Playing with Fire group photo

HyperAllergic Review of Playing With Fire

By Tulsa Kinney. Meet the Doyennes of Ecosexuality.

In their latest film, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens advocate replacing an exploitative relationship with the Earth with one based on intimacy, care, and pleasure.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — The rainy season is over, and the verdant hills up the west central coast dazzle our eyes; the blue ocean sparkles in the high sun. It’s a straight shot up the 101 Freeway from my house in Echo Park, with only one turn:Madonna Road, the exit for the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.

Read Full Review here

Volcano Graphic for Playing with Fire

Filmmaker Magazine Review of Playing With Fire

By Scott Macaulay.

“Fire is Like Sex — Neither Good Nor Bad But What You Bring To It”: Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens on Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency.

In the first two films in their trilogy of environmental-themed documentaries, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle married — literally — their loving spirit of “ecosexuality” with urgent debates around the preservation of our natural resources. In 2014’s Goodbye Gauley Mountain — An Ecosexual Love Story, Stephens returned to her West Virginia home with Sprinkle only to find the eponymous ridges she remembered from her youth undergoing the environmentally-destructive coal-mining process of mountaintop removal.

Read Full Review here

Bazoombas Cake photo

Broke Ass Stuart Review of Bazoombas in Love

By Vita Hewitt. Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s ‘Bazoombas in Love’ Brings Heart to Breast Celebration at Cushion Works.

I love boobs. You probably do too. But no one I know loves boobs more than ecosexual artists and Bay Area icons Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. To prove their deep affection for all things mammary and titular, their exuberant new show Bazoombas in Love opens at Cushion Works o

Read the Broke Ass Stuart Review here

Annie and Beth with castings

Cushion Works: Bazoombas in Love

View Full Press Release with more photos!

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s…
BAZOOMBAS IN LOVE

October 24, 2025 — January 24, 2026
Opens Thursday, October 23, 6-8pm

Gallery open every Friday & Saturday 12-5pm

The name Sprinkle is assumed, but the bazoombas are Goddess-given. From the pages of mob-funded 1970s porn magazines to subculture-defining motion pictures like Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle, her endowment was her currency. By the early 90s, and transformed into a celebrated feminist performance artist and sex educator, she caught the eye of a sharp Rutgers graduate student named Beth Stephens, who included one of her inky “Tit Prints” in a curated exhibition. An invitation to campus followed, inaugurating a memorable first collaboration: femme Annie straddling a Harley Davidson, butch Beth playing the leather-clad biker-cum-photographer, coaxing the sex symbol to perform on her own terms, and ultimately their own terms.

A romance took hold, followed by a decades-long partnership generating a dizzying array of collaborative artworks, many defying simple classification and instead combining elements of performance, video, photography, publishing, and life-as-art experiments. There were Sidewalk Sex Clinics, activist manifestos, feature-length documentary films, and a seven-year Love Art Laboratory project. They are perhaps most well-known as founders of the Ecosex movement, and for their ongoing love affair with the Earth itself. Under the Ecosexual banner, the artists have embarked on an epic series of 21 public Gesamtkunstwerke, ceremonially marrying fire, soil, sun, snow, rocks, sea, mountains, moon, sky, and more, over the course of nine years across nine countries.

No subject or surface was immune to their artistic approach. Even Annie’s first breast cancer diagnosis in 2005 catalyzed an emotionally moving series of collages, unflinching operating room portraits, touring two-woman theater piece, and chemo fashion show. The couple has said that producing art made having cancer worthwhile, a radically optimistic perspective that speaks directly to their belief in art as a force for healing.

News of a breast cancer recurrence, followed by a lumpectomy this past summer, inspired the idea of a San Francisco exhibition about change, desire, and disease. There could be new collages made from strangely beautiful MRI scans mixed with old pin-up photos, cheeky mammogram selfies, a celebratory photo shoot of their aging and erotic breasts, and the sharing of creative strategies for survival with their communities. But the pathology report revealed more cancer, an “occult” form undetectable in scans and visible only in the laboratory. A double mastectomy was suddenly very much on the table, along with related questions: What does a commitment to art, life, and repair look like under such conditions? And how does an artist and performer primarily known for her bazoombas face the prospect of living without them?

The artists not only decided to proceed with the exhibition, but to deepen their commitment to it—and to each other. The show would become Bazoombas in Love, a love story in boobs, a reflection on growing up and growing older, and ultimately a chronicle of their richly intertwined lives.

The exhibition features brand new visual artworks, a “Love Infusion Clinic,” bronze chest casts, Beth’s early photographs, a boobliography, vintage materials spanning Annie’s five-decade career, and much more. A separate room includes breast-related artworks from their personal collection, made by friends, colleagues, and community members.

