How You Can Support LGBTQ Communities One Roll at a Time with Sophia Wallace

Get High on Pride

• Support Housing Works and the LGBTQ community all year long every time you buy a pack of Sophia Wallace Collection Rolling Papers.
• House of Puff’s newest collaboration is with New York-based artist, Sophia Wallace.
• Sophia’s CLITERACY projects centers pleasure equality, arguing that everyone with a clitoris has a right to joyful embodiment.

9-minute read

Uplifting Female Pleasure With Sophia Wallace

For Pride 2023, House of Puff has teamed up with New York-based artist, Sophia Wallace, and Housing Works to create support for the LGBTQ community all year round. Our newest artist series rolling papers feature part of Sophia’s installation, WE ARE HERE FOR THE REPOSSESSION. This piece is part of CLITERACY, an ongoing project she’s been working on for 11 years. With an unflinching lens and infectious wit, CLITERACY asks us to recognize that everyone, and especially those with a clitoris, have a right to joyful embodiment. In addition to supporting Sophia’s art, proceeds from these rolling papers will also support Housing Works. This venerable nonprofit often works through entrepreneurial ventures, like their thrift stores, bookstore, and their new cannabis dispensary. But, no matter how they fund their work, they’re dedicated to supporting homeless and low-income New Yorkers who are affected by HIV/AIDS. Now, you can support them, too—every time you roll a joint.

Housing Works and the LGBTQ Community

Housing Works is one of NYC’s most beloved nonprofits. In 1990, 4 members of the legendary AIDS activist group, ACT UP, founded Housing Works to provide services for some of New York’s most marginalized individuals. Since then, they’ve given low-income and homeless New Yorkers affected by HIV/AIDS access to critical services, including housing, healthcare, job training, and legal support. Their commitment to social justice, harm reduction, and individual empowerment promotes equality, compassion, and dignity for all. That’s definitely something we can all get behind! Housing Works strives to create lasting change and foster a society where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. Their tireless efforts and holistic support inspire hope and transform communities.

Light Up Pride 2023 with House of Puff, Sophia Wallace, and Housing Works

Join us in celebrating the launch of House of Puff’s exciting collaboration with Sophia Wallace and Housing Works at our Pre-Dyke March Sesh! Find us this Saturday, June 24th at 4:20pm on 42nd and 5th near the lion. You won’t be able to miss us一we’ll be the ones with the 8-foot-tall, inflatable clits. Queens to the front! When you place an order through Housing Works Cannabis Co., use the code QUEENSIZE* for free delivery of your recreational treats right to the start of the Dyke March! Then, come join our contingent of cannabis queens as we make our way down 5th Avenue in a trail of queer power and smoke, escorted by Sophia’s unstoppable, inflatable sculptures. Why? Because especially now, pleasure is political! And if you’re not in NYC, you can still support the spread of CLITERACY. Just go to houseofpuff.com and treat yourself anytime.

House of Puff: Your collab with House of Puff features a work from CLITERACY—what’s it all about?

Sophia Wallace on CLITERACY

CLITERACY is my ongoing project to establish the clitoric within our epistemology of subjects, symbols, and bodies. While the phallic obelisk can be seen in national monuments to cemeteries, representation of the clitoric is conspicuously absent. Through mixed media art experiences, I invite broad audiences to liberate themselves from the punishing weight of sexual shame.

House of Puff: What was your original inspiration for CLITERACY?

Sophia Wallace on Finding Inspiration

Many things. First, the absurdity of an organ with 10,820 sexual nerves being absent in representation. Second, that, within queer culture, people with clits almost always have pleasurable sexual experiences. Yet most of the straight women in my life were having lots of sex but many less orgasms. Finally, that representations of sex in film and television—even queer representations—almost never included anyone continuously touching a clitoris. So, women were supposedly constantly orgasming from penetration alone. LOL.

House of Puff: What’s been your favorite reaction to CLITERACY?

Sophia Wallace on the Public Reception of Her Work

There have been so many! So, it’s hard to choose. I co-created a clit rodeo with a golden clit you could ride on. I heard women doctors cry and talk about how they didn’t even know their own anatomy until they saw the work…. But my most recent favorite CLITERACY moment was riding my clit inflatables down a slip-and-slide hill with students at UMass Dartmouth.

House of Puff: How do you see the role of art in destigmatizing female pleasure?

Sophia Wallace on Reimagining Female Representation

I’d like to see what art would look like if no one was allowed to use the female body in representation. If they weren’t, how many paintings, sculptures, films, ads, and products couldn’t exist? So much has been made about sexualizing the female body, and so little has been made about what genuine female pleasure looks like. The clitoris, which is literally an organ of pleasure, is not eroticized in representation and is rarely represented at all. There’s so much opportunity for new artworks, architecture, designs, and drawings that respectfully explore the subject of clitoral pleasure, for the sake of itself. 

House of Puff: Have you seen your art destigmatize female pleasure in real time?

