About

Artist’s Statement:

I believe one of the aims of art is to disturb, to stop people in their tracks long enough to laugh or get pissed or try on another point of view. I am very much drawn to the wisdom of the outsider character, who has an idea of what the standard rules are, but who chooses to take them with a salt lick.

I’m interested in riding the line between the sacred and the profane, in erasing the artifice of mindspiritbody division. Much of my writing offers sex, but in a distinctly non-erotic way, because sex is rarely “just sex”–it is frequently about power, longing, comfort, relationship. While I recognize a broad spectrum of sexualities and relationships, the comparison/contrast of conscious sadomasochism (among leatherfolk, for instance) with the psychotic subconscious roles played out by so-called “normal” people is of great fascination to me in particular.

When I entered the Chicago Eagle, a leather bar, in the mid-1990s, it was a kind of homecoming–a quarter of the world that made sense to me in a way that Methodist church and Catholic high school and dysfunctional family never did. The notion of consent pervaded everything and I became interested in what we consent to on a daily basis, without ever realizing there are alternatives.

To contact me, please email: DebRLewis[at]prodigy.net.

Please note: speakeasy@debrlewis.com is defunct.