while researching anthony Van Dyke i found his sketches and paintings entitled "The Taking of Christ". it depicts the moment judas kisses jesus in the garden to specify him to the soldiers. that has taken on its own life in my painting of jesus and judas. think: fairy tale pallete, but it looks very "Gone with the Wind" and its gay men. i'll try to take pictures tomorrow.

my painting class has been a bit of a struggle this semester. i have been all over the map with materialsn techniques and content. as we wind down this first semester and as i try to pull my thoughts together for next week's critiques i would like to make some posts to organize my thoughts.

From my traditional media class i discovered Walnut ink. that has made its way into painting with the addition of acrylics and some watercolor pencils.

From my new media class i have begun to play with Judas.

i am adding a link to National Geographic's sit on the Gospel of Judas. super interesting (really nice site)

with the semester wrapping up i haven't had a ton of time to make posts. especially since the original concept for the images and for this blog has been seen through to a conclusion. I say A conclusion because this has started a dancein my head of subjects and images that have spread out into other classes. If this blog is continue it will have to be more of a catch all for the content that is informing my work. the work that was attached to this blog has shown me how energized an clear i get when dealing with my sexuality. for the most part i anticipate that a great deal of the work that i do will have a tone or theme or feel that these initial images have. this blog has helped me to keep things clear so i would like to see this continue.

Today I presented to the class. I had a blast. a couple of times i made jokes or rather what i thought were jokes but no one laughed. which sort of produced this nervous giddy feeling in me and energized me even more. i managed to get laughes a couple of times so i gotta believe they had fun. laughing aside i hope i got across the seriousness i wanted to carry off as well. There is a stereotype of gay men as the source of humor. I wanted it to be fun but i didn't want to be comic relief, or ease up on the "uncomfortable" if there was any "uncomfortable". maybe it is just me but showing pictures of naked men to a room of people on a projector has the potential for "uncomforable". Postcards of Michael were a good idea.

Jack brought up a really interesting spin on it all. through out history its always been the church employing artists to depict what it wants and i was turning it around to use the church to depict what i want. That had me all jazzed. thats a cool way of looking at it.

interesting....

i guess now is the hour of truth. does this continue to exist?

I had to do a saint sebastion. i was told once that he was one of the first male nudes to be painted classically. i no longer believe that but his attachment to the erotisized male body is firmly locked in my brain. he is ussually depicted a beautiful, bound, youth peirced with arrows as such i am not the only gay man that has become attached to him. he is considered the patron saint of plague victims which some websites translate into being the patron saint of aids patients.

thinking in terms of through lines i have been trying to shape some big questions to go with this blog.

"where does shame come from?" is unfortunately a big question on my mind lately.

when does erotica become pornography? is sexuality offensive?

i did a bunch of images of of men with erections with halos and the same glow that the other saintly men have. I titled these "He has Risen" I like the idea of showing christ at the height (pardon the pun) of his humanity. How can we attach "Passion" to this character and expect that he was flacid his entire life. i have not posted them because that is one of the ratings guiedlines for films, erect male nudity warrents an X rating. i wasn't sure how this would go over on blogger so i'm going to wait till after i present to the class to post these. ...but i'm pretty sure that my having to hesitate is wrong.

why?

in full innocence...

are angels cheesey? but they are so much fun! i get such a rush from making them! this is michael. he is the protector of the underdog and the loner. Or so the the web site i just linked to explained. I'm not suer how i creeped out i am by the site...i'm real happy with michael tho

as i come down to the last couple of days before presenting this to the class i begin to if worry i have done enough. if i have cast my net far enough if i have left enough of a bread crumb trail for others to follow. i didn't link every sit to this one. i really don't think anyone would use half of the christian art websites. no one wants to link to a site that really has a "Deep Thoughts" section or "Saint News". Neither did i link to all the court transcripts of obscenity cases in through the 40's and 50's. I found myself starting to just skim them (fruitlessly) looking for direct quotes. if i was bored silly then no one else will go through all this.
i also began to veer away from the original conceptas a whole. when i started to put these images together it felt like i was drawing a mustache on a picture of the pope. it was a laugh. I never wanted to be disrespectful, but sligtly antagonistic? sure. but these images became less about them and more about me. i now prefer to use these catholic images as templates for an image of my own creation rather than trying to recreate an existing masterpeice. there are photos that are just so wonderful that i can't not try to show the world how i see them and what they mean to me. i can react to the beefcake photos and let them take me where they want to go rather than trying to force them into predetermined poses. a couple of times i had to use photos that i really didn't like but they matched poses in classical paintings. The Last Dinner Party became work because of this. The Creation of Man from the Sistine Chapel, which i have been working on for the past few days is being crushed by these restrictions. Moses, on the other hand, i had a blast with and i have another Adam that i have been playing around with that i hope to post by monday. These biblical characters are the gender role models that were imposed upon me as a child. My affinity for them is comfortable and effortless and functions outside of catholisism.

in doing the last dinner party i haveput aside around 65 photos i would like to play with and nearly 30 classical paintings. i am more into the themes than recreating the actual paintings. inserting the symbols that coincide with each figure. I have to present this to the class in five days. i would like to get as many images out as possible between now and then...

