What a whirlwind of a morning and here it is afternoon and I still haven’t written my post for today. Last night when I got home I received an e-mail that my proposal to Kick Starter was accepted and I am good to proceed with the submission. I have spent most of morning pulling it together; figuring out what exactly I need, creating a budget, and analyzing how to best present this project. It’s really opening my eyes to the entire process as a whole. Sometimes when we are caught in the middle of the process we can’t always see it from an outside perspective. It seems I remain in my own studio world and don’t venture out too often, so my focus has really become channeled into those things that are right in front of me. In a sense this project has been a greater part in my mind and memory. Now it’s time to begin thinking about how to externalize what this project can look like as a possible show in a space and how interactive it becomes with an audience. Although the images may speak for themselves, the process of creating a proposal has to present an overview to give others an insight into my vision. People come to THE NAKED MAN PROJECT in so many different ways and their responses are varied by how they identify and are touched by what I am trying to accomplish. It seems to resonate to so many on a lot of different levels so it’s hard to become specific. I have always brought to it my own truth, knowledge, and experience. I let it reflect me as I am at this stage in my life; raw, unfiltered, and passionate about my own creative process. I know it would eventually come around to examining what I create, but I thought perhaps that would become retrospective once the project was done at the end of this year of commitment. Being forced to look at it from an outside perspective I am now in awe of its creation.

Many years ago I saw a show on Broadway about a young small town boy from Australia who has an enthusiastic dream to become a performer. He is taken under the wing of Judy Garland and married her daughter Liza Minnelli, eventually becoming a huge success of his own. The show was called THE BOY FROM OZ and had a brilliant cast including Hugh Jackman as Peter Allen. The music from this show sort of became an anthem for me because it was about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. This morning I am listening to it as the excitement is exploding through my mind and body. I was up half the night working on this idea of getting to Paris and Milan. Oddly enough after I posted yesterday my renewed passport arrived in the mail. It’s amazing how once things begin to roll the creative universe just seems to make it happen. Most of the trip is paid for; I am using up my sky miles to get me to Paris. Once I get to Milan one of the patrons I am going to meet has agreed to host me. I am planning two weeks for the entire trip and the only connection I have not been able to make arrangements for is several days in Paris to meet some of my most influential art collectors of my style of imagery. The key now is to create an outstanding portfolio I can take that will exemplify the caliber of work I am capable of creating. When you are meeting others there is a wow factor of seeing a physical portfolio that you can place in their hands to give you more credibility than anything you can show online. I have a fine linen 11×14 box that is used to house a limited edition collector’s series of images. It is my goal to now fill this box with about 20 of the best images I have to offer. The images will be hand printed on a gallery quality fiber based paper, then mounted on a acid free white rag board, each image protected with sheet of tissue designed specifically for such cases. My enthusiasm grew last night more towards the creation of this portfolio than the actual trip. I used to print things of this caliber for gallery showings, but have not done it in years because of the expense and time it consumes to create such a show. Now is the time to pull it all together and make it happen. After yesterday’s post there was so much outpouring of enthusiasm from all over to make this project happen. I feel in my heart this is where it is all leading and if there are strangers encouraging me then there has to be something powerful at work in what I am creating.

I was up until three this morning working on my submission to Kick Starter to raise the remaining funds I need to make this dream possible. I still need to cover the expense of creating this portfolio and there are still some incidental cost and gaps in the trip that I need to figure out. So I am submitting a proposal this morning to make you all a part of the creation of this process. Hopefully now Kick Starter will accept it and you all can become a part of my success.

There is a beautiful haunting ballad sung by Isabel Keating in the musical THE BOY FROM OZ called “All I wanted was the dream”
“All I wanted was the dream
Just like anybody else
I didn’t want it pushed aside
Forgotten on a shelf”

I have made the commitment to get to Europe and meet some of the potential supporters of my images and art and am now frantically trying to pull it all together so I can make it happen. I have been a bit hesitant because I was not quite sure I could afford such a venture, given how hard the economic times have become and the decline of the American dollar. Perhaps I need to reserve my resources for other, more essential things, like living. But I also feel this opportunity is only going to present itself once and I must make this connection happen while I have the momentum on a roll. So I have been waffling the last couple of months as to whether or not I should actually go. My mind tells me to be reasonable, but my heart tells me to make the leap. The Europeans seem to have taken a keen interest in this project and what I have to say about growing up creative and gay in the wilds of Montana where everything is stacked against me. I think it’s potentially where I will be able to market my vision and style of work. I need to begin to think about getting my images out into the main stream somehow, beyond the bounds of Montana and the Internet. I have been in contact with several sources who could help me get these images into European galleries and shows. I have potentially talked of publishing a book. But, first of all, I have to figure out how to get there. I spent this morning looking into a fund raising effort on a site called Kick Starter that helps people make these goals a reality. My morning has been filled with working up a proposal to that end. The more I think about it, the more I know I must make this project happen.

