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…and My Response

Here’s the response I sent to my disappointed supporter:

…thank you for your comments. Your opinions were not so much harsh as unhelpful. These images, I’m afraid to say, do indeed say a lot about me–perhaps a side that you haven’t seen yet, and a side that I am only beginning to explore. So it helps me more at this juncture to hear about what is being seen, and why the images don’t work. Pejorative terms like “derivative” and “sophomoric” are lost on me, because, first off, I’m not really interested in originality, but in being true to my experience–and “sophomoric” discards the conceptual basis of the project and the seriousness with which I’ve pursued its realization. Jack and Mack have always been photographed in poses that are very specific to and easily recognizable as pornography–it is within the context of pornographic photography that I wish to reposition them. But in doing so, I’m not asking the viewer to see them in a different way, I am merely presenting MY experience of them, which has been limited to porn videos and photos, in a new context–the context of nude male photography, which traditionally has been a way of presenting the naked male form in the guise of art. The poses are taken from paintings that have inspired and been copied by many artists over the centuries to tell different stories. I’ve isolated the form from the story to draw specific attention to the male body. I’ve kept the pose to imply that there is a narrative, one engaged with the history of the male body in art, but I leave it up to the viewer to create it. It’s the form that I’m after.

Lighten up a little.

Actually, I just wanted to be alone with Jack Radcliffe and Mack, naked–the rest is hooey. One of the things that interests me is that Jack and Mack are already in the public eye as objects of a kind of adoration. Catholic churches are filled with pieces of bodies and paintings of divine beings that are venerated in place of the live body. I have these pictures to gaze upon and project my desires onto.

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Criticism

A note from one of my collectors about my new Jack and Mack pictures:

I believe your piece on Mack is derivative and sophomoric. You have indeed captured the colors, light and poses of the classic painters and that may be what I find boring about them. They say nothing about you (other than of your ability to translate) and do not allow me to recognize something new about perception, emotion or beauty.

However, I was intrigued with the thumbnail images. I read across them and thought that the larger image would be of the piece I saw in the thumbnail: hands, bellies, neck uplifted, et al.

Alas, I was disappointed.

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A Vision of the Virgin, and of Greek Pastries

Today I saw the Virgin Mary, on Highway 19 in Clearwater, a miraculous vision of the Virgin Mary, her rainbow-hued silhouette reflecting eerily off the glass windows of the international-style bank. Usually one has to squint or stretch the boundaries of representation to see those Madonnas on the walls, or those Jesuses in the tortillas, but this Mary was as clear as the olive in my martini glass, and luminous and beautiful.

And then we had lunch and pastries in Tarpon Springs, a former Greek sponge-diving community turned tourist enclave following the introduction of the synthetic sponge. Parts of town are still charming, and every Epiphany the bishop tosses a crucifix into the chilly Gulf and the prepubescent boys of the town dive in after it. The boy who retrieves it gets a special blessing from the bishop.

I had a completely scrumptious almond cookie, the size of a salad plate, that was like an almond orgy, a slightly crunchy outside covered with toasted almonds that, when bitten into, revealed a chewy inside that spilled pleasure into every corner of my mouth.

First a hop into Carol and Bruce’s pool, and then we’re off to the beach, to spend the weekend in Sue’s husband David’s sister’s condo on Indian Rocks beach. Ta-ta!

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Dream

I was at Chris’ mom’s house, downstairs, peeing into a stainless steel toilet shaped like one of those concrete bunker-type toilets that you find at Sonoma County beaches. I thought, “God, what a mess for Pat (Chris’ mom) to have to clean up,” and turned to see Stephanie, Chris’ Dad, standing there. I remarked to her about how firm and perky her breasts were. She giggled, and suddenly I was in a forest. Sophia Loren sat on a log nearby in a man’s white shirt, buttoned loosely and revealing her décolletage. I was busy sawing off the limbs of a tree that had earlier been cut down. I paused to notice that my hands were covered in saw dust, clinging to the sap on my palms, and then rubbed them together nervously, looking at Sophia, who giggled and blushed with me…

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Florida

Hot, sweaty, moving from air-conditioned space to air-conditioned space… I am in Florida, enjoying a visit with my sisters, Carol and Sue, and their mates and daughters. Last night we all hung out in the driveway, in my niece Megan’s car, listening to the Dixie Chicks and No Doubt on her new CD player, and then spent the rest of the evening looking at Carol’s prints and ceramics. At 49 she decided to finish her art degree, having spent the last 28 years raising a family and designing dresses.

