This morning I open my computer to a white screen. If I open it to the world on my laptop I fear becoming lost and being influenced by its persuasive force. Today I need to focus. These writings are beginning to write themselves in my dreams and I must hear what they have to say. You see I live in Montana and my studio sits on the edge of a vast wilderness. Out my door and down the lane is where the wilderness begins, it is known as the Rattlesnake, and a most magnificent creek meanders though my little valley fed by the mountain wilderness above us. Behind the studio a giant mountain looms and I am in its shadow until mid morning. In the spring and throughout the summer I climb this mountain and look out over the valley and see the city below me and am humbled by my presence is such glory. It is a place I can sit and ponder for hours. You see Missoula is a remarkable place where many rivers and valleys meet to create a hidden city in the mountains. It’s truly a remarkable place. I feel at home here and peace settles around me. We are surrounded by wilderness sometimes scary and dark but mostly filled with life and beauty. Within my studio I connect to the Internet and it too surrounds me by a vast wilderness sometimes scary and dark but mostly filled with life and beauty. Though I connect to the vastness of the world it begins to draw me deeper within myself. I have a tendency to loose my self in such places. Some of this I embrace and some of it terrifies me. With this project, though it is a reflection of myself, I feel I am somewhat losing a part of myself. I struggle to maintain control. I guess I have to give up something of myself to gain a greater perspective to my own identity? This morning I crave the simplicity of being alone with myself. So many people responded to my frustration yesterday with kind words and thoughts and I was deeply moved. I am not always sure where all this doubt, fear and anxiety comes from, for I am lucky to have such a remarkable life in such a remarkable place. I have a tendency to reach beyond myself and push my boundaries and go deeper into the wilderness. With this project I am beginning to fear becoming lost in the wilderness in my head. There is so much to do and look at and connect to and network and tools to look at stats and numbers, that it becomes a distraction and I forget my focus, which is me and my art. Today I must climb that mountain within myself and reclaim it; to work solely on imagery, without outside influence. To get back in touch with my inner self that I feel is slipping away.

I have really been questioning lately what is the true value of a photograph? Now that I am networking on Facebook I see so many extraordinary paintings on various artist pages, I feel a bit intimidated and inadequate that I am not able to create something of such preeminence. As an art collector myself I know the value of many of the pieces I have collected have gained in value since they have been in my possession. But to me they are still masterpieces that hang on my walls that just make me laugh and smile. A couple of the artists long dead seems to have added value since that artist is no longer producing anything new. So what about a photograph? Though it can become art, what is it worth? Recently a Richard Avedon photograph Dovima with elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955 went for $1,151,108 US dollars in Paris. It was the world auction record for that artist. And a Mapplethorpe photograph of a Zantedeschia or arum lily measuring 61 x 50.8 cm, unique in this format, sold for $210,000 by Christie’s NY (title: Calla Lily, 15 Oct. 2004), making this flower portrait one of the most sought-after of the artist’s subjects. It’s all relative and there is value, but both of these artists are now dead. Value is determined by collect ability. To be determined by type and process of printing and number in the addition, wither more can be produced and saturation of the market and if the photographer will produce anything more. The biggest consideration is achievability of the image and how long it will last. Are our modern processes worthy to stand this test of time? Hard telling yet, it’s all in evolution still.

In this modern era of electronic media I have to question the value of worth of such images. The old processes that I began in are dying and no longer used. Now with the Internet the world has become saturated with images, all kinds of images. Is the photographic medium becoming irrelevant? Am I living in a delusional fantasy of a dying art form? What is the relevance of what I create? I know part of it is my own unique vision, allowing others into my world and see it from my perspective? Though there may be great depth in my process and approach, is it of any value to anyone else? It is the history of who I am and how I have lived my life during this time but does that not gain any value until after I am dead.

I have put my images on Red Bubble for 10 months now and have only sold a few postcards. I do not know any artist on Red Bubble who have actually sold anything on there. Though I have certainly bought a few images I am not sure of their value. And I waffle between wither I should add a price or not to the images displayed and keep adding and removing them. Does this hurt and destroy the potential value of my future? But I am to the point where I need to make some money and earn a living. The greatest advantage to Red Bubble is they offer a safe beautiful place where your images can be seen and viewed without risk of being stolen and at least puts your images out for the world to discover. I believe Red Bubble is mostly a site of creation and to network with other creative souls like myself.

Personally I like to have more control of my process, from printing to mounting and framing and putting the signature at the bottom that says this is a part of me that I put forth into the world. To me this is really where the beauty lies is in a finished piece hanging on a wall. But how do you get known if it sits in stack with hundreds of other photos collecting dust in the corner of your studio. I have to figure out somehow to get some kind of return on what I do. I still have bills to pay. I used to have an amazing friend who collected my stuff and it kept my images fresh because it afforded me extra time to create while sustaining me financially. He recently passed away and that connection is now lost. I do work all the time at other jobs and am trying to balance between creation and living. I am afraid the making a living is beginning to win and the creation will be lost soon if I don’t make the connection. I now put everything forth in this project and give myself a year to see if I will survive or not.

