It feels remarkable to finally have some time to focus on things that most interest me now. I just need to process this wedding and then the remainder of the year will be working full force on The Naked Man Project website. It feels like we are finally beginning to tame the beast of understanding how the project functions internally. New artists have been submitting works and I have been building galleries for them. The first one should be up in the next couple of days and I have to say for the first time in months, I am quite excited by the prospects of potentially where this project can go. There are so dang many talented people out there that have been hidden or that very few people know. I feel like I have finally found my place and am creating a place of expression for artist wanting to deal with identity and the nude male. This vision that I have been dreaming of all year now becomes a reality. There are still people commenting on the old Blogger blog and I would encourage everyone to now move or begin posting in the new blog. I cannot transfer your comments and I would love all that you are saying to become a part of the permanent record of what this project is becoming. I have always seen myself as a collective artist and strongly believe in art as collaboration. This includes feedback from both artist and non-artist. If it stirs a feeling or emotion and it is worth documenting or expressing your opinion. I know this sometimes takes a lot of time to log in and do, but it becomes worthwhile and meaningful to others. It is our goal to have everything cleaned up and the site fully functional, with most of the bugs worked out and formally release the site, on December 1st. My goal then for the month of December is the begin opening up all the galleries, and get the featured artist section completely functional. I then want to close out this year by getting back into the studio and shooting new works. I began shooting some new stuff last week and it has a fascinating new edge to it. Then in January, I want to begin working on reviving the old Man Art with its original creators to build a social network, that was the original source that inspired me to ultimately begin this project in the first place, and build a home for fearless creative expression. This is only the first phase in something remarkable about to emerge.
Category Archives: Artistic Vision
Navigating the Labyrinth
Made a huge leap with the website yesterday and last night. We have finally been able to connect it to RSS to create feeds and social links. We have also linked to Google Analytics so we can see how people are using the site. These were the last major missing pieces to this labyrinth of a project. Now I can begin to focus my energy more on the content and less on the structure, and I can openly release the site and begin promoting it.
I am still missing the splash page and can’t seem to figure out how to add it with this Joomla 1.7 system. Each day we get closer. The blog section is now completed with links to feed. If you are currently using the old RSS feeds, please convert them over to the new site as I would like to close down the other blog. The new site has a very good search engine that enables one to find almost any post instantly. Danny has been working diligently on breaking all the past blogs into topics that can now be accessed from the list on the left hand side of the panel. We will begin to focus more of our energy on creating a monthly gallery of the past blog images so they may be readily browsed. Then I will create a master list of titles that can also be indexed and will become searchable. It’s amazing to think I have created so much text in such a relatively short period of time! It suddenly has become a massive body of work for someone who is not a ‘writer’ to have created bit by bit. I wish I had created this website first – it was my intent to create it much sooner – but I just couldn’t figure it out. Now it has taken ten weeks to get this whole thing up and running as it is. My total cost on the project so far has been $135.00 for the entire site. But the learning curve has taken a lot of time and effort and trial and error to understand its dynamics and functionality. Although very technical, it has also been extremely creative to figure out. Once I begin to add the content to the site I will begin to market myself as an artist, collaborate with other like-minded artists, and begin recruiting new models to become subjects for my various studies. So far, being in Montana, I have had great difficulty gaining the credibility to be taken seriously by potential subjects. “You want me to what?????” is the common response. There always seems to have been a sense of perversity surrounding the idea of men exposing themselves nude, or partially nude, that has been the source of greatest resistance. It is the process of establishing myself with quality tangible images that I believe will make me more accessible. After all, it is about creating the images, and my connection to the subjects, that brought me to this sort of creation in the first place.
