Last night was the artist reception and first peek at this year's Seattle Erotic Art Festival, which, if you ask me, is hotter than ever. (That said, I was one of the judges this year, so I picked what I liked, and that makes me all manner o' biased.) There are several images I want to share with you, but they're not available on the festival's site and the organizers are busy this morning—so I'll just put up here a few shot on the fly. (These don't include the great erotic-epistolary installation by Ellen Forney and Jacob Peter Fennel, and many, many other works that deserve your attention.)

*Try to find crappy cell-phone photography erotic just this once, okay? If you can't, don't blame the artists, blame me—and get out there to the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall where you can see the real, clear things.

Also: Wear something outrageous. Halloween comes twice in Seattle.

And finally: You may recall that last year I came away from the festival with the feeling that the ladies-being-dominated (and even hurt) theme was overdone. This caused a storm in the comments section. (A certain print of a skeleton who had removed his lower leg bone in order—clever!—to fuck a buxom living lady sort of pushed me over the edge, in addition to an Abu Ghraibish performance thing I did not love.) I did not have that feeling this time, and may even go back again this weekend since I didn't see everything.

And finally finally: Yes, I have come a long way. Dan, you win.

The more NSFW stuff on the jump. Again, I wish I had more, and better, images. My fail, not the festival's.