Things that Make Me Say Wow

The Texas Academy of Figurative Art recently redesigned its website.  With that redesign came an updated student gallery.  All the pieces in that gallery are amazing, but I'm naturally partial to the three of them that feature me as the model.  One of those is the drawing from my long 42 hour pose earlier this year.  The artist is a young lady named Katy who also did the drawing at the top of my blog.  Her drawing of me in that long pose is one of the most amazing drawings of myself I have ever seen...

The Agony of Da Feet

I posted last time about my application to the Discovery Channel primitive survival show Naked and Afraid.  I'm still hoping/waiting for a callback on that, but I decided that I needed to prepare myself just in case I, by some miracle, do get chosen.  So I started taking my evening walks barefooted to toughen the soles of my feet.  My first such barefooted walk was Saturday night.  I modeled for the Sunday open figure drawing lab at the Dallas Creative Arts Center the following day, and my feet killed me the entire three hours.  The gestures were difficult enough, but the first 30 minute pose was a standing one.  Normally, I love standing poses, but this one was a struggle with my sore feet.

My mistake, I think, was staying on the concrete sidewalk.  I went on another walk Monday night and varied my surfaces from concrete to green grass to bare dirt to brown, dead grass.  I also walked across the playground at the park which is composed of wood shavings.  That wood felt worse than anything.

I wrote a blog post last year called Getting My Head Examined about modeling for a portrait session.  Maybe I do need my head examined in another way for wanting to be on this Naked and Afraid show.  I first watched it in a hotel room in Austin.  I was going to testify before the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee the following day regarding the "fetal pain" bill, so I had a lot on my mind.  As soon as I saw the show, I immediately wanted to be on it.  That desire was so strong that I had to quit watching before the episode ended.  I figured my chances for getting on were very slim, so I put it out of my mind.  I didn't think about it again until I came across a casting call for season two when browsing Craig's List (looking for opportunities to model for art classes).

Now, I keep checking my phone and my email, hoping for that call to go to Los Angeles for the next step in the casting process.  Nothing so far.

My desire to be on this show can be attributed, I think, to many things.  Number one is my love of the nude human form, especially nudity that has nothing whatsoever to do with sex.  I also crave adventure.  That's why I am not content in just my day job and why I keep modeling.  I love to travel, and yet, I've never been outside of the United States.  I want a break from the daily grind of work and traffic.  And finally, I love the pureness of this idea.  I've said before in this blog that I feel pure when I model nude.  I play vintage base ball because of the pureness of the game under those 1860's rules: no gloves, no over-running first base on a ground ball without the risk of being tagged out, etc.  The challenge presented by Naked and Afraid is the challenge faced by our very distant ancestors; how to survive in a hostile world without any modern conveniences.  The survivalists on the show are purely human, as created by God, without any of the added things that make our lives more comfortable (or complacent).

I will be taking a crash course in survival techniques until one of two things happen: 1) I get confirmation that I am no longer being considered for the show, or 2) I leave for my three-week survival destination (a tropical island perhaps, or the Outback, or the Amazon, or the Congo, or some other exotic and challenging locale). One way or another, let the adventure begin.

Naked and Afraid

I came across a casting call for the Discovery Channel show Naked and Afraid last night, and I submitted an email to them. I've only watched the show once, but it was interesting. Two strangers of the opposite sex are put into the wild without anything (including clothing). They then have to survive for three weeks.

The casting call was looking for survivalists, and I have virtually no experience in that area. But I figured, why not submit anyway. I'm sure that they have more challenges in casting that show than most others. After I sent the email last night, I got on their Facebook page this morning and found an online form to fill out. About an hour or two later, I got an email from someone at the production company asking for a phone number and a good time to call. I answered, and she called about 20 minutes into the time window I gave her.

I gave her my life history, including my college degrees, my stint working for the New York Public Library, my current IT career, and my part time nude art modeling job and how it came to be the main topic of conversation with Regis when I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. She also asked about my church and how being a Southern Baptist conflicted (or not) with my being a nude model. She also asked about my political affiliation, and I told her about my run as the Libertarian Party candidate for State Representative in 2012. When she asked about my outdoor survival experience, I was honest and told her that I didn't have much. I did give her the pitch that the first half of the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away would have been boring if the main character had been a survival expert before he crashed near that island, that it was his struggle and discovery that made that movie compelling. When she asked me which environment I preferred among jungle, tropical island, desert, or swamp, I chose tropical island. I told her I chose that because rainfall is fairly regular in the tropics and that making some kind of container for rain collection would provide me and my companion a clean water supply for the three weeks. Swamps had a lot of water, I said, but a lot of it is stagnant. And finding water would be a struggle in a desert. She seemed pleased with that response, and she told me that most people chose the tropical island but don't really give a survival reason why...

