Vintage Base Ball

This past Saturday I played in my first vintage base ball game, for a club called the Farmers Branch Mustangs.  The team actually falls under the management of the Farmers Branch Historical Park.  The team plays games under the rules that were written and adopted by the National Association of Base-Ball Players in March of 1860.  We also try to play with uniforms and equipment that players of the era would have used.  This means that, in the field, we play without gloves.  Bare-handed.  The base balls are a bit different in that they are a little bit softer than a modern baseball and with a single piece of leather instead of two.  Here's a picture...

The bats are thinner at the barrel but thicker around the handle than the bats of today.  There are no ball and strike counts, so there are no walks.  A swing and a miss is a strike, and three strikes is an out.  A foul ball is not a strike.  A foul tip that is caught by the catcher, either in the air or on one bounce is an out no matter how many strikes there are.  Any ball hit, fair or foul, if caught in the air or on one bounce results in the batter being out.  I really like that one bounce rule when I’m playing in the field since we aren't wearing gloves.  The pitchers have to throw the ball underhanded which makes things easier on the batter (called the striker) and on the bare-handed catcher (and I played four innings at catcher this past Saturday). 

I've always been a fan of baseball history, and participating on this team makes me feel more connected to that history.

So what does this have to do with art modeling?  Well, I've already arranged one modeling session in my vintage uniform for a group of portrait painters in a couple of weeks.  Here's a picture of me in uniform from Saturday's game.

The Farmers Branch uniform is more of an early 20^th-century look.  The 19^th century uniforms had high collars, and some of them had what looked like shields on the front of the shirts.  I wish the Farmers Branch team had those shield uniforms since they look really cool.

I had so much fun playing last weekend that I will definitely be a part of the team in future games.

Summer Vacation

We still haven't heard anything from our insurance about Elijah's HGH treatments, and I haven't been aggressive about looking for a more regular part-time job.  I have modeled more this summer than in past summers.  I've done two Saturday life drawing sessions with the Visual Arts Guild of Frisco and a couple of other Saturdays with the Texas Artists Coalition in Fort Worth.  I've got another gig next Wednesday in Keller, TX originating from a Meetup group I'm running.

My full-time job has me feeling a little burnt out, and I am really looking forward to our family vacation.  We'll be leaving two weeks from tomorrow, flying to Chicago (the first airplane flight for both of our boys) and coming back the following Sunday.  The boys then start school the very next day after our return.

We should have a good time on the trip though.  There are several eating establishments that I want to hit (Gino's East, Harry Caray's, and Ditka's among them).  We'll also be seeing a Cubs game at Wrigley Field, and my older son and I will be heading to a White Sox game that night (two ballparks in one day for us diehard baseball fans!).  Another big item on our agenda is a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.  I've been tempted to scour the web looking for Chicago drawing sessions to model for while I'm there, but I have so far resisted that temptation.  The trip will be family time.  Although if I were going to Chicago alone...

Sally Ride (1951-2012)

Here's a post that's completely unrelated to art or art modeling, but I'm going to post it anyway.  I was saddened to hear that Astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space passed away yesterday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.  My younger son Elijah and I went to hear her speak at the University of Texas at Arlington in February 2010.  Elijah has always loved things having to do with space.  I've taken him to the Johnson Space Center in Houston on three separate occasions over the past five years.  For the lecture that night, he went in an astronaut uniform, and I was able to get these two pictures of him with Sally Ride.  Rest in peace Sally.  What a great trip you are on now.

Lucian Freud at the Modern

I should have blogged about this three weeks ago, but the Lucian Freud exhibit opened at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth on the first of July.  That was a Sunday, so, after church, I took the wife and the two kids down to have a look at it.  It was an amazing exhibit, and yes, Naked Man With Rat was part of the collection.  It was a little surreal, looking at the original painting 25 or so years after emulating that pose in a drawing class.  It is a haunting piece, which is why it has remained in my mind for so many years.  But it was just one of many amazing pieces in the collection.  Here are just a few examples from the exhibit:

Needless to say, Jen and I enjoyed the exhibit a lot more than our boys did.  Seth, our 12-year-old, was uncomfortable and ready to go after about ten minutes.  He has developed an aversion to nudity over the past couple of years, and I'm sure he is not at all pleased that his father is a part-time nude model.  Elijah, our 9-year-old, is developing a taste for the arts, and seemed curious at the whole art museum concept.

