This year marks the third annual Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. I've attended for the last three years as the festival outgrew it's original home in Town Hall and subsequently filled up Consolidated Works with sexually charged art and art patrons. The festival is part art auction, part political manifesto, part carnival, and part meeting ground where the kinky and the curious can rub elbows. Being at an erotic arts festival at once grants the viewer license and makes him feel licentious. Indeed, it was a bit hard to concentrate on the art during the festival's opening with young girls wondering around in various stages of undress. At the first festival I bought a photograph of a blindfolded woman spattered with candle wax that most visitors to my home politely ignore. I often wonder whether the festival's atmosphere generated my enthusiasm for the photo, or if I actually like it.

Erotic art demands so much from the viewer. In addition to offering its technical attributes, subject matter, and mode of presentation, erotic art wants to turn you on. Erotic art also tends to resist criticism because you can always say that the critic simply doesn't swing the same way the piece does. The Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, however, displayed a full range of abilities and intelligence. Photography continued to dominate the exhibition, but this year different media and subjects broke out of the figurative idioms erotic art often finds itself trapped in. The show's most eye-popping piece was a tent-like enclosure by Jodi Rockwell that featured latex balloons filled with honey suspended from the roof. The balloons were pricked so they slowly dripped honey through a net suspended around the circumference of the tent and onto the floor that was covered with flour. Rockwell's work is erotic art at its best: voluptuous, messy, and outright hilarious.

Few of the other offerings made as much of an emotional connection as Rockwell's. One exception was a photograph by Barbara Nitke entitled "Jeff at Camp," which depicts a man floating in a swimming pool, mummified in plastic wrap, save for his erection. The image is startling not only for its content, but also for the acute feeling of loneliness Nitke evokes by making a figure so helpless and so close to danger. Wrapped in plastic, it's hard to determine whether the man's erection is a result of erotic stimulation or sheer terror at his predicament. "Jeff at Camp" successfully communicates a sense of emotional isolation that many other pieces at the festival tried to capture. Images of waifs with bridals in their mouths stared out into the gallery, but too often the images carried with them political or religious overtones that overshadowed their emotional message.

Erotic art continues to struggle to escape metaphors of religion, politics, and the culture of kink. Too many of the Festival's offerings were striving to provoke rather than seduce. Toi Sennhauser mounted a performance piece consisting of a 1950's-style kitchen with various actors in period dress eating bread purportedly made with her vaginal yeast. A sign on the table read "banned by the Seattle Department of Health." There was also a massive bondage-related triptych the middle panel of which depicted a man being lifted from a rack in the manner of Jesus being cut down from the cross. Sennhauser's piece and the triptych address the contemporary political world that seeks to stifle kink and sexual expression. Such references come off as strident in a city like Seattle which by and large welcomes sexual orientations and preferences of all flavors. One wonders if the impact of such pieces would be heightened at the South Carolina Erotic Arts Festival, if such an event can be imagined. A related problem with such politically provocative works is their social message often competes with the possibility of communicating an erotic quality. The viewer's attention is immediately pulled in two different directions: an image of a submissive being pulled from the cross immediately signifies a protest against religious intolerance of sexual choices, while the supine figure in the painting asks to arouse. In this tug of war, the political always wins.

Many of the Festival's pieces demonstrated that there is a certain classicism growing up around erotic art that many artists cannot escape. Tom of Finland exerts a stranglehold on much of gay art; very few of the works in this category deviated from the model of impossibly buff mustachioed leather daddies cavorting with each other. The festival jury embraced another familiar idiom, science fiction, with it's first prize winner: Kenji Signani's acrylic on board painting of a figure clad in black latex with a long beak or proboscis, aiming at a nearby flower. Hummingbirds hovered around the figure on the neon green background. Science fiction, fantasy, and kink are chosen frequently as subjects by erotic artists because they suggest unlimited possibilities that do not exist in our sexually constricted world. Overuse of these subjects make the unexpected expected, limiting the erotic possibilities and becoming unintentional pastiche.