I think it was a good conversation. She said she thought I was a good fit for the show (mainly because I was more than comfortable with the nudity involved) but that she had concerns about my survival skills. She said they would talk about it and get back to me next week. If I were selected as a final candidate, I would be flown out to Los Angeles for more interviews. I put my chances at getting into that final candidate status at about 10 percent because of that lack of survival experience, etc. But it would certainly be an adventure...

Impractical Jokers

I'm always a bit critical whenever popular media (TV shows, movies, etc.) tries to portray the job of a male art model.  The model in the movie Art School Confidential was depicted as nothing more than a creepy exhibitionist.  And as I recall, the TV show Ally McBeal featured a life drawing class in which one model substituted for another in the same pose and during the same drawing.  And the pose was one which a model would never have been able to hold for the length of time depicted in the episode.

Over the last year, I have become a fan of the TruTV show Impractical Jokers.  Four supposedly life-long friends compete in a series of challenges designed to embarrass each other in public.  The loser of each episode has to perform some kind of humiliating task at the end of each episode.  The show is hysterically funny, and there have been times that I have thought that I was going to hurt myself from laughing so hard.

Last night's loser was James Murray or Murr as he's called on the show, and his task was to model, nude, for a drawing class.  Of course, the other three had some surprises up their sleeves, like a rotating platform. The result was, as usual for this show, hilarious. Here's a clip of Murr's "punishment."  TruTV shows a lot of reruns, so I'm sure this episode will be on again...

The Impractical Jokers Facebook page even had some of the sketches done of Murr during his modeling experience...

Cancellation

Summer is always a really slow time for modeling, and this summer has seemed especially slow.  I've modeled twice since April 21st, and one of those was for a brand new drawing group's first attempt at a session.  I was scheduled to model last Tuesday night for a class at my local community arts center, but a few hours before the class was supposed to have started, I got a call saying that it had been cancelled due to a lack of registrations.  I was disappointed, both because I didn't get to model and because the lack of interest in drawing the human figure seems to be increasing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  The same instructor will be trying another figure drawing class at that same arts center on September 24th, and I am, once again, the scheduled model.  If the arts center won't promote the class enough to get the minimum number of people to sign up, perhaps I should put a post in the Artists' section on Craig's List or something.

The Itch

I was counting it up, and I've only modeled twice since April 21st.  It's the end of July, and the prospects for bookings over the next month don't look good.  When I don't get to model for a long time, I get anxious, and I go looking for places and groups to model for.  I found a place that does sketch nights kind of like the Kettle used to do, and I've offered to volunteer as a model for them.  We'll see what they say.

I don't know why I get so anxious.  Being a nude model is such a part of how I identify myself, so when I don't get to do it much, I feel unfulfilled somehow.  And I even hesitate to call myself a nude model any more.  I like to think of myself as a pure model, as in purely human without all the extra accouterments that society compels us to put on.

Maybe my IT job is too consuming, or maybe our recent move from one house to another has been taking up too much time and resources, or maybe it's just a combination of everything that is leaving me feeling frustrated.  I like to think of myself as atypical.  I don't want to be the typical IT guy, the typical Christian, the typical political activist, or the typical model.  Yet, when I confine myself to any of those titles to the exclusion of the others, typical is how I feel.

I'm sure these feelings will pass once the fall semester gets started, as long as I'm able to book modeling gigs.

Ground Zero

The job in Wyoming that I interviewed for didn't pan out.  I suspect that I was too expensive for them as I had to list the salaries from my last three jobs on the application.  It's just as well since my wife wasn't too keen on moving right now.  So I get to keep modeling in the Dallas/Fort Worth area whenever my schedule allows me to take bookings.

I took a vacation day yesterday and spent it in the Texas State Capitol building in Austin as it has become ground zero in the abortion debate.  Considering that the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision struck down a Texas statute, perhaps the Texas Capitol has always been a ground zero in that debate.  I was one of several hundred who testified at a hearing of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.  I would probably be called a hardcore pro-lifer.  I believe that government exists to protect the right to life, liberty, and property of every person.  I believe that the definition of person must include every living organism that can be biologically classified as homo sapien.

That being said, I was very critical of the supposedly pro-life bill in question when I testified to the committee.  Each witness only had a maximum of two minutes to speak, so I had to give an extremely condensed version of the written testimony that I submitted.

All in all, it was an amazing day.  I feel very fortunate to live in a country where I can participate in the political process.

If anyone is interested, a copy of the written testimony I submitted to the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee can be found on my other blog here:  http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com/2013/07/ground-zero.html