Sophia Wallace on the Real-World Impact of Her Art

In 2014, CLITERACY was exhibited at the University of the South in Tennessee. While the students and faculty who invited me were very excited, there was a vocal group of staff, alum, and students who protested my presence. Religious leaders circulated a petition, multiple donors threatened to pull their contributions, and a frat offered to accept any pledge who successfully captured my sculpture. Many boycotted my lecture. Nevertheless, the room was packed. I was scared of who might be in the audience and what would happen. But the lecture went extremely well. I received a standing ovation and choked up thanking the audience for being open to see what they thought for themselves—in spite of the controversy. Still, I don’t know what point in the talk made the difference. But I went on stage with death and rape threats, and left feeling that the audience was with me. 

House of Puff: What’s the “repossession” that the title of this work refers to?

Sophia Wallace on the Significance of Repossession

I chose the word repossession to address the idea of taking back what always belonged to us. In this case, our own bodies, not only in a literal sense but also knowledge about our bodies.

House of Puff: This work combines playful images with hard-hitting text—talk to us about that.

Sophia Wallace on the Value of Humor in Cultural Critique

I think this approach is a reflection of my temperament. But I only had the courage to trust myself to work with it in the last 11 years or so. To my surprise, I’ve discovered that some of my best ideas make me laugh. There’s a certain combination of using aesthetics, humor, and irreverence toward authority that comes naturally to me. Texts like, “Democracy Without CLITERACY? Phallusy” came about this way. I was amused by the concept and also thought it was a powerful critique. Humor is such a powerful tool. It breaks fear and creates instant, genuine connections. As an artist working on a supposedly taboo subject, it’s been very helpful for me in reaching broader audiences.

House of Puff: How are you celebrating Pride 2023?

Sophia Wallace on Pride 2023

Pride is my favorite holiday of the year. It sustains me through the rest of the year. This year, I will be marching in the Dyke March, as I do every year! It will be especially exciting this year because I will be together with friends, House of Puff, and Housing Works. We’ll be marching with 8-foot tall inflatable CLITERACY sculptures raised high in the air.

House of Puff: How is motherhood changing your work?

Sophia Wallace on Maternal Strength

I understand my connection to a lineage of mothers in a deeply visceral way now that’s worlds apart from my thinking before I went through the journey myself. Without realizing it, I had accepted the erroneous belief that pregnancy was no big deal. I didn’t appreciate the risk of life and limb and forever sacrifice that defines motherhood. And I also didn’t understand how profoundly I would need the unconditional love and care that a mother offers after surviving a dangerous birth. Becoming a mother gave me a profound respect for every person who has gone through pregnancy as well as new gratitude for my own mother, grandmothers, and maternal ancestors. I think I’ve become a bit braver in my work, and I’m also much more aware of my mortality.

House of Puff: How do you see motherhood and pleasure intersecting?

Sophia Wallace on the Importance of Maternal Pleasure

Motherhood and pleasure are rarely mentioned in the same sentence. This is tragic. What mothers give–of their bodies, energy, time, and life-force–is beyond measure. From an ethical standpoint, society, which is entirely dependent on reproductive labor for its existence, should invest back into mothers. What would this look like? Mothers being financially secure, so that they can always take care of their physical and emotional needs. That they have time to pursue what delights them and to rest as much as they need to. Haven’t the ones who change all the diapers—from the infants to the elderly—especially earned the right to some sweetness in this life?

House of Puff: How do you think uplifting female pleasure could change the world?

Sophia Wallace on Pleasure as a Measure of Trust

To answer this question, I have to immediately point to Adrienne Maree Brown’s work on this topic. She recognizes that pleasure is not merely about its own enjoyment. Instead, it’s also an important messenger telling us that we’re safe. Someone who values our pleasure is more trustworthy than someone who doesn’t. In Pleasure Activism, Brown writes, “I believe our imaginations—particularly the parts of our imaginations that hold what we most desire, what brings us pleasure, what makes us scream yes—are where we must seed the future, turn toward justice and liberation, and reprogram ourselves to desire sexually and erotically empowered lives.”

House of Puff: What are some of your favorite pleasures?

Sophia Wallace on Simple Pleasures

First, a perfectly brewed cup of very strong coffee with half-and-half, cinnamon, and raw sugar in the morning. Then, the sensation of being enveloped in the softest, crisp sheets, or a beautifully tailored shirt that feels wonderful on your skin and feels like an honoring of your highest self. I love when the way something looks and feels on your body are amazing in equal measure. Next, good satire that makes me laugh, like Reductress, Jordan Peele, Ali Wong, and The Onion. And, when my wife and son make me cinnamon rolls. Finally, dancing.

House of Puff: Has cannabis ever influenced your work, and, if so, how?

Sophia Wallace on Art and Cannabis

I only recently started to partake of cannabis more consistently, and I really enjoy taking a tincture about an hour before bed to relax and ease into sleep. Also, I appreciate the way it helps with menstrual cramps or other aches and pains. But, no, I don’t believe it has influenced my work…yet. Let’s revisit this question next Pride!