| October 6 - 7, 2018 |
Los Angeles, CA |
Tom of Finland Art and Culture Festival:
Eye on Collecting
SATURDAY
Art Fair – Noon to 6p
Life Drawing Session – Noon to 2p
Readings – 2-3p
Film Screenings – 7p-10p
SUNDAY
Art Fair – Noon to 6p
Drawing Session – Noon to 2p
Live Art Auction and Awards Presentation– 2-3p
$10 Each day – Eventbrite and door
½ price admission for Tom of Finland Foundation Members
at the door! (You can join when you arrive!)
Food and Drink Available
If you'd like to volunteer,
visit our VOLUNTEERS page.
 TOM OF FINLAND (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish, 1920 – 1991), Untitled, 1980, Color pencil on paper, © 1988-2018 Tom of Finland Foundation |
This year marks the 23rd annual Tom of Finland Art and Culture Festival, located at the Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument where Tom of Finland Foundation has operated since 1984.
The Festival is one of the key public events initiated and run by the Foundation, and serves as a platform in furthering its mission to preserve, protect and promote erotic art. To celebrate the release of the book, My Gay Eye, this year’s programming will focus on the purposeful commitment of collecting art, Eye on Collecting.
My Gay Eye (Mein schwules Auge) is a special Tom of Finland Foundation edition. Artists from its pages will be represented at the Festival with works available for sale.
Special guest artist, photographer, poet and Russian dissident Slava Mogutin will read and be on hand to sign books.
TOM House will preview Secret Gay Box curated by John Wolf; the show is an expansive history of Queerness embodied in a menagerie of objects from across time.
Drawings by Silvia Prada from her recently released artist book, TOM, developed in collaboration with Tom of Finland Foundation will be on view. A series of photographs by Daniel Trese taken at the Foundation in 2014 will be showcased in conjunction with his exhibition Surface Streets at Tom of Finland Store. Los Angeles’ Lethal Amounts has always focused on subversive and counter culture these. In their booth, they showcase their collaborations with artists and musicians. Jeremy Lucido, photographer, publishes Starrfucker and features zines as art. A live auction on Sunday will allow attendees to bid on classic Homoerotica.
This year’s Eye on Collecting features over 60 Queer artists. Rubén Esparza Curatorial is showing 12 artists and Rick Castro’s Dungeon will feature his work and four other artists.
MODELS: Damien and Jack
LIFE DRAWING COORDINATOR:
Miguel Angel ReyesLife Drawing Sessions Saturday & Sunday, Noon to 2pm
Coordinated by Miguel Angel ReyesSaturday night’s film screenings include the time-honored Born to Raise Hell (1974), introduced by writer and director, Roger Earl, and a new film by director Bruce LaBruce, It is Not the Pornographer That is Perverse (2018).
Addditionally, visitors can get their footgear shined and benefit from expert hair and facial grooming.
Fotos from the Fest
This Year's Award Winners
At the Annual Awards Presentation on Sunday afternoon,
2018 Achievement and Cultural Icon Awards were presented
and an induction into the
Tom of Finland Foundation’s Artist Hall of Fame.
Bottom row: Ron Athey, Sheree Rose, Slava Mogutin, Hector Silva
Top row: S.R. Sharp and Durk Dehner of Tom of Finland Foundation
FOR ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS AND STEADFAST COMMITMENT TO THE ART AND CULTURE OF OUR COMMUNITY
Hector Silva – Artist Hall of Fame
Hector is a self-taught artist based in Los Angeles who has been producing work for more than thirty years. Born in Ocotlan, Jalisco, in Mexico, he moved to the United States at the age of 17. He began drawing in his late 20s when he discovered his own talent. Today, Hector’s work is collected internationally, and has received acclaim in the US and abroad. Living in LA with its rich Chicano culture, Hector draws from the Latino tradition. Among his influences are Tom of Finland, Frida Kahlo, Chicano prison art, the works of M.C. Escher, and religious iconography. Hector explores themes of cultural identity, eroticism and beauty. Hector’s mastery of light and shadow on skin is captured on paper with pencil, but he is also experienced with other media, including oil and acrylic. He draws and paints from photographic stills.
FOR ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT AND IMMEASURABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO
THE ART AND CULTURE OF OUR COMMUNITYRon Athey – Cultural Icon
Ron is a Los Angeles-based artist creating work since 1981. His practice includes body-based, writing, content philosophical, AIDS-y, and esoteric terrorism. Recent works include Gifts of the Spirit, an opera developed from automatism experiments performed at the Cathedral of Vibiana in January. He has been a friend of the Foundation… forever.
FOR LEADERSHIP AND STEADFAST COMMITMENT TO
THE ART AND CULTURE OF OUR COMMUNITYSheree Rose – Lifetime Achievement Award
Sheree is an American performance artist, photographer and cinematographer known for her work documenting the subcultures of which she is a part and collaborations with her husband Bob Flanagan. Sheree was born in 1941, earned a master’s degree at California State University, Northridge and Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine. She has been involved in feminism and the punk scene. Her practice has been based in sex politics and activism within the BDSM community.
FOR ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT AND PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT
Slava Mogutin – Achievement Award
Slava Mogutin by Nicolas WagnerSlava is an outspoken Queer artist, writer and activist. He is a New York-based Russian-American multimedia artist, author and filmmaker exiled from Russia. A third-generation writer and self-taught journalist and photographer, he became the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the US on the grounds of homophobic persecution. Informed by his bicultural literary and dissident background, Slava’s work celebrates diversity and nonconformism encompassing the themes of displacement and identity; transgression and transfiguration of masculinity and gender crossover; urban youth subcultures and adolescent sexuality; the clash of social norms and individual desires; and the tension between attachment and disaffection, hate and love. He is the author of seven books of writings in Russian, as well as three monographs of photography.
Getting to the Festival
Our bus stop is Sunset/Echo Park. We are serviced by Metro lines 4/704 and 2/302. Also the 603 to Alvarado/Sunset.
Continue on Sunset Boulevard to Laveta Terrace, then up the short hill and up the Grand Stairs until Laveta Terrace levels out and another 1/2 block. TOM House is on your left. The House is only a 0.3 mile walk from the bus stop.
1421 Laveta Terrace is on a residential street, so we recommend using Uber or Lyft.
 |
Photograph by Alex
La Cruz for GAYLETTER |
Super 8 Motel
1341
West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90026
213.250.2233
Comfort Inn
2717
West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90026
213.413.8222
Quality Inn & Suites
250
Silver Lake Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90004
213.639.1920
TOM House
(Foundation Headquarters)
1421 Laveta Terrace, Los Angeles, CA 90026
(Echo Park) Map