendant told him when he arrived, explaining that now the nudes were left uncensored and displayed in a separate area, requiring them to check IDs. Three of Marty’s canvas prints were displayed in the public area, and three more—sans censors—are displayed in what has apparently been dubbed the Dirty Old Man Room. (If this catches on, it’s Marty’s fault.) We still think it’s a little silly for the nude work to be separate (and I guess that’s really just the kind of folks we are), but it’s a hell of a lot better than taping it up or not displaying it at all. The staff members we spoke to were obviously happier with this solution.

Also in the quiet sanctity of the Dirty Old Man Room (you guys know by now that no link in this post is work-safe… right?) was a fourth incarnation of St. Labia, newly released this year.

At least, it was there until I bought it.

It seemed only appropriate!

I was making a video where I explained how I’d just taken a very nice nap and had driven two hours from Austin to College Station and how we’d left two hours late and I was pretty freaking tired when we got here but I had some food and juice and slept and felt better and was thinking I should work but mostly just sitting around waiting for dinner when I spilled beet juice on my shirt and gasped, because I didn’t bring any extra clothes for this weekend, so I abandoned my video and washed out my shirt in the sink and then couldn’t figure out how best to dry it until I rung it out rolled up in a towel and then had the simply grand idea to do this perilous thing:

I only got what I had coming—I should have been making a more interesting video!

What I should have done was make my video topless, in order to properly illustrate the post I’m going to make about Aggiecon’s sad, sad 2008 anti-nipple policy. Since my shirt’s all dry now you’ll have to do without the Real Live Nudity (my condolences), but I WILL show you the gorgeous prints I picked up last year (they have excellent nudity) and I’ll tell you the story of how I came to purchase them. It is a brave tale of woe and circumspection, a tale of courageous deeds and fair maidens rescued from the clutches of evil censorship overlords. Promise.

I might also tell you about how I found a vloggification solution for way less than I expected, and while I’m waiting for my JVC (which I should have sometime next week, I think) I will be making a few Aggiecon videos with my handy dandy Flip Ultra. This thing is pretty spiffy, folks. We’ll see how it holds up. ;}

And now, back to work—my master tasklist waits for no one. (Well, sometimes it waits for me…)

Update: Marty came back to the room with news of the art show. We’ll post more later, but for now: “The Boobie Guy.”

We’ve only posted a few updates since getting to Aggiecon, and they’re both at Marty’s blog—a brief check-in after our first evening and a cryptic sketch addition.

Apparently the MSC —the building Aggiecon is held in—has been bugging Aggiecon for years to get rid of the nudity in the con art show. This year I guess they were extra insistent about it, because when we got there we found out we had to tape over exposed nipples. At a fantasy / SF art show, you can imagine how many nipples were floating around. A lot.

This is absurd for a whole string of reasons, but the short story is that we did it and felt bad for the art show staff, who were obviously stressed and flustered. We doubt there would have been censorship without that particular pressure from the MSC. We don’t blame the con staff, except that we think it’s better to stand up than sit down, especially in such a ridiculous situation. For this reason, Angel obtained a roll of the same blue tape used to censor most of the artwork, and proceeded to censor all willing nipples at con. Yesterday there were hordes of us walking around with blue tape X’s on our shirts, and more today. It’s more a joke than a protest, but there’s something to it. Todd was also supportive (as you can see), and Steve Brust was downright pissed. I can relate to that. If you take this sort of thing lying down too often, you get used to it. That’s not a cool thing to get used to.

In any case, we have our blue tape gang and our backstory. Steve sounds like he plans to write a letter. This con is turning out to be thoroughly weird and nifty. Anyway, I’m having a pretty good time. You can tell:

Update: By the way, Marty’s Iron Artist entry (or result?) touched on this particular issue—so if you enjoyed his pasties sketches, you’ll like the pictures of the competition. Well, with penguins.