I don't consider myself a huge fan of contemporary art unless it is art that deals with the figure, so I was really excited to see that this Lucian Freud exhibit was making a stop in Fort Worth.  And luckily for all of us here in North Texas, this is its only scheduled exhibition in the United States.  I think what I love most about Freud's paintings is their honesty.  His figures are not idealized; they are not glossed over or censored.  You see all of each body's perceived imperfections.  Genitals, when visible, are depicted in the paintings just as you would see them if you were looking at the model yourself.  And yet, all of those imperfections and brutal honesty demonstrate how wonderful each body is, in its own way.

The exhibit runs through October 28th, and you can bet that I will be going through it at least one more time. In fact, the Modern is running an 8 week painting class in conjunction with the exhibit, called "The Muse," and I'm hoping that I'll get to be one of their models...

Life and Love

Summer has always been a slow time for art modeling, at least for me.  Since I work full-time, I always have to limit my modeling to evenings and weekends, and there just aren't that many evening classes going on during the summer.  During the busy part of the semester, I model from six to ten hours per week.  But that's not steady since there are slowdowns around the holidays, spring break, etc.  I love modeling, and I really like the extra income.  But that income is not something that I can really count on when budgeting, since it is so sporadic and variable.

My wife and I found out this week that our younger son, Elijah, will need human growth hormone treatments for the next few years.  He is currently nine years old, but he looks more like he's six.  He recently had a test to see if he was just a late bloomer or if his body is not producing enough HGH.  As it turned out, it was the latter.

Most concerning to us right now is the cost and whether insurance will cover it.  Without insurance, the cost would be close to 25,000 dollars per year.  If he has to stay on the treatments for five years, that's more than the cost of our house.  Of course, not getting the treatment means that he would not grow to full height, have late puberty or even no puberty (which would mean that he would never be able to have children), and have other serious health problems throughout life.  So not getting the treatments is just not an option.  He is my son, and I will do whatever it takes to provide him with what he needs to grow into a healthy adult.  Of course, we are hopeful that we can harass and/or force the insurance company into covering these treatments.

All these concerns have me looking for another source of income.  I've already applied for a part-time night hotel desk clerk.  Who knows what all this will mean for my modeling.  I may have to give it up for a few years while I work the equivalent of two full-time jobs to provide for my son.  But it's a sacrifice I must make.

Sketch Sanatorium at the Kettle Gallery

As someone who obviously loves modeling for figurative art, I occasionally do web searches for photos, videos, and events having to do with life drawing. One of the things I've found but have never experienced is the concept of life drawing marathons. Pallette & Chisel in Chicago hosts three 12-hour long drawing marathons per year with "models in multiple studios." In San Francisco, the Bay Area Models Guild hosts occasional six-hour-long drawing marathons with "many models posing at once: males, females, nude, costumed, short and long poses." I've also seen information about drawing marathons with multiple models held in several east coast cities (like Washington D.C.).

To my knowledge, such a marathon (with multiple models) has never been attempted here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, probably because the interest from the art community just doesn't seem to be there. Most of the open, drop-in sessions that I do are sparsely attended. The last drop-in session I did at the Creative Arts Center, which turned out to be a wonderful experience, only had four artists present. I've done an open session or two at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center with only one artist in attendance.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area is one of the largest population centers in the country, and I do think that interest for a drawing marathon and more figure drawing events could be cultivated. About three years ago, the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, at the request of some of their regular artists, tried to hold a special double model session. Due to a scheduling mistake, there actually wound up being three of us models that night, but there were at least fifteen artists in attendance, the most I had ever seen there. We all had a great time during the three-hour session, but the FWCAC has, to the best of my knowledge, stuck to one model per session since.

So I started thinking about what I could do to generate more interest in life drawing in the area. I realize that part of the problem is that Dallas lies in the Bible belt where nudity and public and semi-public displays of the unadorned body are generally thought of as prurient by the general population. Those of us who have spent time in life drawing class know that that isn't the case. It's about seeing us, human beings, as we really are and as we were created. And for the artists, it's about lines and values, shadows and darks, perspective and proportion.

I started looking into galleries in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, thinking that perhaps I could inspire a live figure drawing event. I've never drawn or painted, but I've always considered modeling as my artwork. I was thinking of a big art-show-opening-type of event, open to the public, with me and at least one other model posing. People could draw, watch the models pose, watch the artists draw, or just mingle. Paper and pencils would be available for anyone who wanted to draw.  Artists have been drawing nudes for centuries, and it is entirely natural for a model to be seen posing nude. So the goal of such an event would be to normalize life drawing from nude models. The more people see it as normal, the more people will be interested in it.