Yesterday, my young film maker friend come by for a visit. He is also a photographer and wanted me to help him look at some of his images objectively to begin to pull them together in some sort of show. He is a young man in his 20’s who lacks confidence, lives in a very introspective world filled with such emotion and feeling that he doesn’t quite yet know how to express. I look into his eyes and see myself in the mirror of his reflection some 30 years back. He has recently been taking photographs of an ex-girlfriend, who he was photographing, doing just ordinary things. There is a haunting quality to the images because they are filled with so much emotion and he could not separate the emotional involvement with the images to determine if they were actually worthy of showing. Hence the visit. I pulled several books from my bookshelves on the photographer Nan Goldin, a woman in the 60’s who photographed her own anxieties of an abusive relationship, creating a book called “THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDANCE.” His images had an uncanny representation of Goldin’ s style of candidly shooting those around her in moments of desperation. To me this is what makes the art of photography truly interesting. Instead of fearing what he might be exposing, he should embrace it and dig deeper into recognizing his deep felt connection to the subject. His relationship eventually ended and now he looks back at those images that become a haunting refrain and explains to me that he sees her sadness and where the relationship was headed in her eyes, which is quite obvious now, that he could not recognize at the time. I was captivated by the sadness he felt for the loss of this relationship, and thought here is a man who going to go someplace because he is able to record, recognize, and capture the loss in his imagery. But instead of this becoming a point to move forward it was becoming a barrier that he could not overcome, and it threatens to destroy his creativity. My advice; embrace it, use it, allow the experience to move you into a newer state of existence. So many times we look at the sadness of our lives as a negative that we most stow away in a place that no one can touch. To me the stronger the emotions we feel the stronger the connection to finding out who we really are. It typically becomes the pivotal moment in our lives that leads up to an epiphany that will hurtle us into a stronger direction. I think good artists recognize and embrace this. It is the raw power of those emotions that allow us to truly connect to our art.

Perhaps this is part of the trappings of youth. I too look back at that stage in my own life and see all the barriers that I allowed to block my creativity. Coming from Montana seems to contain its own set of roadblocks. Because we are a poor culture that does not put much stock or appreciation toward the arts, it is typically a community outside of the norm; a perceived class of its own that exists alone. Perhaps we create our own isolation because we recognize those feelings that so much of the western mainstream so deeply wants to deny. I see the balance of my own life become a balance of riding both edges and my own insecurities taking a deeper hold that I cannot overcome. I see this in my young friend and I encourage him that this is his time. Do not waste it. Use it as a precious given to him in this moment. Don’t wait until you are an old man to look back and examine what has been lost.

My intention is not to make people pretty in my images, but instead to expose the complexity of our existence. Yesterday, I worked on two sets of images of two different people. One just a portrait; candid images of a young filmmaker artist who visited my studio one day, and the other, nudes of a man I have been having a conversation with on line for several years now. When I finished the images I sent digital proofs to both of the subjects, which I rarely do. Since the ones were candid, it didn’t seem to matter, but the other was from out of town and has been bugging me to see the images since they were taken a couple of weeks ago. Both responses to the images were fairly negative. And I am reminded why I do not share these images on line as such a cold exposure. The process of creating images truly is a collaboration of the artist and the subject. This final presentation of the vision should be no less so. Images are not just created to be tossed out there; instead it becomes a process of self–revelation. Often times there is a shock quality to see ourselves photographed in ways we don’t necessarily envision. We often cannot look beyond the negative qualities of all the things we are dissatisfied about. I also struggle with seeing images of myself, so identify with that feeling well. When subjects are able to come back into the studio and look at the images with the artist they see them through each other’s eyes. This leads to a greater understanding of the perceptions and intentions behind the creation of those images. Some subjects do not hit it on the first round and have to settle into the uneasiness of the stripping away of their emotional apprehension to get to a place of comfort and security. Working as collaboration is an easier way to approach the viewing of these self-images. It then becomes a process of elimination together to get to the core of the experience. In the end, I am looking for a few images that honestly represent what we both shared, but we must separate the others to get to that core. Anyone can create a pretty image of someone else, and it is not my intention to be like everyone else. Each of my images is a journey into myself and my subject, for the subject is always closer to me and how I examine myself then they often realize. These are reflections of the self: revealed.