Regardless of one's reaction to the art, it is impossible to deny the enthusiasm and energy the organizers of SEAF bring to their work. This year's festival contained 900 entries, only three hundred of which were chosen for the exhibition. The staff I spoke with and the Festival's website continually emphasized selectivity as a primary goal of the event. The festival drew thousands of viewers this year, a number made all the more impressive when you consider the major sponsors of the event aren't Poncho and Microsoft, but rather Utilikilts and The Stranger. The Seattle Erotic Arts Festival is an enthusiastic and successful forum that embraces both its artists and its patrons. Seattle's traditional arts community should look to SEAF's success and take note.

Few art forms are more purely subjective than abstraction. Freed from the requirement that their pictures must resemble some familiar object or scene, abstract painters can work in a completely independent universe, one with its own rules and vocabulary — with colors, shapes, and lines that exist for no reason other than their meaning to the artist, and the effect they produce.

But "pure" abstraction has lately shared wall space with another sort of abstraction — that with an intentional connection to the visible world. One of the originators of this branch of abstraction was the early 20th century pioneer Mondrian, who created a series of highly influential studies in which a tree becomes gradually more grid-like and less recognizable, finally transformed into pure geometry. In the case of the two Seattle painters Margie Livingston and Patricia Hagen, their own observations of the natural world remain a clear presence in their abstract paintings, with results that reveal as much about their distinct temperaments and approaches, as about the subject matter they use as inspiration.

For Patricia Hagen (now on view at Bryan Ohno), the launching points for her art are the peculiar shapes of a variety of life forms, including amoebas, cells suspended in fluid, breasts, pine cones, lemons, and genitalia. She re-imagines these elements as slightly awkward, floating objects in a never-never land of pure white space, where any sense of scale is purposely suppressed, and we are never quite sure if what we see is meant to be microscopic or monumental. Both Hagen’s acidic pink, grey, and blue palette and her lumpy, cartoon-like drawing style are strongly reminiscent of the work of Philip Guston, whose own crossover from abstraction to representation in the 1960s and 70s has had a huge and continuing impact on the art world.

Like Guston, Hagen uses humor to enliven her work, and there is a certain whimsical, other-worldly quality to many of the paintings, where what action exists seems to be taking place in slow motion, and a comic-strip thought balloon would not seem out of place. A typical painting in this mode is Glister, at 7 feet square the largest work in the show. Hanging down from the top edge of the picture is an enormous pink breast-like shape with a dark red nipple, although "breast" might be stretching the term a bit, since this particular form is more boxy than round, its skin covered with rows of rectangular cutouts. A large red droplet is falling downwards from the nipple, its teardrop shape cut out and pasted onto the canvas in a collage technique that one only notices on close inspection. Other large, pock-marked objects surround this drop of blood, each also equipped with a nipple-like protrusion. Some of these shapes suggest floating asteroids, others a Fred Flintstone-style apartment building. Filling the in-between spaces is a field of pure whiteness — a resonant, airless void where these alternate life-forms can cavort. This white background has a rich, velvety surface, the result of a generous application of casein paint, an unusual, milk-based medium with a look like dried custard.

The white-dominated sparseness of many of the images stands in contrast to the crowded, more textured quality of Hagen’s earlier work, examples of which are also in the show. In these paintings, the air in which the globules float is itself a highly worked and encrusted surface, and there seems to be less breathing room overall — an appropriate metaphor for pictures in which disease and disfigurement are part of the implied mix, and where certain of the molecules — red, dripping, bristling with spikes — look menacing, or unhealthy. I personally found more to dwell on in these busier pictures, with some of the newer work almost too minimal for its own good.

It is a bracing and eye-opening journey to stroll up the street to the exhibit of work by Margie Livingston at Greg Kucera, a few blocks but light-years away in terms of its painterly technique and artistic goals. Although Livingston is also an emerging female artist whose work references the natural world, the resemblance stops there. Where Hagen’s work is highly intuitive and purposely rough around the edges, Livingston is elegant, analytical, and rigorous — each paint stroke seems to be considered, and a linear, almost metallic structure is everywhere dominant.

