Censoring Art With Boobies

The topic of censorship has come up for me recently. Let's just say that a nude I did combined with "inappropriate" and the phrase, "families read this publication" happened, and although I knew this would happen I thought, maybe, just maybe they'd be cool. Guess not.

The first time I got one of my nude paintings censored, so to speak, was at Laguna Beach High School when my teacher hung it in the art room. I came back the next day to find a string of toilet paper across the area where the lone nipple was visible. I guess the principle said he didn't want the 9th grade boys to get too "excited". At my high school back in Ann Arbor, they showed my nude pieces quite often, as well as the Ann Arbor Art Association, so this was a new thing for me. After all, the mascot for Laguna Beach HS was the "Artists". Later, I was told it could not be published in the high school year book -- even though my teacher pushed for it -- again it was deemed inappropriate. We had a major meth epidemic at the school, but you can't be showing students a nipple. Totally makes sense, right?

When I moved to Dana Point for my senior year, same problems, different school. My nude works were banned from being shown in the common areas of the school in display cases. They were inappropriate. I found this hilarious, when you consider we had at least 3 teen parents at our school; two girls who were currently knocked up, and the fact I took one of the cheerleaders to buy a pregnency test so she could take it my house without her parents finding out. So yes, representations of titties in oil were to be censored, despite the fact many students CLEARLY knew how bang some genetalia together to make a baby. A gallery in Dana Point also asked me not to show my nudes because "it wasn't Christian", so you know, all those nude works by Renaissance artists must be smut, and that's why religious leaders commissioned their smutty porno peddling asses to decorate their homes and churches. She must have thought I was a real perv then; a 17 year old girl, doing these paintings of naked women? Shocking.

The final straw was when I tried to curate a group show at Artcore in downtown Los Angeles. It was to be me, Tara McPherson, Louie Metz, Staci Lande, and a few others. The woman who ran the gallery didn't want nudity. A downtown Los Angeles gallery, not wanting nudity? The board members tried to reason with her, but it was no use. This was on top of many other conditions she decided to set. That show didn't happen, obviously.

So it was weird to me, all these galleries in Laguna Beach and even Los Angeles refusing to show nudes, because they were inappropriate and indecent; and yet the people who set out these rules loved works by Botticelli and Micelangelo. I started drawing nudes when I was eleven years old! So what does that mean? I grew up with nude artwork in our home, and no, it didn't turn me into a deviant or make me full of love for Satan.

I know the MySpace police take down any artwork with nipples showing. That's insane. I'm curious to know how other people have had their work censored? Was it a gallery, print publication, or something else?