William
Brooklyn artist, designer and rope teacher who founded the Bushwick kink and rope space Temple New York in 2019. William has studied shibari since meeting Midori in 2003, mainly in Naka style and semenawa, teaches harness and takate kote classes at Temple and hosts its rope jam, The Hang.
William (they/she) is a queer artist, designer and builder based in Brooklyn, New York, and the founder of Temple New York, a space for rope bondage and kink in Bushwick. Their own site asks to be called William, not Will or Bill.
Rope background
According to their Temple profile, William has studied shibari since meeting Midori in 2003. They have since learned from many teachers, most notably Chiaki in New York and Tokyo and KissMeDeadlyDoll in New York, with a focus on Naka style and semenawa. The profile also lists work at events and productions including Dances of Vice and Torture Garden, and says William has tied with Hajime Kinoko in installation art performances in New York.
Temple New York
William writes that a small group of fringe artists created Temple in 2019 as a modest project space in Bushwick for alternative live art. It has since grown out of its co-op origins into a community space for kink activities and education, aimed at offering a safer space to queer, neurodivergent, trans, people of color, sex worker and alternative communities. Temple says the room is built for suspension work, with three steel beams spanning it under the roof that give the space its “House of Three Beams” emblem. William describes Temple as a place to experiment with designing and building kink spaces, structures, furniture and experiences, and works there as a community organizer and educator.
Teaching
William teaches rope classes at Temple, often with Syd. Temple’s calendar for late 2026 lists Harnessing, a level-two series that introduces one upper-body and one lower-body harness per class, from shinju and strappado to hip harnesses and futomomo, with attention to anatomy and how each structure fits the person receiving it, and TK Foundation, a workshop on the first two ropes of the takate kote. The class description acknowledges the tie’s known risks and covers posture, nerve pathways, load testing with an upline and variations for less flexible and hypermobile bodies. William also hosts The Hang, Temple’s supervised but unstructured rope jam, with suspension points on bamboo and rings.
Art and design
William traces the work to art school in the early 2000s, where sculpture led them to installation spaces, interactive sculpture and video performance. Through TieMeTightly they offer private sessions and lessons and make custom toys, furniture and rigs, and they say kink films are in the works.