This striking and beautiful exhibit is the successful culmination of a decade-long project in which Livingston has focused on painting abstractly while working from observation. For the past 5 or so years Livingston’s chosen motif has been tree branches, brought into the artist’s studio, suspended in space, and observed in both natural and artificial light. Livingston’s departure from her actual subject matter is more radical than is the case with Hagen — her trees are no more recognizable than those transformed by Mondrian. Here the dead branch has been reborn as a precise, diaphanous framework of faintly colored lines moving in deep space, a construction as finely balanced, and as poised to move gracefully in the breeze, as the wired arms of a mobile by Alexander Calder.

Perhaps the most spectacular of these haunting works is a five-foot high canvas entitled Structure (Late autumn bright). Against a graded blue and rose background inspired by the light seen on her studio wall, Livingston has created a dense of array of single paint strokes in muted shades of blue, beige, black, and white, strokes so slender and elongated as to bring to mind the pick-up sticks of the childhood game. But unlike the randomness of those tumbled sticks, the hundreds of gleaming or shadowy lines in Livingston’s painting form a perspectival array like a ghostly scaffolding or giant electrical tower, a construction with a visible logic that is both methodical and mysterious, tunneling deep into the apparent space of the painting in a way that belies the traditional notion of abstraction as denying pictorial depth.

There are many subtle variations in the 20 paintings in the show, all of which share the same main title: Structure. Not all the networks penetrate so deeply in space, and not all are as open and lightweight in their construction. In one much smaller painting, a diminishing web of nearly transparent lines suddenly erupts into a dark, twisted knot, like an interruption of the irrational in a universe of order. The knot itself is more lovingly detailed and more clearly imagined than the rest of the image, as though conflict is more compelling than its resolution. Several of the other images have complete latticework constructions that have been purposely painted out, so that the only trace of their previous existence is a slight relief on the surface of the canvas, a framework more felt than observed — like the pure idea before it emerges as form.

If anyone attending the current program at the Pacific Northwest Ballet was looking to witness a historical retrospective of the nation’s great choreographers or a showcase of its most promising young talent, it is possible they might have walked away disappointed. "American Choreographers" could have more aptly been titled "Four Random American Dances: Two World Premieres by Young Choreographers with Close Ties to the Pacific Northwest Ballet Along with Two Oft-Seen Works from the Company’s Repertoire."

But in spite of the grandiose billing, Saturday night’s performance was far from disappointing. Kent Stowell and Francia Russell are still on track to make their last season at the Ballet the finest ever. I am still marveling today at the pinnacle the company appeared to have reached a few months back when performing Rite of Spring.

Christopher Stowell’s Quick Time and Paul Gibson’s The Piano Dance were solid, generous works; refreshingly coherent and uncluttered. Jose Limon’s The Moor’s Pavane, a narrative dance that has been in the company’s repertoire for many years, was ably executed; its drama well-articulated through the movement of its actors. Even the final piece in the program, Val Caniparoli’s Lambarena — an unsuccessful and cloying work of art that has pleased audiences in seasons’ past — managed to show the company in an extremely favorable light.

Stowell, the son of the company’s artistic directors and director himself of the Oregon Ballet Theatre, takes the sparkle and impressionism of Saint-Saens and creates a piece with jazzy, light-hearted exuberance. The work may be modest in its ambitions, but it is not without pleasure. Stowell has wisely chosen to cast Noelani Pantastico and Jonathan Porretta — the company’s most appealing dancers — in the lead roles. The infectious smiles, sly touches of humor and almost Fosse-like poses are enhanced by outrageous staging and costumes. The cacophony of color — a backdrop that changes from mauve to fuschia to cantaloupe; men with brown bell-bottoms and green and pink striped shirts; women in lime or turquoise Norma Kamali-inspired dresses — gives the work a fun and deliberately discordant quality.

