Phil Pool and Jan Whitlock
Wise followers of the snails go at the pace of the snail and read the words rather than speeding ahead just to look at the images.
The Mucin Garden Words – Phil
Enter the snail; a snail enters; a woodlouse escapes.
The Mollusc Profound – spiralling, stories and dreams, oozes and creams, cool in the darkness, near silent, slides through warm wrinkles and, softly, folds. Greens, to creams, pinks, browns and reds sanguine – mucin drip, cyprine sip.
Mollusc muscle-foot slides, smooth mucin drawn
over labium oris and labia minora.
A soft, vulnerable body, protected by a hard, button-polished shell explores tensions of exposure and defense, desire and… withdrawal, shrinking back, from the cool, from the warmth. A inseparable androgyny, a no-gender identity, a non-sexable alien explorer sets out on a sexual human world.
Embodying and exuding fluids, mascufeminine, mollusasculine. La concha y la concha, the snail and the cunt, cyprine, mucin. Soft mounds, pubes and pubis, divided by the closed labia that opens when caressed and parted – a snail slides across the petals .. Clitoria Ternatea.
Dips a finger, slips a tongue; muscular, glides the snail’s foot.
Linguistic kinship – curved enclosure, vulval home, dark and wet.
Spiral-shelled-taboo, labial yin-yang in a moment of togetherness, muscular, erectile, stretching to… Repetition, repetition, la concha, la concha, spittle fluid bridges the spaces between the whole animal and the animal hole.
… images from this point on are more explicit… 🌿🐌
Two disparate living, physical, objects merge in a single, loaded concept. Synchronous, the snail’s fluid trail and the vagina’s rich secretions flow.
Mucin, blended glycoproteins and peptides protect from harm and heal most wounds – glide – a mucus, self-sustaining hydrogel, glints; sparkles and mirrors vaginal secretions, mucus rich in mucins, salts, and water. Cyprine fluids share sensual lubrication, defense, and self-care.
The slime trail of the snail, an abstract, elemental representation of the body’s natural, protective flow. Snail as cipher for the fluid sexual reality, linking the soft, self-healing path of the mollusc to the folds and lips of the vagina’s cyprine flows.
La concha is not merely the shell, or the lips, but the fluid-defined life within. The life, the slime, the joy grounded in nature. Spirals, spirals, moistened lips within, los concha del mundo.
Jan Whitlock on Snails, Snails on Jan Whitlock
To lay on my back enjoying the sky while snails crawl all over my naked body was a very pleasurable experience. The way they slowly move on their cool silvery mucin feels very sensual.
Watching the way their tentacles explore my fleshy curves and crevices and hair is tantalising. This fascination evolved more after, looking for a new idea for photos, I mentioned to Phil I’d once photographed someone with a snail placed intimately upon them some years ago.
He then ran with that and researched snails and their symbolism in the surreal erotica sense, and studied their behaviour. We arranged two sessions to explore this idea. We each rounded up some snails and kept them happy with greens and moisture, before letting them loose upon various parts of my body.
Snails have more strength than is at first apparent, and their suction can be quite a pull if they are attempting to beat the gravitational force. On my belly they tickled a little, and would eventually topple off my side.
On my pussy their lightness and smooth slipperiness blended with my own. On my face they felt delicate and left my skin feeling soft. On my mouth I imagined kissing a cool lipped being, so gentle.
To see them released and heading off into the undergrowth afterwards was a joy. And I feel intimately acquainted with these fascinating hermaphrodites after our experiences. I’m amused to be a muse modelling molluscs.
Spirals and slime
Got plenty of time
No rush
Just hush
Feel the sensuality
Sublime
Join in by contacting Phil via the contacts page.
Phil Pool - Art and Protest 