Sorry no blog yesterday, every time I sat down to do it I would get distracted by something else. It was one of those extraordinary fall days outside that was sunny and unusually warm for this time of the year. I had my nephew Brenden come over and help me clean the property and prep it for the winter. I somehow thought I would be able to put him to work and I would get to write and work on my computer. But he is not very experienced and I began to realize the work of pruning and cleaning the beds was only specific to me. It was so beautiful out that I just decided to stay and get everything caught up. Then we had Glenn’s mother for dinner in the afternoon, because I had a wedding consult at 5:00, to shoot a wedding next month, and had to attend the dress rehearsal for a University production at 7:00, for a shoot on Wednesday night. When I got home it seems a bit late to blog so I settled in with Glenn. This seems to be the extent of all of my days.
The production I saw the rehearsal for was called Grace And The Art Of Climbing and seemed to focus on a woman dealing with intimacy issues. It really got me thinking about my own life and I began to question if perhaps I too have intimacy issues of my own. I began to think about relationships in my past and how perhaps I have pushed so many people away. When I began to ask Glenn about his perceptions of me and how I function within our relationship? He genuinely said he was happy and realized I had lots to accomplish. Most of the time I feel so focused that I know I am not really present to him and our relationship, and often times it feels like I notice him in the distance watching me. From my past experiences it seems the points of my life where I have been highly creative are the points where the relationship begins to falter. I cannot equally focus my attention in both directions at the same time. That’s why in the fall when Glenn goes off for two months to work somewhere else I try to focus on huge creative projects and seem to get the most productive work accomplished. I think artists in general are people who suffer from relationships more then anyone else because we have to disconnect and rechannel our passion toward what we create. Life in art is not easy and I think this is why many artists are single and probably drink and or use drugs. When we are creative our intimacy is our art. I am lucky, Glenn recognizes this and allows me that creative flexibility with little demand in return, in fact supports, it by taking care of the everyday things that distract me from the creative process.
I am reminded of an incident when I first met Glenn and I was asked to work as an associate director for a large film festival we used to have here in Missoula. I was responsible for logistically pulling the entire festival together. I worked with a woman named Cinda Holt who had help Robert Redford organize the Sundance festival in it’s early stages and we created a similar festival here in Missoula for and with artisans behind the camera: art directors, cinematographer, writers, directors. We screened films for a week and brought in all the filmmakers including Kenneth Turan from the LA Times to facilitate the event. For this project I had to book the films, that spaces, contact all the people and logistically get them to and from Montana, arrange accommodations and coordinate the mass army of volunteers to make the project happen. For several weeks it was all consuming for 24/7 to pull the project off. The project was a huge success, but it about destroyed my relationship with Glenn at the time. He was so angry that he refused to attend any of the events I had just spent every ounce of my being orchestrating. This hurt me so deeply that my own partner would not stand beside me at a moment of my greatest achievement. I now recognize it was a defining moment in the relationship where I disconnected, perhaps we both disconnected. Our relationship has since grown. Now Glenn is my creative partner in all my wacky self-absorbed endeavors. My projects and creative life has since grown and some how we have all adapted. My days do not get any easier and my need or sense of accomplishment never seems to cease. I don’t promise it will get any easier, because I know that would be a lie all I can recommend it that you “fasten your seat belts because you are in for a bumpy ride” as Bette Davis says in All About Eve.
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!!!!!
Wow it is mid afternoon and I feel like I have been sucked into the world of cyber reality as I am trying to figure out how to put together yet another piece of this mysterious website. My topic of search today has been: “How can I actually protect the images I put on the Internet?” I have completely come up blank. There are no real solutions actually available out there that can or will work. It seem that it mostly comes down to choice of completely marking the images up with some sort of watermark that will completely cover or obstruct the nature of the work or just putting the images out there for free access. I am not over comfortable with either. The nature of artist is free expression of the art or images without obstruction. I would like to be able to market myself somehow, but if most everything is just for free on the Internet then we end up working for nothing and it completely loses it value. What a strange time we live in where modern media is so limitless and expendable. I feel like I am living in a world of constant frustration that I can’t seem to make work and that the only options are a loss on either end. I wish somehow I just had a limitless wealth so that I could just be creative and not have to worry about the possibilities. Am I just two or three steps behind the technological world where I live? It feels most of life has been lived in a world of dying art forms. I was passionate about theater, but in a sense as I entered that world it too was coming to a close. Overall, the next generation is not really interested in such art forms and it seem that fewer and fewer young people are going to such events. Broadway still seems alive and thriving, but the ticket prices have become so hefty that many can no longer attend a show or will save up for one or two during the course of a venture into NYC. There was a time when I would fill every possible slot with a show when I was in the city, often two a day seeing 16 shows within a two-week visit.
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. 
It’s so beautiful out already this morning; the leaves on my giant willow trees in the back yard are beginning to yellow and slowly falling creating a carpet of yellow along the ditch banks. I see the skies begin to clear with some patches of blue. If the sun comes out it’s going to create a brilliant glow that will radiate through out the house. This would be a perfect morning for some beautiful photographs, but I have no one lined up. Thor and I a have been putting so much time into the website that I we have neglected shooting anything new in the past couple of weeks. I am writing early today, even before coffee, because I want to get out and work on the yard today. I have the new deer fence about half way done on the other side of the house, so today’s goal is to get out and finish the fence and start thinking about how to design a gate. For those of you who know me, you know I don’t do anything simple and every element of my life is personally designed.
