Wow a morning and afternoon completely free with nothing scheduled!!! It feels like months since I have had a window like this open. The only thing I have to get done today is my posting for the day on here. The ground outside is now frozen and winter in Montana becomes very slow for business that allows me time to focus on my creative endeavors. This is the time of year I get to shut myself into the studio and just focus. Shooting and the website will become the heart of what I do all winter. I love to make soups in the winter and fill the space with savory smells and invite others into the space to work on new concepts and ideas. I haven’t even had a chance to think about where I want to go next. I know the website will become a major focus as we begin to hone and refine it. I have begun to order some new books on male nude art, with a focus on painting. I have now proven myself as a photographer and now need to focus on images that get more to the heart of who I am. Topics I am most interested in are Greek and Roman mythology and I see how powerful its influence has been on so many other artists. What is it about these images that are so deeply connect to us? Is it the classic beauty or the actual myth that tugs at our heart that we want to identify with? I am particularly drawn to the theme of Orpheus, the idealism of intoxicating music that lulls us and being so captivated by another that he is willing to risk going to hell in order to retrieve it. It has been in my head for years and how we tell this story is not entirely clear yet, but is worthy of exploration. I am quite surprised that this is a story that has not been reworked for cinema. The theme is universal and captivating. It seems we all live in an era of loss, a time where we all search for desire and to be connected to something we want to love. We forget how beautiful and poetic life becomes as we begin to build barriers to encase and surround ourselves. I know I have. It seems life becomes more of a struggle just to maintain a normal existence. The theme of loss of a part of oneself and what we need to do the recover it fascinates me and basically has become the primary focus of this year. As an aging man, I want and need to revisit what was once vital to my youth. But is seems the darkness of life surrounds and often shrouds us locking us into a protective barrier that we often cannot overcome and so we become stuck in a place we may not necessarily be comfortable or even happy. Though I have lived a creative life most of my adult life has remained hidden behind this curtain. Now that I have reached this place of comfort and security within my own self I begin to ponder, why did it take me so long to get here? What was I really so afraid of for so long that held me back? My life has certainly not been easy, but then I know neither has anyone else. I am beginning to think our plight is to struggle with finding meaningful existence, yet I remember a time when I was so idealistic and my dreams wider then the ocean. Now I have crossed those oceans and the idealistic dreams are back. But it feels there is a huge hole or gap in the middle of my life filled with loss fueled by uncertainly and loss. I think this erodes at the core of our self-expression and breeds doubt. I think it is the mythology of hero that surpass the insurmountable odds that become so iconic and perhaps this is what mysteriously draws us to emulate them. It’s defiantly worth of the exploration.
Category Archives: Technical
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.
A Shift of Consciousness
I have to say I was a bit lost most of yesterday. The website went up at about 11:30. Glenn left at 1 pm for a week of UPS training to become a utility driver for peak season to spend the week in Billings. I went for a long walk along the river to clear my head. Though the sun was out it was not warm enough the melt the snow dabbled on the pine trees. The leaves have not completely fallen yet and now there is snow. It feels like I have been asleep for a very long time and have not really felt the changing of the season this year. My fall has been inside, focused on a massive project and suddenly my senses are awake and alive again. I did some light shopping and found some lamb chops at the store. I love grilled lamb, but never have it because Glenn dislikes it so much. I went home and settled into a lazy afternoon of lounging about wanting to somehow celebrate, but mostly trying to figure out and put into perspective what I have accomplished. I dabbled on cleaning the website here and there, not wanting to delve to deeply but to savor the unfounded glory. It was time to see what has happened in the world in the past two months of my absence. I began to look at fellow artist and what they have been producing. It seems Facebook has now become a means of tagging and posting and less a means of communication. And I began to ponder have we all run out of things to say to each other? Perhaps we are all just becoming more focused. I tried to watch a movie on Netflix, but it no longer seems to work. Here one of my greatest passions has somehow imploded itself. I had shut down getting the discs by mail when they raised the prices and I was so involved in the project, that I wasn’t watching them anyway and only kept the streaming, but had forgotten that it simply doesn’t stream on Sundays. How could something so brilliant completely destroy the foundation of its livelihood. I was very resentful at their decision to split the service, but I guess I vote with my dollar and I have said “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore”. The theater world seems the same, Phantom is still running after 22 years with no end in sight, the new musical Pricilla seems to have grown stronger from its initial lukewarm start, and Hugh Jackman is returning in a one man show. Now there is a talented man who can do it all, he was ever so brilliant in The Boy from Oz as he flashed that big warm smile at me in the 4th row many seasons back. Avenue Q has down sized and moved to a smaller venue that seems to have revived its longevity.
I spent the afternoon drifting in a universe of my own creation, so near, yet so far from my current existence, drifting in and out of consciousness. It was almost like I could see myself separating from itself. Am I am even slightly aware of my own life? Somehow it doesn’t feel like it. As I began to realize I was caught in that post partum creation lull that I used to feel at the end of the tour or the jet lag you feel from flying across the ocean west. I finally understand the meaning of lost in translation. Oh yes and today it’s that odd shift toward or away from daylight savings time, which I can never figure out, where we are just naturally out of sync with the day. It feels like my life has come to a stand-still and yet I look back at this year and am astonished by my own accomplishments. All I can think is it’s time to somehow renew the creative process again. I am now ready to get back into the studio and shoot something new.
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.