While anchored in a physical presentation, the exhibition pulses with programming: a pre-exhibition walking tour from Cushion Works to The Lab, a breast cancer healing circle and panel with seven generations of cancer vixens, “Tit Print” demos, and “Tits, Tarts & Crafts,” a holiday gift-making event. Not to mention “Tit Lit” open mic night, gallery tours led by the artists, Boob Reiki, and discussions about art, erotics and illness. Annie’s Radiation Termination Celebration will be part of the fun, too, as it marks the end of her treatment (November 15).

The proceedings begin in October, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Bring your mind, bring your heart, and bring your body. In fact, every body is invited.

Calendar

The gallery is open every Friday & Saturday from 12 to 5pm.

Friday, October 17, 6-7:30 pm — “An Ecosexual Walking Tour In Search of the Elusive Boobie Bird” with Beth Stephens and Amanda Starbuck. Cameo by Annie Sprinkle. Produced by THE LAB.

Saturday, October 18, 8-10 pm — Screening of Playing with Fire–An Ecosexual Emergency, Artist Television Access.

Thursday, October 23, 6-8pm — Opening Reception

Saturday, November 15, 12-5 pm — Beth and Annie will be in the gallery all day offering Love Infusions, milk from the Milk Bar, and giving personalized tours of the exhibition. They will also serve tittie torte cup cakes to celebrate Beth’s birthday and the completion of Annie’s breast cancer radiation treatments.

Saturday, December 6, 12-5 pm — “Tits, Tarts & Crafts” — Drop by and make some holiday cards and gifts with Beth and Annie and their crafty friends. We will have art supplies, though feel free to bring your own supplies and ideas. Special guest artists to help you include Julie Blankenship, Deborah Oak, and Carol Queen.

Gallery closed for holidays December 7 to January 9.

Saturday, January 10, 12-3pm — Gallery tours and Love Infusions by Beth and Annie.
3-4:15pm TIT LIT — Open mic for all breast related readings. Bring poems, writings, medical reports, musings, etc. Special guest reading by Camile Roy. Hang out til 5pm.

Saturday, January 17, 12-2pm — The artists will be present, the Love Infusion Clinic will be open (get milk at the Milk Bar!), and experience various Experimental (Art) Healing Modalities with our clinicians.

2pm — Panel: Artist Cancer Stories: Every Body is Invited. An inter-generational, gender diverse panel will share stories of their experiences with cancer.  The panel will climax with a “Ritual Blessing of our Bodies.”

Saturday, January 24, 12- 5pm — Closing event with Beth and Annie, details to be announced. After gallery hours conclude, we will walk two blocks to The LAB for a “Milk Bar Community Meal,” where the food and entertainment will all be inspired by breasts.

One gallery features boob-related artworks from Annie and Beth’s personal collection. The presentation includes: Linda M. Montano, Madison Young, Dragonfly Diva, Hoshi Hana, Shine Louise Houston, Monica Canilao, Camille Holvoet, Dan & Laurie Hennig, David Steinberg, Willem de Ridder, Deborah Oak Cooper, Vanessa K. Rees, Samantha Nye, Franko B., Guillermo Gómez Peña, James Mogul, Petra Kralickova, Joyce Culver, Celestina Pearl, Kalash, Jiz Lee, Kaytea Petro, Luke Dixon, Joel Peter Witkin, Michael Steven Flynn, Carol Queen, Amy Graham, Courtney Desiree Morris, Dorian Katz, Josie Bunny, Louis Rawlings, Sheila Malone, Sarah Thornton, and Charles Gatewood.

Performance Artists & Healers: Amanda Starbuck, Jane Hamilton, Veronica Hart, Rebeka Rodriguez Mondragón, Sam McGinnes, Beatrice Favaretto, Julie Blankenship, Nicholetta von Heidegger, Lady Monster, Bill Basquin

Special thanks to Tamara Freedman, Ryan Whelan, Caitlyn Galloway, Kevin Lopez, Keith Wilson, Little Shiva, Ruby Pearl, Craig Baldwin, and Artist Television Access. Bronze torsos cast by Sean M. Monaghan of Bronze Works Santa Cruz with assistance from Raissa Boysen and Anastasia Oleson.

Green Wedding photo

Sierra Magazine

The Earth is sexy. Annie Sprinkle had a sense of that even as a child, skinny-dipping in the glacial lakes of the High Sierra. Beth Stephens felt those same stirrings as a kid growing up in Appalachia, when she straddled bucking horses for rodeos. In 2008, Sprinkle and Stephens made that relationship official—the couple symbolically married the Earth.

“We thought, who needs the rights and protections of marriage? The Earth,” says Stephens, today a professor in the Art department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

Their resulting performance piece, “Green Wedding to the Earth,” was equal parts earnest, playful, and avant-garde. Guests were given bags of soil to breathe deeply from during the ceremony. Soprano Emma McNairy performed an operatic striptease. The ceremony kicked off a new environmental movement: ecosexuality.

