Travis Nixon

I don’t do anything halfway. Almost six years ago that turned out to be a problem, in the best possible way — a casual interest in shibari became Shibari Sessions, then BoundHTX, then a spare bedroom repurposed as rope processing and a living room built around a nine-foot suspension frame.

Shibari Sessions is my for-profit studio: fine art rope photography, private lessons, and hand-tied rope and sex slings, made in small batches and sold cheap to other bondage organizations so they can resell it to fund their own programming — the same trick that’s kept BoundHTX’s classes free or low-cost since it started. BoundHTX is the nonprofit I run out of the Montrose Center, built specifically around technique and craft rather than lifestyle, so it stays a safe entry point for people from every background, including those for whom other kinds of content could be genuinely triggering.

This November, that same instinct to go all-in produced “ShibARTi” — a living rope art exhibition and competition at the Montrose Center benefiting the Montrose Center and BoundHTX. Forty artists build sculptural work in real time across two sessions, no rehearsal, nothing pre-built, judged on technical skill, composition, creativity, and impact by a panel that ranges from a working rigger to an art world representative to RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Jaymes Mansfield, flying in from Las Vegas, to Houston City Councilmember Mario Castillo. Guests vote too, for People’s Choice, and a professional photographer documents every finished piece so the work outlives the night it took to build. It’s built in partnership with sponsors, volunteers, and artists from across the community — including an exhibit that’s a collaboration between myself and Aria and Christine of Dyes That Bind.