A forest fire between us by Tee A. Corinne

'The moving spirit of my work has been my own reality. I make images that give me pleasure and that seem to be missing in the world around me."
- Tee A. Corinne

Tee understood the importance of the archive. Aware of the erasure of women's stories in general, and queer women's stories in particular, she had made it her mission to construct a comprehensive history of lesbian artists, writers, cultural figures, her friends, her family, and her lovers.

In 1967, in the basement of a Greenwich Village bookstore, Tee A. Corinne found a book that would change her life and work forever. Informatively titled Sex Orgies Illustrated, the publication was a treasure trove of sexual artworks by Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Picasso among other (male) artists; it confirmed what she had long been searching for: an artistic tradition that celebrated eroticism and intimacy.

While there had been a few breadcrumbs on Tee's journey of artistic discovery - an Ancient Greek depiction of oral sex here, a Japanese Shunga print there - she never dreamt that there was such a rich visual history. She later recalled that she 'wanted to do pictures that nobody else had ever done...

I was trying to find ways to do lovemaking pictures... to show how bodies could interact'. 3 This search for sexual imagery was difficult due to a United States customs ban that limited the sale of works it deemed 'explicit', so Tee decided to start creating her own, 'circling around ways to picture sexuality, teasing, nudging, trying to create images which made sexual sense to some deeply responsive part of me'.T.C

'Pleasure... is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.'2
-adrienne maree brown