[Touch Assignment]

Digitally Edited Ink and Pencil on Mixed-Media Paper

[First Touches]

"In fetuses, touch is the first sense to develop, and in newborns it's automatic 

before the eyes open or the baby begins to make sense of the world. 

Soon after we're born, though we can't see or speak, 

we instinctively begin touching."

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

This whole section struck me as very profound, but this was one of my favorite bits of text. I think we often take our senses for granted, especially touch: you don't marvel at the fact you can feel sand run between your fingers when you catch it and let it go, you don't appreciate the softness of the fabric of your mother's shirt as she gives you the hug you've needed all day long but have been too afraid to ask for. And yet, it's truly the first feeling we develop, and is often the main way we discern the world around us- your eyes and ears may fool you, and they often do, but fitting something solid perfectly within your hand, being able to feel it, is very real. In addition to our mental development, it's also important to our emotional development... one can't survive without touch, even from infancy.

Ink and Pencil on Mixed-Media Paper

[Kissing]

"Sex is the ultimate intimacy, the ultimate touching when,

like two paramecia, we engulf one another.

We play at devouring each other, digesting each other, 

we nurse on each other, drink each other's fluids, actually get under

each other's skin. Kissing, we share

one breath, open the sealed fortress of our body to our lover.

We shelter under a warm net of kisses. 

We drink from the well of each other's mouths. Setting out on a

kiss caravan of the other's body, we map the new terrain 

with our fingertips and lips, pausing at the oasis of a nipple, the

hillock of a thigh, the backbone's meandering riverbed.

It is a kind of pilgrimage of touch, which leads us to the temple of our desire."

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

Upon reading this bit, I immediately thought of the way lovers worship one another's bodies, almost as if their partner were a divine entity in themselves. This is why I gave these two women halos: they are each other's only goddess, and they are dancing close to one another, suggesting their comfort and intimacy with one another. Though sex can be a rough, emotionless, or even outright violent thing, I think there is something beautiful about the careful touch of a devout lover with both skin and mouth alike. I referenced the pose from a photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, as the piece signals to me a level of sweetness and intimacy that I can't say I have felt from other photographs.