Several months back I read an interesting story in The Atlantic Magazine about a woman who had formed a voyeuristic fascination to a woman, an acquaintance she had met at a job and followed on Facebook for several years. Though she had never had any contact with the woman she lived vicariously though her postings and followed her through all her ups and downs and relationships and a forthcoming marriage. Then suddenly it stopped, the woman died and the woman wept and felt a deep loss and mourned the passing of this stranger.

Monday the Man Art website was finally disabled and taken off the Internet. We all knew it was coming and I wrote about it last week in the blog: MEN ON THE VERGE OF A PONOGRAPHIC EXTINCTION. It meant a lot to me because it’s the wellspring from which this project comes. I had posted never before seen images and thoughts and finally connected as an artist, with a group of people who accepted me and my vision unconditionally. Alliances were formed, courage gained, and artist emerged. I spent a great deal of the weekend reviewing those connections, looking at what I had posted over the last 9 months, peoples responses to me and my support of others. The sensitive little boy began to emerge and I become overwhelmed and began to feel my own loss. It was almost like a great part of myself is being taken away. A part of myself that had nurtured, coddled, and beguiled me. I had formed a strong alliance with an Australian man named John Douglas, one of the founders of the sight who had given me a new belief in myself. I wanted to share my last letter to John as I said my long last goodbye:

Dear John
“It brings tears to my eyes and a sorrow to my heart to see this site go. I have spent the past couple of days reexamining my connection to it and putting it in context. My dear you are a master of bringing out the beauty in others. I owe Man Art a debt of gratitude for helping me find myself in such a tumultuous year. But most of all I owe you so much for befriending me and helping me to see and believe in myself. I remember how excited I was to see images of you, how my heart leap to receive response back from you. I guess it’s odd because I feel in love with a stranger I have never met. I feel in love with you though your images of yourself and now see you though the images of your art. You have moved me so deeply and I hope we will soon meet up somewhere so I can collect on that hung you have always promised me. Take care my dear friend and thanks for so much life. “

Magical Looking Glass
# Posted by Terry J Cyr on May 21, 2010 at 12:41am on Man Art
I feel like Alice who has just passed into another dimension though some sort of looking glass. I am suddenly in a world that if filled with visual delight and inspiration. There are so many talented people on this web site and I am getting an amazing amount of positive feedback on the few images submitted yesterday. I have begun reaching out and connecting to many. I spent hours looking at others work and giving feedback to their images that moved me. This is truly a remarkable place to rest and grow. I am excited to have finally found a place to become myself and fill my creative well. Yesterday morning I felt I had hit rock bottom with the way everything around me has been going. This morning is a complete reversal.

Dreams revealed
# Posted by Terry J Cyr on May 25, 2010 at 1:59am on Man Art
Where does this website originate? It is one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen. I am drawn deeper and deeper with each new connection I make. There are so many mirrors of myself hidden within all it’s context. It feels like such a large labyrinth of feeling emotions, desire, fear, paranoia and beauty. Much of it I do not yet understand but seem to grow with each journey within. I feel hypnotically drawn into a new layer I had not seen of myself that has always been lurking below my own consciousness but was too afraid to express. The isolation of the Rocky Mountains is beginning to melt and excitement is building within myself to explore a whole new realm of my own expression through imagery.

The haunting song EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE Lyrics by Cole Porter, sung by Annie Lennox rings thought my head today as I morn the loss of something so powerful it was beyond my ability to express.

I found the link to the original story A DEATH ON FACEBOOK:Intimacy and loss in the age of social media, original story by Kate Bolick

I was a very sensitive and sentimental kid. Constantly overwhelmed by my emotions, to the point were I was paralyzed by them. I didn’t interact with other kids well and preferred solitude and really learned to be on my own at a very early age. We lived in very small town called Superior in the mountains of western Montana for the first 7 years of my life and then moved to the family ranch out near Alberton. As a young kid I was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. It held such power over me and moved me at such a deep level. It would stir my emotions and overwhelm me at its mere mention. I most identified with the Scarecrow, because he wasn’t very smart and yet seemed to have the most compassion and understanding. My father always told me I was stupid because I was constantly getting into trouble. And yes I did things I shouldn’t, like trying to light a real fire under the easy bake oven to get the cookies to cook faster. Somehow the label stuck and I was always considered the dumb one from my family that god didn’t give the good sense of a goose to. I know looking back now that my father was just trying to protect me and I am thankful for that, but labels like these stick in a kid’s mind and it becomes a huge hurdle they spend the rest of their lives trying to overcome. I found solace with my friends from Oz merrily skipping down that Yellow Brick Road each year when it was broadcast on television. Oh how much I loved that world and identified with Dorothy not being understood and dreaming of something beyond herself “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I was entranced. She sang from the heart of it was my life she sang about. We had a wooded hill behind the house and I would round up what kids I could gather and play that we were on the Yellow Brick road wondering though the forest. Now you see why I didn’t have many friends. But the heartbreak was always the ending when Dorothy had to say goodbye to the misfits and go back home. To click those ruby slippers and find within herself home the place she most longed to belong. I would burst into sobs and cry for hours and my mother threatened every year to not let me watch it if I was going to cry. How is it that a 4 or 5 year old who knows little of the world can be so sentimentally carried away that he becomes overwhelmed by his feelings that the near mention of the story creates emotion? I was so emotionally attached that my eyes would well with tears just to see the commercial.

