Five individuals sit on our visual art jury: an artist, an art professional (often a gallery owner), an art collector, a sex-positivity activist, and a Festival committee member. Jury members are selected by the Festival Director and Exhibition Curator. Each year, the membership is new, except under special circumstances or on the basis of expertise in the realm of erotic art.
In 2014, our jury is comprised of:
John Sisko
Art Professional
John Sisko is a fellow of the National Sculpture Society, which is the oldest sculpture professional organization in the US. He is a nationally published writer on the topic of art and culture, and he is the chair of the editorial board of Sculpture Review magazine. He has shown his sculpture nationally for over 20 years, and has executed commissions for private clients, cities, libraries, universities and churches. He has taught privately, at the university and museum levels, and for private and community academies. Commercially, he has directed a gallery, and worked as an art consultant as well as curated independent exhibitions.
Glenda Downs
Committee Member
Glenda Downs founded the Festival store and has been involved with the Festival on and off since its inception. Glenda is a painter, flower artist, and manager of Sky River Brewing.
Jeff Hedgepeth
Gay Rights Advocate, Phallic Art Collector, and longtime Festival Supporter
Photo by Kelly Moore Photography
For 13 years, until Jeff retired in 2013, he was involved in awarding and managing Pride Foundation’s grant funding to thousands of projects advancing LGBTQ equality around the northwest. Jeff has volunteered with the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival and the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture for over a decade. He served as a 2005 arts juror, has helped with festival setup, performed as a naked olive oil wrestler for a fundraiser, and modeled for a sensual interactive arts demonstration. Jeff also served on the FSPC’s 2012 Sexuality Panel and on the 2014 Seattle and Lesbian and Gay Film Festival’s post-screening discussion panel for Dicks: The Documentary. His condo is known as the Penis Palace because of the phallic art throughout. He has a featured role in a full-length, award-winning documentary, Beyond Naked, about nude, painted bicycle riders in the celebrated Fremont Solstice Parade. Jeff’s personal art talent is gardening. His former garden was featured in local and national gardening magazines and on House and Garden TV.
Larie Smoyer
Art Collector
Larie is a long-time art lover and collector of small- to medium-sized works. She was one of the original members of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival planning committee, serving as its auction director from 2002 to 2007. She was also a Board Member for the Foundation of Sex
Positive Culture, serving as its Secretary from 2006 to 2008. She has been an art handler, or “Vanna,”” at Artist Trust and Home Alive art
auctions. In 2014, she joined the Ignition Northwest Art Council and was the art placement lead at Critical Northwest. In her spare time, she pursues her other love, roller derby.
Michael Rosen
Artist, Seattle Erotic Art Festival Master of Erotic Art
Michael Rosen has been creating erotic and sexually explicit work since 1977 – stark nude landscapes, gritty images of S/M sex, portraits and action photos involving BDSM, erotic piercings, and gender play. His latest work comprises romantic images of explicit sex that challenge the banality of pornography. There are five monographs of Michael’s photographs: Sexual Magic, Sexual Portraits, Sexual Art, Lust & Romance and Vanilla Sex. He’s had many one- and two- person shows, has been in very many group shows and publications and is represented in several prestigious permanent collections. Michael is a founding Master of Erotic Art, has received an Acker Award and a Venus Award, has been nominated for an Erotic Oscar and has just been inducted into the Society of Janus Hall of Fame. See his work at http://michaelrosen.com.
Interested in learning more about our jury selection process? Visit our page on Visual Art Selection, the Jury and the Process.