Jeanne E’s July exhibit challenges conservative mores with art and humor.

Jeanne E wears faux fur boots and dangly earrings in the shape of little hands.

She is nearly 6 feet tall, and her close-cropped silver hair has just a touch of purple.

But the truly unique feature of her costume is a ceramic fig leaf, held in place with purple ribbons.

“That’s the official John Ashcroft commemorative fig leaf and morals protector,” E said. “I was furious listening to NPR one day, the news and current events, what is going on in our world.

“I figure any way I can deal with it is a good way, and my way seems to be humor and a little bit of sarcasm and political statement.”

E has made the leaves for her upcoming July exhibit at Stone Soup. In addition, she has crafted a very special leaf she plans to send to Ashcroft himself – imprinted with the red, white and blue.

The in-your-face sexuality of E’s ceramic sculpture is a response to what the artist views as an era of retrenched conservatism.

The muted palette of the raku glazes E uses on the torsos makes the shiny gold highlighting of the genitalia that much more outrageous.

For all the emphasis on the equipment, the headless, armless torsos could be read as the male body objectified. But that sort of 1970s-style feminist commentary isn’t necessarily the intention of this artist, who celebrates the life-force with the zest of a female Zorba.

E has exhibited a series of women’s bodies as well.

“I started doing these bodies when I turned 60” three years ago, she said. “I had to get in touch with my own 60-year-old body, you know, because everything would change about every five years. It was like, ‘who’s this body?’”

But the self-examination lacks the melancholy of middle age; E is happy in her life with her partner of a decade, Michael Milligan, a retired attorney and banker.

“I had run away from home at 52,” she said. “I’d been married for 35 years. I was long overdue; I had worked, worked, worked, I had the fashion design business – I manufactured my own designs that I wholesaled and I had two retail stores. I just worked so I didn’t have to do life.

“One day I woke up to what I was living, and I walked.”

E bought a pair of over-the-knee red cowboy boots.

“I put on the boots and I took a box,” she said. “I figured anything I could put in that box was what I’d take from that house I’d lived in for 30 years.”

E lived in Paris for two years, deliberately cutting herself off from her support system in order to be alone.

“It was a hard year, that first year,” she said. “I cried and puked and had migraines.”

But, over the year, she resolved issues with roots in childhood trauma.

Then she met Michael.

“We met in Paris 10-plus years ago. Michael was living in Italy and I was living in Paris. We’d gone there to reinvent ourselves. We had lunch and after a couple of years of being Eurotrash we decided we need to live in the same country.”

E’s dream of trees and water brought the pair to the Pacific Northwest.

“We got on a plane and came to Seattle,” she said, “and then we got on a boat and came to Bainbridge Island.”

The pair built a quirky house on a cliff north of Manitou Beach, with a big studio for E to make art.

“We’ve done a good job of recreating our lives,” she said.

For Milligan’s upcoming 60th birthday party, E has made 80 plates to give as gifts to guests, each with a hand-painted portrait of Milligan.

Another series of plates bears images of the companionable domesticity of Sundays – newspapers askew, coffee cups, rumpled bed.

The plates are a throwback to a wheel-turned series, but most of E’s current work is large and sculptural. Her outdoor pieces are to-scale architectural elements that include arches and columns. Works for Bainbridge In Bloom include massive jars.

“I’m right at the end of a big working season,” she said. “I have this big show at Art Soup and then I’ll do the Garden Tour, so there are a lot of things culminating. Then I’m going to take the summer off.

“Old broads need a rest.”

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Jeanne E’s ceramic sculpture exhibit, “Well Hung,” opens July 2 at Lone Hansen’s Art Soup Gallery, with a reception from 5-8 p.m.

E shares the space with Jason Devinney, who shows wearable art weavings. Call 842-1315 for more information.