I'm delighted that The National Museum of Art (Osaka, Japan) has a show "Collection" that includes 3 of my photographs from Familiar Men and Women En Large together with their accompanying texts. It is curated by Yuke Uematsu. The show introduces a group of works from their collection, centering on recent acquisitions. The  photographs on exhibit are among my works that are part of their permanent collection. The curator was very helpful in working with me to have the appropriate texts. The show runs from January 7 to April 8 2012.

I heard from Tomoko Aya at Third Gallery Aya in Osaka that National Museum of Art Osaka is making a new catalog of their permanent collection that will include photographs from Women En Large and Familiar Men. The museum acquired them for the permanent collection after Laurie's solo exhibition there, Meditations on the Body: Recent Works in 2002.

Junko Fukazawa is writing a short article about women and art in the journal We Learn. It’s published by The Foundation of Japan Association for Women's Education [1.25 MB PDF]. The foundation is highly respected by the women’s groups and women’s centers in Japan. She is writing from a feminist perspective about a self-portrait of Alice Neel at 80, and an image from Women En Large. The article is published in the winter of 2011/2012.

Junko Fukazawa writes, curates and gives workshops on feminism and art, and is one of the core of people that I work with on my Women of Japan Project. Her thoughts and support are very important to the work. There a long interview with me about my work and Familiar Men in the December issue (9) of Filament Magazine. Filament Magazine is a quarterly magazine, self described as 72 pages of intelligent thought and beautiful men. The thinking woman’s crumpet. Their very thoughtful questions certainly lived up to their description, and gave me the opportunity to rethink some of my ideas about my work.

In Korea, a beautifully produced fashion/political magazine Dazed and Confused/Korea (there is also a British and a Japanese version of the magazine) published the article “Ugly Beautiful,” in February 2011 about beauty outside the narrow limits of fashion and was illustrated by a large number of images including mine, Botero’s, and Irving Penn’s.

At WisCon 33 (May 22-25, 2009), the world feminist science fiction convention, Laurie will participate in the panel Metal, Beads, Fiber and High Geekiness. “Geekiness” implies a high level of focus and knowledge. Jewelry, sculpture, and other “material” arts can have an intense focus on conceptual and intellectual content sometimes including a deep knowledge of both materials, their histories and meanings. Artists discuss how this geekiness affects their art and bring works to illustrate their conversations. She's looking forward to continuing the fascinating conversation that stated at the Potlatch panel in March.

On March 1, 2009, Laurie was at Potlatch (a gathering of the writers and readers of literary science fiction and fantasy at which participants exchange ideas). She moderated a panel Helixes, Corals, and Brains: Oh My!, a discussion about crafts based on math, science, and nature. Have you knit a möbius strip or virus lately? The panelists were Elise Matthesen, Kate Schaefer, and Laurie. She blogged about it in Body Impolitic.

Laurie moderated the panel Mirrors: Ours, The Media’s, Our Culture’s and Our Kids’ on Moms, children, and body issues. It was at BlogHer'08 (July 18–20, 2008) the national women’s bloggers conference in San Francisco. “Children of all races, sizes, ages, and body types deserve to feel good about themselves: how they look, and how their bodies feel. On this panel Mommybloggers and other Moms will discuss helping our kids to like themselves as they are.” Panelists included the women who blog at So Sioux Me, Mocha Momma, and Kimchi Mamas (Glennia).

All three of Laurie's portrait suites were featured in an exhibition at the Gender Equality Forum hosted by the Minato Center in Tokyo from June 17 to June 29, 2008. The theme of the forum was health and body image.

On May 24, 2008, Laurie, Mari Kotani, Debbie Notkin, and Manami Tachibana appeared at WisCon 32 the World Feminist Science Fiction Convention, in a panel and slide show for the Women of Japan project. Photos from Women of Japan were in the Art Show. The photograph of Fukazawa Junko won the art show award for “Most Feminist.”

On April 16, 2008, Laurie spoke on Deborrah Cooper's online radio show, Sucka-Free Dating. Listen to the whole show at the link.

In January 2008, Meditations on the Body, a documentary produced and directed by John Wells, was made available on the Web on the occasion of the solo exhibition at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, MediaWorks, Japan (January 2008). To see the short film go to videos on this site.