So I am in the 2nd grade, in Superior grade school, and Tanya Warnkin brings the movie sound track from The Wizard of Oz to school for show-and-tell. It’s the end of the day and the teacher puts it on for the class. It stirs that emotional response it usually does; I become overwhelmed by my emotions and burst into fits of sobbing. The teacher, I am sure in a panic is not sure what to do, and turns it off. The sobbing continues. In fact it worsens because now the rest of the class is watching me. The more I try to get it under control, the more overwhelmed I become, and the deeper my sobs become. The teacher lets all the rest of kids from the class out early to lessen my humiliation. She calls my mom and explains and asks if she can come pick me up. My mother explains that she does not drive and it’s a normal reaction for me and to just to send be home. I am still sobbing and still cannot get it under control. The teacher still not sure how to deal with it, decided she is going to take some newspaper, cut holes in it so I can see, and I should be able to make it home masking my emotional breakdown. So here I go, crossing the main street in Superior, with a sheet of paper in front of my face, finding directions through the eye holes, sobbing all the way home. After all there is “No Place Like Home”.

Now I reveal one of the greatest horrors of my life and you can see why I spent so much time in isolation. Shortly thereafter we moved to the ranch where we had no television and I found solitude in my isolation and began to create. I did not see The Wizard of Oz for many years thereafter. And when I did it still moved me but not as deeply because I realized the powers that beguiled me as a kid were more of a fantasy. I still look for friendship in the oddest of mankind and am still sentimental at heart. I think as an artist it is at the core of my creation and connection to others. I have grown beyond being stupid and now reflect back with adoration to tell my friends of my crazy adventures into my own world of Oz. Billy today’s story is for you and all those nights we would lie awake on tour and laugh ourselves silly remembering all this sentimental sap. You always told me I should put these stories in writing; well here they go.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday in the USA. Where the two mighty North American conferences face off for the battle of the best. Today it’s the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Green Bay Packers. But more importantly it is a long-standing tradition among many Americans to get together once a year and have a party with great friends. Many think Super Bowl Sunday should become a national holiday with the following day off for recovery. This afternoon the studio will be transformed to host to one of those long standing traditions as some of my best friends gather for exceptional food, drinks, games, and of course watching football.

I will have to admit I am not a huge football fan and don’t really follow the season nor know what this clash is always about. But this is the only professional football game I watch of the season. I do enjoy football on a collage level and am an avid supporter of the Montana Grizzlies.

So many of you may be saying to yourselves how does a gay artist who has a passion for Caravaggio merge this connection to his homoerotic art. Football represents, at least for me, man in his barest, rawest form. The clash of bodies, will, and force to overcome obstacles and endeavor to persevere. In small mountain communities, where football is a dominant activity, football superstars become iconic heroes. They are often idolized for their masculine prowess; much like the Greeks recognized Achilles and Hector of The Trojan War from Homer’s Iliad. They become symbols of purity, strength, power, agility, dominance and endurance. Where the beauty of this lies is in our cultural psyche that we want to emulate them. It becomes synonymous with a sort of immortality that we will be tenacious to overcome all hindrance of mind, body and soul. To me this is where the shear eroticism springs and becomes the object of my desire. Figure and form collide to become perfection and raise the mediocrity of my menial life to become a symbol of hope and glory. It is sensuality at the peak of perfection. The silhouette of a football players shape empowers me with the strength of his broad shoulders, tapered waist, and bulging muscles. I realize most of this is padding for protection, but also creates a fierce presence in the face of opposition. It is probably one of the sexiest forms of men’s attire. Tight, sculpted, reveling the mass of quivering muscle contained within it. I do photograph sports, but it comes from another perspective, I see it more as an sculptural art of shape, form, and texture; the beauty of mass and form colliding, figures suspended in air as if in a dream or an ode to the heroes of classical mythology of days gone by.

Today is a tribute to Jimmy Farris. I took this image when he was a wide receiver during his final year at the University of Montana. A couple years later he went on the win a Super Bowl ring with the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVI proving that some of us do step out of our humble surrounding of the mountains of Montana to achieve greatness. Always dream the dream, who knows where you might end up.