Today Carol and I went to the Dali museum. The Persistence of Memory was visiting from MoMA.

It was nice to see it again, one of Dali’s really satisfying works. The museum presented sanitized interpretations of these paintings that are so filled with sexual anxiety that even I get nervous around them. His later paintings, called Masterworks, are beautifully painted and visually thrilling, but are weighed down by grand themes that are less interesting to me than his sexual anxiety and Gala’s vulva.

Last night’s dinner:
– Salad of romaine lettuce and hearts of palm
– Zipper peas
– Fried okra
– Steamed squash with vidalia onions and butter
– Alabama white corn bread with local tangerine marmalade
– Sweet potato pie

Mmmmmm….

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Chemical Reactions

When the electro-magnetic of the he-male
Meets the electro-magnetic of the fe-male,
If right away she should say, ‘This is THE male,’
It’s a chemical reaction, that’s all.

Only chemicals perhaps, but that big hairy butt fills all of my thoughts and all of my art.

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Distractions

Last week Jane Delynn stayed over for a few days. She was in town reading from her new Semiotexte book, Leash, which promises to be a fun read. Degradation and submission, oh my! She has a motherly butch look, and the cutest little girly giggle. And then Robert Flynt flitted into town to speak at Camerawork and crash my guest pad. He’s in a show called “Everyman: A Search for the Male Form,” in which I am noticeably not. The same tired old hairless muscular young body is the subject of the mostly insipid and utterly drab work in the show. And then there’s the intelligent and beautiful work of master collagist John O’Reilly and Robert’s surreal and ethereal little gems to steal, if not save, the show. Robert and I traded two images each, and I am a happy little camper. Mysteriously, Camerawork called me today to ask for slides for consideration of including my work in an upcoming show on intimacy and erotics–right up my furry alley. Thank you Robert! Okay, so I get off the phone with Camerawork, and there’s a message on my voice mail from RJ, the curator of the AC at the PotLoH. Okay, so I call back and leave a nervous as all get out message–I think I forgot to say my name, but I’ll call back tomorrow and find out what the deal is. And yes, I would trade my soul to be in that collection.

I photographed the assmaster’s masterful ass a few days ago for my Thundercrack! grid, but need to arrange yet another photo session. It seems that I need to make a white “Y” out of his thighs and lower leg to get this thing to work. Hmmmmm…

Movies this week included Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Cockettes, both fab films. Y Tu.. was one of those movies that you wait years for. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, except drop what you’re doing and see it right now. The Cockettes, was equally enjoyable (plus my friend, David Weissman made it), and it left me yearning for fabulousness. After seeing it you’ll want to drop acid, put some glitter in your beard and spin like a dervish in your grandmother’s blue chiffon.

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The Big Night, 1951

I’ve been thinking about this Joseph Losey film, The Big Night, from 1951, starring John Barrymore, Jr. (Drew’s dad). It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I’m thinking of just one scene (well, and one thing the dad tells his son, “Sometimes a man loves one woman in the whole world. If she turns out to be the wrong one, well…that’s just tough”). Okay, so the big night in question is the 17th birthday of Barrymore, Jr. He sees his father brutally and very publicly beaten, and spends the rest of the film seeking his father’s attacker, intent on revenge. His passage through the night and what it reveals becomes an allegorical passage into adulthood. The scene that I’ve been thinking of is the scene where the dad gets beaten up. He is forced to take off his shirt–he’s a big powerful man, and hairy–and he acquiesces to the beating with no resistance. His vulnerability and shame are intensified by his nakedness. Typically, body hair, and particularly chest hair had been used in films of that time to connote a kind of monsterish masculinity, yet in this film, it is used to enhance nakedness and vulnerability. It was one of the turning points in my development as an artist, to see how metaphorically charged the hairy male body can be.

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New Grid

I’ve been frantically arranging images of BC’s Big Bottom, arranging them in an array that recalls bolts of lightning streaking across the night sky. Thundercrack!, after the Curt McDowell film, exclamation point after the title… Oooooo-Oak!klahoma!

Stay tuned…