On October 5, 2007, a Japanese feminist magazine published an interview with Laurie about her life and work.

Laurie spoke about Women of Japan at the Kyoto International Manga Museum, which is a combination of a museum and an extraordinary manga library. Other participants included Professor Rebecca Jennison from Kyoto Seika University and photography critic Mika Kobayashi, both of whom have portraits in Women of Japan. Laurie says, “Don’t miss this museum if you’re in Kyoto!”

Laurie completed her digital prints of Women of Japan for Nippon 2007. At the end of August, Laurie was in Japan for the exhibition of all 40 of the Women of Japan photographs (with bilingual texts) at the Pacifico Convention Center Convention in Yokohama, as an exhibit of Nippon 2007 (the World Science Fiction Convention) in August and September. This was the first exhibit of all of the photographs in Japan. The exhibition was a huge success, as was the panel where Laurie and several of the women in her photographs discussed the project and its importance.

On July 27th Laurie and three other bloggers spoke on the body image panel “Our Bodies, Our Blogs” at Blogher, the third annual national women’s bloggers conference in Chicago. The room was packed and the panel was passionately received. We look forward to more BlogHer discussions on body image.

12 photographs from Women of Japan were exhibited at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin (May 25-28). Laurie and Debbie and Mari Kotani were on a panel on Feminism and Japan. Laurie’s work was awarded the “Most Feminist” in the Art Show again — one of her her nudes won last year.

And closer to home the first solo exhibit of Tee Corinne’s Scars, Stoma, Ostomy Bag, Portacath: Picturing Cancer In Our Lives sponsored by the Queer Cultural Center was at the SomARTS Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St. in San Francisco. The opening date of the exhibition, and the reception, was Sunday, June 3rd. The show ended on Thursday 6/28. It was curated by Aspen May.

Laurie was the aesthetic curator of the “Scars” project, and her nude of Tee taken the summer before she died is Tee’s chosen artist’s portrait for the exhibition. Laurie was at the reception.

Women of Japan is finished! Laurie has printed all the photographs and all of the text we have is translated and on the web in English and Japanese. The newest photographs will be going up on the web gallery as soon as all of the models have had the chance to see their pictures.

Laurie had 14 photographs in “Silver/Silicon: 5 Photographic Perspectives” at the gallery Back to the Picture (934 Valencia Street @ 20th, 415.826.2321) in San Francisco. The opening was from 7 to 9pm on March 24th. The exhibition ran from March 24 to April 12.

Laurie and Elena Anaya, Sonia Gresham, Lynnly Labovitz, and Trish Tunney were showing a collection of film and digital images ranging from black and white nudes to color landscapes.

The exhibition included photographs from all three of her projects: Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes; Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes; and Women of Japan It included the first group of photos from Women of Japan to be shown in the US (they had, of course, been shown several times in Japan).

She’s been experimenting with large digital nudes 3 feet to 4 1/2 feet in size and she exhibited one of these for the first time.

Laurie was on a panel discussing photography books and work at Foto-Grafix Books (655 Mission Street, San Francisco 94105; 415-495-7242; 7-9 pm, December 13, 2006). Other participants included: Carol Queen, of The Center for Sex & Culture; and Jean Sinclair, author of “Pink Box,” a photographic tour of the Japanese sex industry. Laurie showed slides of all three of her projects. The event was a benefit for The Center for Sex & Culture.

The glbtq encyclopedia website featured a slideshow of 21 photos from Women En Large, Familiar Men, and Women of Japan during December 2006. Wik Wikholm, the designer, did a beautiful layout of the work. They are the major online academic, gay, lesbian,bisexual, transgender, queer encyclopedia. The editor is Claude J. Summers, William E. Stirton Professor in the Humanities Emeritus, University of Michigan-Dearborn.

I’m delighted to announce that this website went bilingual in early October, when we put up essays by many of the Women of Japan models, and supporters of the project, in both English and Japanese. Their words are powerful and wonderful. Women of Japan is of necessity a bilingual project, and I’ve wanted the website to reflect that for a long time. Please let me know what you like about the bilingual site, and what (if anything) doesn’t work for you.

Photographs and an article on Women of Japan were featured in the November 2006 gender issue of the Kyoto Journal: Perspectives from Asia. The Kyoto Journal is a remarkable award-winning English-language magazine. It’s available in the US, Japan, Canada, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, and Korea.