Anyway, that's my vision, and perhaps it will happen one of these days. In the meantime, I found a small gallery called Kettle Art in Deep Ellum that holds monthly Sketch Sanatorium nights. The "rules" of Sketch Sanatorium, as listed on the website, are as follows:

1. Come ready to draw
2. All drawings can be traded with other artists, or bought by anyone else for $10 (all proceeds go to artist)
3. Come to meet, greet, and share with other artist and collectors in an open environment.
This is a chance to get to know what the Kettle is about, and let the Kettle know what you’re about.

I contacted Richard Ross, one of the people who run the monthly sketch night, and asked about the possibility of volunteering to model for the group.  He seemed OK with the idea and invited me to the next one, on April 5th.  I arrived not knowing what to expect or whether I would even model or not.  As it turned out, Richard wasn't there, and that session was being run by Amber Campagna.  Amber had invited a friend of hers to model as well, a young woman named Kristin with an amazingly frizzy head of hair that everyone agreed would be fun to draw.  Kristin arrived in a green dress, and she intended to wear it while she modeled.

At the beginning of the session, I asked Amber where I could change, and she directed me to the bathroom in the back room.  She then asked me what I had brought to wear while modeling.  "Nothing," I replied.  "So you want to pose nude?" she asked.  "That's how I usually model," I said.  She paused and seemed to think about that for a moment before giving me the go ahead.

Amber got a couple of people to help her cover the windows as I changed into my robe.  There was still a lot of activity going on in the gallery around the table that had been set up for those participating in Sketch Sanitarium.  The sketch nights were also portfolio review nights for artists who would like to get a show in the gallery, and there was one lady there having a member of the Kettle's all-volunteer crew look at her work.  Amber was working on her paintings and didn't intend to draw with the others.  And a couple of other people were doing something else with something that had been on exhibit.

Once the sketch artists had their sketchbooks and pencils ready, Kristin and I got into place, and I dropped the robe.  Those first moments of exposure are always the most intense of any drawing session for me as the model.  Scary, liberating, exhilarating, vulnerable, and humbling are just a few of the adjectives that could describe the moment, and those feelings were even more intense that night in such an open place and with another model who was not disrobing.  I was a little fearful of the reactions of non-sketch night people in the gallery, but the other activities continued normally around the artists as they got busy sketching Kristin and me.

While the majority of my modeling is done solo, I have had more than a few sessions with another model where both of us were nude.  I've also had a couple of portrait sessions as one of two clothed models.  But I had never done a session like this, where one model was nude and the other fully dressed.  It made for an interesting dynamic.  As the session continued, Kristin and I got comfortable with each other, and we did a few interactive poses.  We took several positions that looked like we were in deep conversation, and we even did a pose as if we were dancing a waltz.  I even had a little fun with one where Kristin was seated in a chair and I pretended to sneak up behind her, my fingers bent as if they were claws.  A couple of people in the gallery who were not drawing even took notice of the pose, and Amber grabbed her phone and took a couple of pictures...

Personally, I had one of the best times I had ever had modeling.  Perhaps it was knowing that I was volunteering and not "working" that made me more relaxed.  Or maybe it was the openness of the session, that we weren't in a closed classroom but in a gallery that was open to the public.  Throughout the session, people came and went, although I later learned that most of them were members of the all-volunteer Kettle gallery crew.  Some of them had shocked expressions upon entering, and a few others couldn't hide their amusement.  But I never once felt uncomfortable because I was in my natural element, modeling for artists.  I can only hope for more opportunities to introduce people to the wonderful discipline of drawing the unadorned human figure from life.

Summer slowdown

My summer slowdown has begun as all of the college classes for which I have been modeling regularly are now doing final critiques.  I only have one modeling gig on my calendar, a June 6th evening class at the Art Institute of Fort Worth.  I'm sure I'll pick up a session or two as the summer goes on.

I don't know whether to be sad or relieved.  These past four months have been extremely busy with working my day job and modeling in the evenings, sometimes three or four nights a week.  It was sometimes difficult to keep up with, especially when you add my son's baseball practice and tournament schedule to the mix.  And yet, I love modeling so much that I'm sad to see the opportunities fade for awhile.