Mission
The Sex Ed Bakeshop is a platform for art projects, conversations, and resource-sharing to normalize sex education and all topics related to sexual health. This metaphorical bakeshop is a space to explore.
We want you to get cozy, comfortable, awkward, uncomfortable, curious, and inspired through collaborations with pastry chefs, designers, artists, sex educators, and the public.
Our work promotes dialogue about the role of sex, with its multiple meanings and complexities, in our everyday lives. In the Sex Ed Bakeshop, sex is a word that everyone can say without shame or hesitation.
Our goal is to expand current definitions of and comfort with sexual health by baking and making as if our lives depend on it – because we believe they do.
Team
Liz Slagus, Founder & Director
Liz Slagus is a Brooklyn-based artist, curator, educator, writer, and provocateur who is completely over sex education being a game of chance. As a child of the 80s, she grew up during the AIDS crisis, which left its mark with the death of a classmate at the age of 15. As an adult, she has witnessed the vulnerable state of sex education, which, when allowed to be taught in schools, is still not comprehensive enough to incorporate pleasure (ever!), reproductive rights (usually), consent (generally), gender inclusivity (rarely), and many other areas that make sexual health multidimensional and multi-dynamic.
In 2009, she began a body of art and curatorial projects to spotlight these issues and concerns by inviting artist, Norene Leddy, to co-found the SexEd project. Together, they collaborated with schools, community groups, health centers, and service organizations to create innovative and eye-catching sexual health campaigns in the language of their collaborators. They installed exhibitions; took over student health fairs (with temporary tattoos and manicures promoting consent worn by hundreds of teenagers), high-school classrooms, and after-school programs; taught SexEd as a university course; and documented it all as the sex ed that does not exist in the US.
Most recently, Slagus has grown infuriated with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the lack of research, information, and public familiarity with menopause or pleasure. Carrying forward the SexEd Project values of openness, consent, inclusivity, and active engagement she has created The Sex Ed Bakeshop, her latest tool for engaging the public in conversations about what holistic sexual health is and can be.
Geralyn Abinader, Illustrator - We Heart Sex Ed Recipe Book
Growing up, important conversations with my mother happened in the kitchen; while I learned to cook, I also learned about life. Sexual health, practices, and identity are challenging to talk about. What better way to ignite and inspire conversations about sex than through fun and delicious recipes? A visual storyteller for science and natural history institutions, I create engaging and educational films, interactives, and installations. I’m excited to be part of this project where I will return to my first passion, illustration.
Angela Carlucci, Pastry Chef - We Heart Sex Ed Recipe Book
I am so pleased to be part of the We Heart Sex Ed Recipe Book project, which blossoms from honesty and the genuine love of caring about people and their futures. I am a trained Pastry Chef from the Institute of Culinary Education and the Head Baker for Devoe Street Bakeshop (Think Coffee) in NYC. I specialize in recipe development and culinary education for adults and children, of which I design programs and teach “self-care baking” classes–something I feel genuinely passionate about. Baking is therapeutic, and I hope to relay those gentle and methodical aspects through fun and educational recipes created just for you!
Giana Pilar González, Identity, Branding, & Experience Design
Giana Pilar González works and plays with brands, technology, and cultural systems. She researches, analyzes, and (re)maps code and structures to create new possibilities for participation and creative dialogue. This manifests as experiences, engagements, performances, and products that challenge everyday people to reinvent the systems they encounter. Within her practice, Giana blurs the lines between art and commerce, digital and analog, couture and homespun culture, and uses art as a context for open experimentation and audience exchange. Her work has been featured in exhibits at Eyebeam and MIT and in publications such as WiredUK, Hurriyet, and Fashion Practice. In her commercial practice, the projects she has led have won industry recognition, such as the Webby Awards. Giana holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. and a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. She lives and works in New York City and founded TEOSANTOS, an experimental design studio in Brooklyn.