Thad, Matty and Simon finish up the group.

here is Tommy, Jimmy the great, and Phil.

J.C.

I have always had a soft spot for judas. I guess i always assumed that he and jesus knew and discussed that in order for this whole salvation thing to work Judas had to spend eternity excluded, the outsider and marginalized and hated. here is Judas with Pete and Johnny

.

starting from left to right i used a basic primary color basis for each trio. here is Nate, Jimmy the lesser and Andy.

before i start posting my last supper i just wanted to make it clear that i am not claiming the original beefcake photos as my own in any way other than my cultural heritage. Bruce of LA, American Modeling Guide, Kris of Chicago,the list is longer than most would think. although not nessacerily a tribute to these men in particular, i would like my images to convey my sense of gratitude to all of the photographers and studios in the beginning of the 20th century who comforted, encouraged, and consolidated my ancestors; fanning the flames that would lead to were i sit today.

the photoshop document became so unruly that i broke it down into 4 panels of three apostles each and a central Jesus figure. i guess it would be more of a "Last Buffet" as they are no longer seated at a table.

When i started to research Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" in order to recreate it i found this wonderful book called "leonardo davinci's last supper".It was written in the mid fifties when a south carolinian became profoundly diturbed by the thought that The Last Supper was disintagrating. he financed Lumen Martin Winter to recreate it here in the united states. the painter took the approach of investigating Davinci the man and artist as a means of gaining insight into his relationship with each of these men in the painting. i have used this book and his deconstruction of the painting to give my own interpretation a traditional grounding.

i did a google search for radical and i found micah wright's propaganda posters. these made me happy.

i was asked by a man that i was seeing if i considered myself radical. I told him that i dont want anything that everyone else doesn't want. a home, a family, a sense of contribution. the only thing, i decide the definitions of those words. he replied "thats why you're radical. Self defining is radical."

i started this blog with guns blazing. it was a laugh. i was channeling all this attention and energy into this blog and these images. then i realized that this was public domain. i felt exposed and worse i felt shame. I started to sensor myself and each blog entry became torture. this blog became a my path to recovery. I consider myself to be a fairly liberated and open-minded individual. the realization that i suddenly felt that the male body and the homosexual overtones in these images made them offensive or disrespectful left me breathless. I have gone to great lengths to make sure that these are not just parody. I can think of nothing more beautiful than the naked male body. seeing it as a vehicle for the divine is effortless. that has been my one guide as i scramble to recover from this psychological tail spin. the random collection of links, quotes and stream of consciousness rambling is my way of reconstructing in myself what i was once overly confident in. it is true, one must "come out" every day.

So many of the beefcake photos seem to demand wings...

"IN 1953, WHEN A GROUP OF brave souls in a seedy garment district of Los Angeles launched the nation's first gay magazine, gays and lesbians were thought to be as dangerous and sneaky as communists, lurking everywhere and threatening the nation's moral foundation. Not surprisingly, a year after it started, the Postmaster General dubbed ONE magazine obscene and banned its distribution.

Tame by modern standards, ONE hardly matched the girlie magazines of the time and only delicately talked about sex. (In one short story, a lesbian couple touched each other four times before living happily ever after--which was apparently the story's real crime in the eyes of the government.) But that didn't stop the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals from branding the October 1954 issue of ONE "morally, depraving and debasing."

When ONE decided to fight the L.A. postmaster over its decision, even the ACLU wouldn't represent it, having defended the constitutionality of laws that made homosexual behavior criminal. But ONE's editors did manage to find a lawyer, and much to their surprise, in 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court took up their case, its first ever dealing with homosexuality. Even more shocking, without even hearing arguments in the case, the court ruled in ONE's favor, giving life to the country's gay rights movement more than a decade before the Stonewall Riots."

"In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) after intense debate. They stated that homosexuality "does not necessarily constitute a psychiatric disorder." Effectively, this saw its official acceptance as a viable sexual orientation and saw the increase in gay liberation throughout the Western world.