Laurie and Ctein’s collaboration nuclear reactor won the Judges Prize at the Worldcon in Los Angeles in August.

There was an exhibition at Gallery Fleur (Kyoto Seika University) from Fleur’s permanent collection which included a group of photos from Women en Large and Familiar Men. Gallery Fleur is where Familiar Men was first exhibited in a solo show in November of 2000.

In June, Professor Rebecca Jennison spoke about Women of Japan at the PSi #12: Performing Rights conference in London. PSi#12 is an international powerhouse of innovation for academics, artists and activists, holding annual conferences across the globe.

It gathered artists, activists and academics for a festival of creative and critical dialogues investigating the relationships between human rights and performance. They are linking human rights and performance because of the significance of human rights in a time of war and globalisation, and because of the bold claims made for performance as a way of understanding the world.

Her panel on June 16th was titled: Producing Public Spaces for Creative and Critical Dialogue: Performance as a Site for Postcolonial and Gender Critique in Japan. Other panelists were Yasuko Ikeuchi (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto), Lee Chong-hwa (Seikei University Tokyo), and Alicia Kitamura Arata (Director, performance artist). The panel considered a number of performance and visual arts projects and their impact on human-rights advocacy in contemporary Japan.

Laurie and Debbie attended the 30th Wiscon in Madison, Wisconsin (May 26-29, 2006). Photographs from Women En Large and Familiar Men were in the Art Show. WisCon is the first and foremost feminist science fiction convention in the world. WisCon honors writers, editors and artists whose work explores these themes and whose voices have opened new dimensions and territory in these issues. One of Laurie’s prints got the award for ‘Most Feminist’ work.

The fall issue of Corpus is out. Corpus is an extraordinary Spanish/English art periodical published by the Institute for Gay Men’s Health. This issue features fourteen of Laurie’s portraits from Familiar Men, along with “Beautiful Men,” a new essay by Debbie. Corpus’ mission is to promote AIDS awareness to the community of gay men of color through cutting-edge visual art. The magazine interviews and features a wide variety of artists, showcased with beautiful design.

Hwangbo Kangja is a supporter of and has modeled for Women of Japan. She has written a new essay on Laurie and the Women of Japan project, which is appearing in Zenya, a Tokyo-based quarterly magazine which “opposes any form of colonialism, war, racism and sexism in Japanese society.” Their website is Japanese only. Photographs of Hwangbo can be seen here and here.

In August, Laurie and Debbie presented “Women En Large: Looking Back over Ten Years” at Big Summer Fun, the 2005 convention of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). We were joined by Rebecca Jennison (model for Women of Japan and Carol Squires (model for Women En Large. We talked about the book’s remarkable journey, spanning three continents, over a hundred public presentations, an array of reprints, and hundreds of articles and features; about how the book’s journey illuminates the changes in fat politics and the struggle for size acceptance over the last decade; about Familiar Men and Women of Japan; and about how our work is vital and active now: fat people learning to see the beauty and power in their bodies is at least as important today as it was ten years ago.

During the month of August, Laurie had an “Altar Barbie” piece, an altar by Laurie featuring a marvelous fat Barbie created by Charlotte Davis. This was part of the Altered Barbie show cosponsored by ChatterBox and Red Ink Studios. The show was “pick of the week” for the San Francisco Chronicle, and had a very crowded opening and good attendance throughout the month.

Jill Lee, curator of the Chatterbox Gallery, where she exhibited our work, brought the Women of Japan project to Shanghai last March. She is currently travelling in China as the Curator of the State of California for Asia. Her mission is to create a crosscultural exchange through a diversity of artistic expressions, bringing emerging and established artists across the ocean to exhibit their work, host workshops or seminars, and participate in artist and community interchanges in the USA and Asia. We expect to be involved in this work going further.

In June, 2005, Laurie’s diptych portraits of Marlene Hoeber, never previously exhibited, was shown at Fresh Meat in the Gallery at the ODC Theater Gallery, 3153 17th Street (at Shotwell), San Francisco, California (from June 12 through July 5). Marlene Hoeber is quoted in the Familiar Men essay. The art in Fresh Meat is focussed on transgender, intersex and genderqueer topics.