More on the article here.

Assuming the Ecosexual Position book cover

BD Owens Reviews “Assuming the Ecosexual Position” by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle collaborative art and activism practice has reached a broad range of audiences through their feature length films Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2014) and Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure(2017). Their performance works, and happenings, have been presented at documenta 14, the Venice Biennale and many other art festivals, galleries and venues across the Earth. Their socially engaged performances have included: Ecosexual Weddings extravaganzas, Sidewalk Sex Clinics, Ecosex Walking Tours, Cuddle sessions and Extreme Kissing. The stories in Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover detail some of their behind-the-scenes adventures while making these projects. Readers from Scotland will be thrilled that the Glasgay! Festival (and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow) played a “juicy” part in their love story. Stephens and Sprinkle have been in a relationship, and collaborating, since 2002. The founders of the E.A.R.T.H. Lab at UCSC, describe themselves as, “two ecosexual artists in love, in a relationship with each other as well as with the Sky, Sea, Appalachian Mountains, Lake Kallavasi in Finland, the soil in Austria, the Sun, the Moon, Coal, [their] late dog Bob and current dog Butch, and other nonhuman and human entities.” Although they acknowledge the long-established position framing the Earth as mother, they assert that the Earth can also be a lover. Reconsidering the Earth as a lover, creates a shift in the dynamics of responsibility and mutual respect.

More on the review here.

 

Photo of Annie and Beth

Co-Directors Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle go viral after appearing on England’s #1 morning talk show!

When Beth and Annie appeared live on the most popular morning talk show in England, the expected the worst, as most talk show hosts don’t appreciate conceptual art. However, the hosts were kind and enthusiastic. Over the next few hours, many newspapers had stories written and Beth and Annie and their messages of loving the Earth went viral. From the national Daily Mail to the a slew of tabloids. Earth Lab SF was mentioned in some of the stories, and the interview was a hoot.
JUST A FEW OF THE HEADLINES:
“Morning viewers are left baffled by ecosexuals.” Daily Mail.
“Meet the couple that really, really love the planet!’ ITV.com
“Ecosexual couple recall perfomring oral sex with grass.” Metro UK.
“ITV morning fans gobsmacked by ‘bonkers’ X rated interview.” Birmingham Mail
“We kiss for an hour, and lay on the beach naked as we make love to the planet, say Ecosexual Couple on This Morning.” The SUN.
Etc etc…
 
Watch the fabulous interview here.
 
Queen Green graphic

‘Queen Green’ by Susie Green

Water Makes Us Wet Film Screening

When: Friday 28th January, 6-8pm
Where: Woodend Gallery, The Crescent, Scarborough, YO11 2DF
Tickets: Tickets on a sliding scale. Click here to get tickets for event.

This screening is in response to the current exhibition, ‘Queen Green’ by Susie Green currently on show at Woodend Gallery. The exhibition was partially inspired by the book ‘Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover‘ by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens with Jennie Klein. 

 

Who is it for?

The film is aimed at 18+

There will be a small selection of drinks available by donation.

Where will it take place?

The screening will take place within the gallery space at Woodend Creative Space, YO11 2PW. The gallery is fully wheelchair accessible and disabled parking available, for more information about the venue follow this link: https://www.woodendcreative.co.uk

Online version: An online version of the film will be made available for those who are unable to attend the event in person. 

About the Exhibition

Queen Green is an exhibition of new works by artist Susie Green inspired by her residency at Dalby Forest in the North Yorks Moors. The exhibition celebrates erotic encounters with nature, and moments of confidence and fragility, growth and decay, lightness and dark. Works on paper and large cut-out mixed forms mounted onto wooden trellis portray powerful, blossoming, shapeshifting bodies.

Queen Green is supported by Crescent Arts, Scarborough Museums Trust, Arts Council England and Forestry England.

Curated by Martha Cattell and John Heffernan

San Francisco Chronicle article photo

San Francisco Chronicle

The Earth Lab SF got some great newspaper coverage in December 2021 when a fabulous man about town, staff writer Tony Bravo imbedded with us for three days. Award-winning photographer Lea Suzuki did a photo shoot in Holly Park in the Bernal Hill neighborhood. Tony Bravo managed to credit all the right people and places and we couldn’t have been happier with the piece. Click here to see the whole piece by Tony Bravo.

Wedding photo of Annie and Beth near a tree

CNN

CNN gave us huge exposure with a really fantastic article about the Ecosex Wedding Project, using many of our great photos by our talented photographer collaborators. People saw and read this piece all around the world. We hope we planted some seeds in some people’s heads, that they can have a wedding to a non human entity they love too. Hoping for lots of copycats. The more love generated for the Earth, the better. 

Read the article.