Rowena O'connor stands in the middle of an empty, ambient Ciao Edie's wearing orange leather pants and talking on her cellphone. Gillian Farnsworth, dressed mostly in black, is lugging a sandwich board out onto the sidewalk.

They're queer art-welder girls Tempermettle, and they're prepping for a fundraiser to raise cash for their Pride parade float. Together with a bunch of quick-study female volunteers, they're building a 10-by-24-foot creation that promises fantastical creatures, a DJ and a "saucy bedroom set."

"It's Mad Max meets Fantasia," says O'Connor, "and (except for the saucy bedroom set donated by Ciao Edie), it's all metal."

Since meeting in Vancouver eight years ago as art- and film-school students, their working relationship has evolved from doing it for themselves to art directing and set designing for people like David Bowie and Barenaked Ladies. Tonight (Thursday, June 14) you can see their visionary visuals at the Strange Sisters lesbian cabaret, which they're responsible for designing.

"As an artist, you think the entertainment industry is going to be very creative and very open. I think if you're really an artist to begin with, it can be quite limiting and very frustrating," Farnsworth says.

"And cheap," O'Connor says. "Everything's held together with tape. We got a little tired of painting cardboard silver to look like metal. I started to feel a little dissatisfied."

Rowena O'Connor (left) and Gillian Farnsworth show mettle working with metal.      // photo by SUSAN KING

But learning to work quickly with different materials helped their own work, a mix of sound, sculpture, body-art and metal that uses the natural environment and the female form as canvas. The materials they use, they say, empower women's bodies and challenge female objectification.

Tonight's regular lesbian gig, Here Kitty Kitty, with resident DJs Nikki Red and Switch (Carrie Gray), doubles as the third fundraiser for the Where The Wild Girls Are float, an adaptation of the children's story Where The Wild Ones Are about a boy who creates a forest of friendly creatures in his bedroom.

For the articulate Cancer/Scorpio couple (not that kind of couple, although they used to get it on), the decision to display their art in the male-dominated Pride parade instead of the Dyke March, was a conscious choice.

They created their first float (or live installation) for Pride 99 from an existing piece in eight-days on a budget of $1,500 and they're still riding the response.

"It's kind of a testimony," Farnsworth says. "Big beefy guys on rich, corporate-sponsored floats get up and flex their muscles with a couple of palm trees in the background, and that's all they do. Then we come along, trying to get our art out there. It gets noticed."

They also both sheepishly agree on the sex appeal of the blowtorch. There's no denying the chick-magnet factor tonight as Ciao Edie begins to fill up with women.

"It's the metal," Farnsworth laughs. "I think it's all about the aesthetics and the texture and the connotations."

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