Limon’s retelling of Othello is a classic example of mid-century, high-culture American art, set to music by Purcell. While the piece offered no new insight into the tragedy of the Moor of Venice and little in the way of original dance vocabulary, it is one of the best examples of story-telling through dramatic ballet. If only more contemporary narrative ballets (think the elder Stowell’s Romeo & Juliet) were so richly textured. Olivier Wevers, easily the greatest actor in the company, brings a rare subtlety to the role of Iago. In the hands of a less-accomplished actor, a one-dimension portrayal of a villain may have had to suffice.

Gibson’s The Piano Dance was confident and engaging. Much more challenging than the contribution of the younger Stowell, the work — set to the music of Cage, Chopin, and Bartok, among others — never lapsed into pretentiousness. Possessing the maturity one might expect from a more accomplished choreographer, the former PNB principle dancer and current ballet master demonstrated a keen sensitivity to his varied score. At the outset the movement closely resembled that of Balanchine, but slowly it transformed itself into something more Gibson’s own. Corps dancer Chalnessa Eames was a real standout in the piece; as she paused and stared knowingly at the audience she displayed a sauciness rarely seen onstage at McCaw Hall.

I have always found Lambarena something of an embarrassment to watch. Set to a musical composition that integrates Bach with traditional African Song, the work is a fantasia on Third-World nobility and Western Enlightenment. The piece has utopian sensibility, but it does not acknowledge the complex historical relationship between the continents it draws its inspiration from. Its well-intentioned message of cultural harmony and interconnectedness is undermined by the unconscious colonialism of its artistic appropriation. There is something vaguely ridiculous about seeing ultra-thin white women with forced grins dancing to African music in colorful print dresses and ballet shoes. And what is with the men, with their tacked-on mullet-tails? Olivier Wevers executes his movements with verve and precision but ends up looking like a regiment commander gone native, a balletic Colonel Kurtz.

In February 2000, while traveling on the old Route 66 midway between Victorville and Barstow, I stopped in the town of Helendale to visit the Exotic World Movers & Shakers’ Burlesque Museum and Striptease Hall of Fame. Director and former burlesque dancer Dixie Evans — a spirited and raspy-voiced woman approaching eighty years of age — led me through the crumbling ranch-style home with its series of even shoddier additions. As I observed the racy black-and-white photos, splashy print posters, dusty feather boas, and colorful but faded paste-ons, I recognized the artifacts of a culture that had disappeared long before I came into the world.

As if sensing my archaeological approach to these tools of her forgotten trade, Ms. Evans confidently predicted — quixotically, it seemed — that burlesque would once again return to its prominent place in our popular culture.

Five years later I found myself at the Mirabeau Room on Queen Anne, watching a performance of the Atomic Bombshells, one of the most celebrated troupes performing this recently-revived art form.

For those not familiar with burlesque, it is important to emphasize that it is a very specific art form — a type of theater and dance as rigid in its practice as Kabuki. Facial expression, movement, and the process of revealing the body are all executed according to some seemingly ancient but unwritten dictates. Female sexuality attains mythic stature (as well as real power) through the slowly-unfolding performance of seduction.

The five women who make up the Atomic Bombshells are all extraordinary practitioners of this art. To be this sexually suggestive, lasciviousness requires all the discipline and restraint of ballet. And while it was easy to be overwhelmed by the immediacy of their presence on the small stage, I could not help but marvel at the thought of their training and study.

Each dancer performed a brief solo in a disappearing outfit that conjured up a specific (and fantastic) exotic locale. The forbidden intrigue of the harem in Istanbul, the coquettish allure of China, the sultry self-expression of Brazil at Carneval, and the dark voodoo magic of New Orleans were all brought to life before our eyes. One of the Bombshells (I had had too many gin-and-tonics by then and cannot remember their names) surprised me by ably singing a Carmen Miranda-style number in which she likened the pleasures of her body to mangoes, papayas and other tropical fruit.

What was most striking about the evening’s performance was the innocence and purity of its retrograde charm. The true nature of our sexuality — entangled as it is with the complexities of personal relationships — is given a brief holiday. With the pervasive presence of such realism in our contemporary art and cultural sensibilities, the Atomic Bombshells offer a curiously welcome respite.