Despite all my yammering yesterday about the death of art in general, I am having a blast being creative. The creative process is rarely about money, and my life seems to have been always living on the fine edge of poverty and sustainability. There were so many great thoughts and comments yesterday about what constitutes art. My friend Katie La Salle-Lowery posted on my Facebook: “After all, everyone has access to pencils, paints, etc., too — but we aren’t all able to make art with them.” This kind of brought it into perspective for me as I began to ponder what makes an artist, an artist? Someone else had commented on the use of lenses and tools to tell stories from the artist’s perspective. To me, the process of creation is what makes my life sustainable and bearable to live and, all in all, I am having a blast doing what I do best and personally growing with each new adventure. It’s not like I am out to duplicate what I have already done, but a discovery into something new I have not yet touched upon. I am beginning to see that the new website will become my gift to others of my life well lived. About a man with hope in his soul to discover his identity that happens to make beautiful images in the process. As I begin to look over the vast body of work I have created, I am often startled and surprised and what I have been able to express. Right now it is so massive that it’s become over whelming to contain. Where do you begin and where does it stop. Yesterday we completed one complete section for Chad, hence the images of Chad the last two days, with only 30 images. But we have uploaded nearly 2000 images to the site that actually need to be worked through. Every time Thor goes through the archives, he finds gems of images buried deep. Things that were discarded in a first cut long ago that I haven’t looked at since. I find it delightful to have such a problem to deal with. I know the site does not have to be completely ready to launch and I can just activate the sections that are necessary that are done. There are just a few broken areas that need to be solved, but I am aiming at getting it up and out there within two weeks. After all it will always be a work in progress. I loved the comment Marg from Australia left on the blog yesterday “I think copyright is on its way out. I find it impossible to protect my work anymore – I think I will just stop worrying about it. There is just too much else to worry about LOL! And if someone thinks its THAT good that they want to copy or nick it for their w/site – so be it. Kinda flattering, in a way – LOL!” Flattering indeed!!!!!
Category Archives: Creative Process
Creative Contributors
This week I am working on the logistics of cleaning the website and working on its functionality. I have created a section set up for other contributors. I am hoping this section will showcase other artists in other forms of media including history, cinema, music, literature, and other expressions of art. I am currently looking for others who are interested in writing short blurbs or showcase current projects they are working on. I am hoping to make it a sort of news outlook. It does not have to be current; it can be historic, social, or a personal outlook or observation. If anyone is interested in becoming a part of the project, you can reach me via email. We are looking for different perspectives on the theme or subject of exposure, men naked, or nude male art in general. It can be gay, straight with no real gender limitations. I am hoping to make the site more interactive with other artists and contributors. The site overall tends to be very visual so the more visual the better. Through out the year in the blog I have written postings about movies, books, and other artists who have inspired me and fueled me as an artist. It is my dream that this will continue to grow and that the Naked Man Project can become a place where others can come together and share ideas, thoughts, and concepts of the creative experience. When I began this blog project at the beginning of the year, we seem to have limited options and outlets for this sort of expression. I was a member of all of them. But through the course of the year much of that has been shut down and no longer exists. Though the outlets no longer exist the expression remains the same; we are still creative souls creating our art and expressing our ideas of what we have become. I began this year’s blog process as a means of communication to other artists and it seems to grown way beyond its original intention. There are many followers still, some of you I know have been with me from the beginning and I sense most of you have some sort of creative thoughts you must or might want to express. I am inspired by what Alison has done with her own blog and she is becoming a contributor to this project as well. A while back when I wrote about the movie Maurice she wrote an entire blog about the impact the film had on her. Here is her connection so you can see how I would like this to work. Of course we do have to be careful and mindful of copyright infringement, but most of us own the copyright on the things we create.
Drawn Into the Darkness
In younger days I was drawn into darkness and often found myself lurking in shadows that were unsavory to others and probably not always safe for myself. Being a boy from Montana we do not always perceive dangers that others may be aware of within their surroundings, making us fearless. Being a stranger we may not always be aware of what the rules are and what is normal. Everything in Montana seems safe, unless you have a run away tractor barreling toward you because the diver has passed out at the wheel. I have spent a great deal of time in large cities and have only felt a threat a couple of times in my life. I spent a year in Washington DC working as a bartender for a club in the Dupont Circle area, had a roommate who was a porn actor, we did a lot of drugs and become party animals, some times to the point where I was not even sure how I even got home. In fact waking up one morning, my ankles sore and swollen to discover I had somehow ended up with a pair of pumps at the foot of my bed, I must have traded shoes, the previous night either with a drag queen or a woman with very large feet. I had always heard Washington was a somewhat dangerous town and had known people that were bashed, some of them quite severely, which in those days was quite often. As a bartender with a porno housemate, we become a privileged sort of celebrities who were recognized and often given a certain amount of advantage, in the form of little packets of treats slipped into our pockets. We were creatures of the nights, going to bed as the sun rose, sleeping all day. But I never felt a threat when I was out, even when I got stupid silly messed up. I had a good group of friends and we all kind of watched each other’s backs.