Perpetual Growth
The Naked Man Project website has been up for a week now and though you may not see changes happening to it, I assure you it is continually still under construction. We are still trying to learn the programs and how it all functions together from the back end and there are still lots of detail stuff going on within that inner structure. Reminder this is a works in progress website so if you are on and you begin to see things shifting around or moving as we are working on various components of the site. It’s a true content management system so everything is always live and you work and change things in real time, which is really quite a fascinating way to work on the web, because you instantly see the impact it has on the site. And yes we are still making lots of mistakes. At this point I am systematically working my way through all the controls, turning new modules on and working with them, seeing if it something we can use, then adapting it or deleting it. There are about a hundred of these modules that can be worked through so you may see things appear and disappear as you are browsing. I really encourage people to sign on and become a member, there is no charge and it does take you to a deeper level so you can see the works as they were intended to be. You actually only need an email address to register and can be as anonymous as you want. I also encourage people to now post comments on the new blog since the old one doesn’t transfer those comments made to the new one and this will become the permanent record of the project. There are so many amazing people with great insight I really want to preserve. We have many galleries built, plus many artists outside the project are beginning to work on galleries to add to the featured section and several new articles written but wanted to get some of the understructure working before I added too much. Any feedback or recommendations are greatly appreciated. I do have a couple of big jobs that I need to finish up this week so a lot of my energy will be focused there. Thank you for making this website such a success already and thanks for helping it to grow.
With A Little Help From My Friends…
It has been about two and a half months since I returned from my inspirational trip to France and Germany and have since accomplished the goal I set out to do. This morning I have began reconnecting to some of my Man Art and Red Bubble friends and approaching them on the possibility of building a gallery of their magnificent works that could become featured artist on the new site. It feels that I have been in a creative hole since my return from the trip that I have lost touch with all my creative artist friends that are also exploring the nude male form. Hopefully you will begin to see new galleries of their work begin to populate the new website and it will finally begin to grow. Not that I don’t have enough work of my own to do because I still have 32 of my own galleries that we have created, but not had the time to put up yet. The site will continue to grow in the upcoming weeks. I am still trying to figure out some of it operational features and placement and links to the home page. And, I have been trying to take some time off and get caught up with my own life. But perhaps, this is my life. Not a bad life at that if so. The gardens are about to bed for the winter and this seems like an excellent way to spend my winter, stuck indoors working on this vision. Today I have to say thanks to Franz Werner in Berlin, who is one of the most inspirational people who have given me the idea for making this project happen. I have never seen a man so passionate and dedicating so much of his life to showing the modern male erotic form.
If you are interested in contributing to the website here are the requirements. You can link to your own website or to places where the images are for sale, for instance back to Red Bubble or if you sell them yourself. The site is protected, as much as such sites can be protected, and I will be able to put a watermark overlay on the image. We are looking for image sizes 600dpi at it’s longest point 100 dpi resolution roughly 100kb. Please contact me if you are interested in becoming a featured artist on the site.
“What would you think if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
And I’ll try not to sing out of key.
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends”
Lyrics from “With a little help from my friends” as sung by Joe Cocker originally written by the Beatles.
The Naked Man Finally Finds Exposure
OK!!!! Here it is the big day!!!! The website is finally up and running!!!! You can find it at naked-man-project.com. We have put together a limited version to test the site and see how it will function. It’s still a work in progress so there may be some quirky little things that aren’t quit there yet, but for the most part you can get a good feel for what it will become. We currently have eight of the thirty plus odd galleries open so it will give you a sampling of various styles. Sorry I could not get an opening splash page up to warn viewer of the content, but most of you know what that is anyway and will hopefully get that up later in the day. As an option I have chosen to hide the more graphic images from casual public viewing that can only be accessed when you become a registered user. There are ratings at the bottom of the gallery pages, but they are way at the bottom so please feel free to use to give some feedback, you may have to scroll down to find, but am working on bringing them up into the page. And there are comment sections at the bottom of each section for feedback. The blog will now become more searchable via keywords though not all of the blogs have been categorized yet. There is still a tremendous amount of work to be worked through on what’s currently up, but will be refined through out the upcoming weeks as we muddle our way through it.
It feels like I have reached the pinnacle of a wondrous place in my life today. I now have a public home where I can dwell and share my creative spirit. A year and half ago I was too afraid to even show my work publicly and now have a site that totally celebrates what I have become. Thank you to all that have contributed and helped along the way. A very special thanks are due to Glenn who keeps pushing me and reminds me of the practical side of my vision. A huge thanks to Thor for his hours of working through my massive catalog of images and getting them organized and putting so much of the galleries together. Alison you are the female love of my life, you just keep inspiring and cleaning up all my dirty little messes and making sense of my babbling. I also have to thank Ramon who’s giving me the courage when I feel like I have fallen in a dark holes from which I thought I would never recover. This website is a community effort and I have graciously learned this year that it takes a community to create art and survive.