Many other associations across the world followed suit soon after. The American Psychoanalytic Association made similar steps and began accepting openly homosexual men and women. However, it wasn't until 1992 that the World Health Organisation ceased to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder, followed by the UK Government in 1994, and the Chinese Psychiatric Association in 2001."

i have had this block quote from some wikipedia for over a week now. I touch base with my instructor on this project. his one comment. "self editing is the worst."

I haven't posted for the past few days even though I've been working on some images. I've realized that putting the my interpretation of the William Blake's drawing out on the web has been causing pangs of anxiety. Out of respect for the subject matter and my own feeling I don't wanted to proceed until have a clearer head. I figured I should step away and do some support work, find my footing. There are a number of web sites that i have been browsing to get my beefcake photos. Most offer background information on the whole phenomenon.

" During the early Middle ages the type of 'passionate friendship' familiar to the early church was common and comprised the subject matter of much of the clerical writing, including almost all of the love poetry of the time."

"I think of your love and friendship with such sweet memeories, reverend bishop, that i long for that lovely time when i may be able to clutch the neck of your sweetness with the fingers of my desires. Alas, if only it were granted to me, as it was to Habakkuk, to be transported to you, how would I sink into your embraces,...how would I cover , with tightly pressed lips not only your eyes , ears and mouth but also your every finger and your toes, not once but to many a time"

From the head cleric in the court of Charlemagne to bishop he was friends with.

Both quotes from Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality. ( pages 188,190) Boswell, University of Chicago Press, 1980

This is the first image I have begun to play with. William Blake's Sepulcher 1805, pencil, pen and ink, and watercolor. William Blake has always been a favorite of mine. His injection of mysticism into traditional religious imagery inspires me. The fact that he deals with such subjects but from outside organized religion resonates with me.

I felt the need to establish a sense of cultural placement and vocabulary so here are three paraphrased definitions from The Subjects of Art History- Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspective (Cheatham,Holly and Moxey, Cambridge University Press,1998) I read them as a time line of the coming-out of art.

Homosexualism - The Euro-American tradition of self-consciously - if obliquely -highlighting the homoerotic personal and aesthetic significance and historical meanings of works of art or other cultural forms...In the simplest formula, homosexualism is the personal testimony of homosexuals that they exist.

Gay and Lesbian Studies - Emerging in the second half of the twentieth century,fully accepting the reality of homosexuality whether or not previous generations would or could have done so. They (gay and lesbian art historians) are united by their common concern to establish gay and lesbian inquiry within the discipline in the discipline's own accepted and most legitimate or prestigious terms and formats.

Queer theory - acknowledges the peculiarity - the specificity, distinctiveness, and originality - of every sexual act and subjective position in relation to every other one and asserts that no such position could be a general model of all sexualities and subjectivities.

The ideas / issues that am exploring in my identity project are sex and religion.

I have been gay my entire life. This is not something that happened over the years through accumulated experience. This is not a hormonal surge that started with my sexual coming of age. It is intrinsic to my character. I was gay in kindergarten and it was obvious and as I grew to adolescence is became even more obvious. Unfortunately, I was also catholic. These two areas of my identity came into direct confrontation with one another for the first time when I was 13. Puberty was in full swing with all the drama and upheaval that comes with it and I about to be confirmed as an adult in the eyes of the church. The year was 1983. A particularly controversial plague was just creping into the public consciousness. The pastor of my parish who was “teaching” my confirmation class had some particularly ugly things to say about AIDS being a punishment. I had always been good at religion, intending was to become a priest. I had some bible quotes for my “teacher”. I was barred from the class for the day and from heaven for eternity. Sr. Ausumpta, my homeroom teacher, found me in the hallway and had me explain how I got there. When the pastor had left the classroom she took me into the class and closed the doors, all the doors even the ones leading to the coatroom. . She gathered the entire class around her in a huddle so we could hear her as she whispered. In a clear and gentle voice she told us “Ignore everything that mean, bigoted, old-man just said to you. I have not devoted my life to an angry and vengeful god. My God, our God is one of forgiveness, mercy and love. You are about to be confirmed, you are adults. You all know when someone is acting out of love and when someone is not. You must think for yourself.”

That afternoon defined me. That remarkable, simple, woman gave me permission to trust myself to “know better”. Armed with that self-trust I have been able to understand the truth in this religion and walk away from the fear and anger. As a result I have carried a piece of catholisism through out my life even though I have not participated in any rituals since my confirmation. This project allows me to play off both the cultural histories that make me who I am.