Yet I was always drawn to the darkness. There is beauty at night that becomes extraordinary; that most people do not always see. In photography it becomes very vibrant when it rains or is wet. That’s why you often see wet streets in movies shot at night, yes, even in Los Angels when it doesn’t rain, or not very often, because it makes the details in the lights pop. That beauty seems to become more pronounced in bad neighborhoods with a lot of structurally interesting textures, like alleys and areas of old abandon warehouses at night, like the meat-packing district in NYC. I am always a person who is keenly aware of my surroundings; I think this is another Montana thing that we develop a fascination with everything around us. So at night these areas awaken a feeling that I always love to explore. It becomes about who I am in the space or even possibly channeling past lives, who knows. But in cities these are typically the areas one always tries to avoid, yet these are the areas I like to linger. I tend to think I have a strong masculine presence that most people don’t really want to mess around with. I am very confrontational when I meet others and think I have a focus that sends a clear signal that I can hold my own if you come up against me. My observation skill keep me aware of what is happening around me so I don’t become an open target and can divert things before they can happen. But it is these areas that most excite and attract me.
In looking at my catalog for the website I see this feeling of lurking in darkness present in most of my images. It’s what makes it theatrical and heightens our wonder and curiosity about the subjects. I love the shadows and seeing things emerging from those shadows.
Gorgeous Montana Fall
I feel like I am becoming a bit tapped out and have talked about everything possible. Have been working on this website so much that I actually can’t seem to think or function anymore. It’s a time for a diversion! The site is coming along beautifully, but it has grown beyond what I thought it would become. With some minor set backs shutting the process down most of last week, things are back to normal again and it’s almost finished. I don’t think I have ever worked on anything as hard and long as I have this. The rain seems to have passed and the last couple of days have been totally Montana gorgeous as the leaves are now starting to change and vibrant color fills the air. The warm sun feels great after all that cold rain. I have begun my fencing project on the other side of the house so I am going to get out and work on that today. I really need to work with my body and hands, instead of so much with my brain. I am going to put on my work clothes, play some jazz music and head outside.
Sex vs Sensuality
I have spent a great deal of my life trying to differentiate between sex and sensuality. It feels like it is often a fine line that I have often crossed without really understanding which side of the line I was actually on. Some guys are just naturally oozing with a raw sensuality while others are very mechanical and get stuck in a pattern. One of my favorite lines from the play Chicago when they are in court is describing Amos making love to Roxy as he’s twisting his hands, as if rubbing her boobs but in the motion “…as if adjusting a carburetor. I love you honey, I love you”. I feel like most of my life has been lived on the sensual side. I love romance, soft light, am passionate about kissing, lips gently, but aggressively playing off your partner’s mouth, the tenderness of our lips colliding, wrapping, wet, licking, tasting. I like to look deep into the eyes of the person I am with to watch the expression on their face as you make love to them. I have recently fallen in love with the cover art from old romance novels that are illustrated in the most perfect vision imaginable. There is a passion, the embrace, the woman with her neck back, extended, bare as the man holds her in a firm embrace with a raging intensity in his eyes and a soft supple boldness to his mouth and lips. Those cover images just take you to that place and you can feel the sensuality oozing out for you to pick it up and buy it. Unfortunately, we don’t really see this in gay literature of this sort. So why is it that when men are together it is portrayed so differently? Recently my friend Alison, whom I adore, asked me if I would be interested in creating a cover for her upcoming book, about three men in a relationship. She has a basic outline and I love where she is going with it and I think the cover somehow should hearken back to those days of the old torrid romance novels, hence my research on the subject. Of course it will be about beautiful light. So does beautiful light make an image sensual? Men have sex in small cubical in the back room of a video arcade lit merely with the flicker of porn flashing across the screen. Is this actually just sex or does it cross the boundary of sensual. After all they are generally strangers and the light though artistic not necessarily romantic. In my mind’s eye I live and dwell in that world of the romance novel cover from the 50’s or possible 60’s. It’s my vision of my world and I see how much of this I bring to my work in the studio. I think most of my images are sensual without being sexual. Sometimes I work to the verge of those images crossing into a sexual nature. I have always been leery of seeing a man’s penis exposed in the image, because for most that distinguishes the line moving toward porn and I began this year with a questions “Does showing a man’s penis make an image pornographic” which turns out the be the most read posting I have written all year, so there seems to be a lot of people interested in the subject as there is no right answer because of its subjective nature in the mindset of the viewer? Some cultures are conditioned for it and some against. I know I discard an awful lot of images to get to the ones that really capture the essence of view on the subject. But it’s really what makes this sort of imagery fascinating and pulls us in. Pornography gives us the wanker; we are either wowed by something extraordinary in it, or merely click on searching for something better to ignite our fantasy. I am captivated by the images that make me want to linger and pull me in igniting something deep within myself. To me this is what this sort of art should be and what I am committed to produce with each image I work.
